You must understand that by surrendering, I do not mean a fatalistic acceptance or a sacrifice. True surrender is freeing yourself from all ideas and allowing perception to come to you. You will then see that the energy fixed, for example, as suffering, begins to flourish in your full attention.

In reality, there is nothing to achieve, and the moment you are convinced of this, a halt will occur. Every energy previously directed towards an aim returns to its origin, and you are brought back to your presence. When seeing and hearing have become free from all motivation, aim, and intention, you are in an unqualified, multidimensional attention: the entire body listens, and listening and seeing dissolve into presence. Ultimately, there is no longer a subject that sees nor an object that is seen.

Seeking something, expecting something, hoping to realize something—these are all movements that lead away from one's own axis, toward the periphery, taking us away from global consciousness and leading us toward "a point of view."

What is real exists in itself; as long as the person needs consciousness to be known, it is not real. You can see what you are not, you will never be able to see what you are. When you become familiar with what you are not, you feel a distance, until the moment comes when you feel what you are without touching it. This is being knowledge.

Meditation is not a brain function. There may be the inner urge to meditate, but this comes directly from silence, from your true nature. Until you have realized silence, sitting down can help you become familiar with yourself, until you find yourself in listening; then meditation is present in every moment. Knowing yourself does not require a practice. You do not need to undertake anything. There is nothing to achieve, nothing to lose.

To free a child from an image, you must be free from all qualification, particularly from being a father. Maintaining the image of the father generates the need to fulfill everything that defines your relationship with them. A kind of mutual imprisonment is thus established.

No system, method, or technique exists by which to approach reality. It reveals itself where every technique and every system fail, where the futility of willing is seen. Every effort of this kind leads to the strengthening of the ego.

When the mind sees its limitations, a humility and an innocence arise that are not objects of cultivation, accumulation, or learning, but the result of instantaneous understanding. When it sees its powerlessness, its weakness, and nothing is reacting, then a moment of surrender arrives, a silent pause in which it is in communion with silence, with the ultimate truth. It is this reality that transforms the mind, and not an effort or a decision.

To discover spontaneity, conscious and unconscious thought must be extinguished.

Thoughts, emotions, and perceptions exist, but there is nothing personal in them. The 'I' is a convention accepted in human relationships; it is a concept but has no reality.

When you truly know that what you seek is your true nature, then you are freed from the impulse to strive.

You can truly make decisions only when you accept the situation. In acceptance, the situation belongs to the totality, to its completeness, and the decision emerges from this global perspective.

Name and form make the object. If you remove the name and form, there is only consciousness.

To realize the eternal is to be the eternal, the totality, the universe and its content. Every happening is an effect and an expression of the whole, and is fundamentally in harmony with it. Every response that comes from the whole is necessarily right, effortless, and instantaneous.

You absolutely cannot say that you are what you think you are. The ideas you have about yourself change from day to day. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.

Truth is simple and open to all. It is falsehood that is difficult and a source of problems; it continuously wills, demands, and has expectations. Being false, it is empty, always seeking confirmation and reassurance.

To entertain ideas such as 'I am a sinner' or 'I am not a sinner' is sin. Identifying with the particular is the gravest sin.

The impersonal is real; the personal appears and disappears. 'I am' is the impersonal being; 'I am this' is the person.

Spirit touches matter and consciousness results. This consciousness, polluted by memories and expectations, becomes a bond and produces karma.

Beyond the mind, experience, which is a dualistic state, does not exist. Everyone sees the world through the idea he has of himself. If you imagine yourself separate from the world, it appears separate from you, and you experience desires and fears.

You cannot be yourself for some reason. You are yourself, without any reason.

When you demand nothing from the world and from God, when you do not want, do not seek, and do not expect anything, then the Supreme State will come to you unexpected, uninvited.

Reality is neither subjective nor objective, neither mind nor matter, neither time nor space. To be such, these divisions need someone who is separate from them.

Action is performed by the whole for the whole; activity is performed by the individual for himself.

Every illness begins in the mind. First, deal with the mind by tracing and eliminating all wrong ideas and emotions. Then, live and work unconcerned with the illness. With the removal of the causes, the effect is bound to disappear.

It is always falsehood that makes you suffer: false desires, false fears, false values, false ideas, and false human relationships. Abandon the false and you are free from pain.

Awareness becomes consciousness when it has an object.

The mind and feelings are external, but you mistake them for something intimate; you believe the world is objective while it is only a projection of your psyche. This is the confusion.

Freedom from attachment is not achieved through practice; it arises naturally when one knows oneself. Self-consciousness is detachment. Every desire is due to a sense of deficiency. When you lack nothing, desire ceases.

Contradiction is the hallmark of the false; the true never contradicts itself. It is useless to seek the truth if the mind is blind to the false. It must be purified of all falsehood before the truth can appear.

Things happen around me, but I do not take part in them. An event only becomes an experience if one is emotionally involved.

There is nothing to become; just discover what you are. Trying to conform to a model is an unbearable waste of time; just be.

Changes are inevitable in the world of the mutable, but you are untouched. You are the immutable background against which changes are perceived.

All desires must be abandoned because by desiring them, you become your desires. When no desire remains, you return to your natural state.

What you remember is never real; the real is now.

I was asked the following question: some people would like to separate themselves completely from others and be alone – and in that, they would find peace, and in being in church: is this the best thing? I answered no, and here is why. He who is as he ought to be, in truth, is well off in every place and with everyone, but he who is not as he ought to be is not well off in any place or with anyone. He who is as he ought to be, has God truly close to him, and he who truly possesses God, possesses Him everywhere: on the road and next to any person, just as in church, in solitude, or in the cell. If such a man truly possesses Him, and possesses Him alone, no one can be an obstacle to him.

