Eckhart Tolle teaches that fear is a common human condition rooted in identification with the conceptual mind and one’s "life situation." By practicing presence—stepping out of thought into spacious "being" and not fully believing every thought—one can dissolve fear. Tolle references A Course in Miracles and other spiritual teachers to illustrate denying the reality of personal narratives, embracing not-knowing, and recognizing the ego and the collective conditioned mind as sources of ongoing problems.
Chapters
Once you know that also it's the end of fear. Because there nothing can be destroyed. So it's wonderful practice. That's your practice. It doesn't matter where you practice. Wherever you are in your life, you practice every situation, every moment is the two dimensions. And the end of fear comes with that. Fear being a normal human condition for most people, sometimes buried under something else. Fear in its many manifestations, nervousness, tension, anxiety, anger really comes out of fear. Stress really is a form of fear. All many forms of fear, quite normal. Why? That's all you know, that's fear. You don't know that. Once you know that, also it's the end of fear. Because there nothing can be destroyed. That's why they cause in miracle starts, which is all you need to know. The prologue, the first before it all starts, it says this course can be summarized in the following. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. Nothing real can be threatened. And that is here. Because nothing unreal ultimately exists in the world of form. The form is ultimately not real in itself. Nothing unreal exists herein, which means knowing that lies the peace of God. God, of course, is the formless, timeless, eternal, unmanifested that is both within and beyond the world. Some of you, as I mentioned earlier, are able to step out of their mind. And you can practice that through a conscious choice. Be present. Nothing to think about right now. Just be present. You don't carry your history with you when you're present. Your life situation. I use that word in power of now. Very important. Your life situation. Everybody has one. Past, future relationships, job, health, finances, where you live, what happens to you and all. Your life situation. You have a life you are here with. You have a life situation, of course you do, but you also have. It's not that you have a life. You are life itself. And when your life situation is all you know about yourself, which is another way of putting that's all you know, then you miss life. No, you're very good at dealing with your life situation, but you miss life. You do all the right things, but it never really gets you anywhere because you miss life. Life is now. And life is not in the doing. Life is in the being. Now. Step out of thinking into a large stillness, if you can. And also another way is not to completely believe in every thought that comes into your head. Realize it's a thought, it's a