But the man in whom God does not truly dwell, and who must seek God externally, in this thing and in that, and who seeks God in unequal ways, in works or in people or in different places, does not possess God. Such a man easily encounters obstacles, since he does not possess God, and does not seek Him alone, nor does he love or have Him alone in his mind; therefore, not only bad company but also good company is an obstacle to him, and not only the road but also the church, and not only bad words and works but also good ones: the obstacle, in fact, is within him, because God has not become everything to him.

The will is full and right when it is totally stripped of itself, dispossessed, and formed upon the will of God. Yes, the more it is so, the more it is right and true. To be empty of every creature is to be full of God, and to be full of every creature is to be empty of God.

God loves by virtue of Himself, and accomplishes everything by virtue of Himself; that is, He loves for the sake of love and performs works for the sake of working. Indeed, without a doubt, God would not have begotten the only Son in eternity, if having begotten were not identical to begetting. Therefore, the saints say that the Son is begotten so eternally that He still continues to be begotten. Thus, God would not have created the world if having created were not one and the same with creating. Therefore, God created the world in such a way that He still continues to create it. Everything that is past or future is far away and distinct from God. Therefore, he who is born of God as a son of God, loves God for His own sake, or loves God for the sake of God and performs all works for the sake of working. This is what Our Lord means when He says: “A nobleman went away”; for man must abandon all images and himself, and become foreign to everything and dissimilar from everything, if he truly wants and must receive the Son and become a son, in the heart and in the bosom of the Father.

Love separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul: it tolerates no condition except God, and what is God, and what is of God. He who is caught in this net, he who walks this path, can do what he wills: whatever he does is a work of love; whether he does something or does nothing, it does not matter. The most insignificant action, the most humble occupation is for him and for other people more salutary, more fruitful, and more pleasing to God than the actions of all those who are pure from mortal sin, but inferior to him in love. His rest is more useful than the other's activity.

The moment God created the first man, the moment the last man will perish, and the moment in which I now speak to you, are identical in God: in Him there is only a single moment. Behold! One lives in the same light with God: therefore, he knows neither suffering, nor future, but one single, always equal eternity. For such a man, encompassed as he is by the truth, no miracles exist: in him is the essence of all things; no accident, no future can bring him anything new, since he lives in a present that is ever-fresh, without interruption! Such a divine power resides in this strength.

This is how you can recognize whether your suffering is yours or God's: if you suffer for the sake of yourself, your suffering always hurts you and the bearing of it weighs heavily on you; but if, instead, you suffer only in God and for God, it does not hurt you and does not weigh you down, because it is God who bears the burden. And even if all the pain that men have suffered, or that the whole world endures together, were to fall upon you all at once, it would not hurt you, nor would it seem heavy, because God would bear the burden.

Meister Eckhart said: He who is always alone is worthy of God. To him who is always with himself, God remains close. And in him who always dwells in an eternal present, in him God incessantly generates the Son.

We must ensure that we do not have to pray to God to give us His divine grace and goodness; we must ensure that we take them ourselves, and not ask Him for any of it. For God, with His divine influence, cannot but descend into the humble person.

He is loved by God who possesses these three things: the first is the renunciation of possessions, the second of all pleasure, the third of himself.

When God made man, the most intimate part of the divinity was united with man.

Meister Eckhart said to a poor man: “May God grant you a good morning, brother.” “Sir, may you have it; I have never had a bad day.” He said: “Why, brother?” “Because I have always willingly suffered what God gave me to suffer, and, since I felt unworthy of Him, I have never been sad or afflicted.” He said: “Where have you found God above all?” “When I left all creatures, that is when I found God.” He said: “Where have you left God, brother?” “In all clear and pure hearts.” He said: “What kind of man are you, brother?” “I am a king.” He said: “Over what do you reign?” “Over my flesh. Indeed, everything my spirit ever desired from God, my flesh was even more agile and more ready to accomplish and to endure than my spirit was to receive it.” He said: “A king must have a kingdom. Where then is your kingdom, brother?” “In my soul.” He said: “How is that possible, brother?” “When I close the doors of my five senses and desire God with all my fervor, that is how I find God in my soul, purely and blissfully as in eternal life.” He said: “You must be holy: what has made you holy, brother?” “Remaining firm in silence, together with high meditation and union with God, that is what has carried me to heaven, since I have never been able to find peace in things inferior to God. Now I have found it, and I have peace and joy in Him for eternity, and this surpasses the temporal duration of all kingdoms. No external work is equally perfect, as it hinders the inner life.”

A young woman came to a Dominican convent and asked for Meister Eckhart. The doorkeeper said: “Whom shall I announce?” She replied: “I do not know.” The doorkeeper said: “How, do you not know who you are?” And she: “Because I am neither a maiden, nor a woman, nor a man nor a wife, nor a widow nor a damsel, nor a lord nor a servant, nor a maidservant.” The doorkeeper went to Meister Eckhart and said to him: “Come and see the strangest creature who has ever spoken to me; allow me to escort you, show yourself and ask who seeks you.” They did so. The girl spoke to him as she had to the doorkeeper. Meister Eckhart said: “Dear maiden, your speech is true and lively; explain to me what you mean.” She replied: “If I were a maiden, I would be in my original innocence; if I were a woman, I would incessantly generate the eternal Word in my soul; if I were a man, I would resist sins with all my strength; if I were a wife, I would be faithful to my dear and only spouse; if I were a widow, I would have a constant longing for my only love; if I were a damsel, I would carry out noble service; if I were a servant, I would perform hard labors and serve my Lord with all willingness and without opposition. But I am none of these things; I am one thing like another, and so I go my way.” Meister Eckhart returned and said to his disciples: “I have heard the purest human being speak that I have ever found.”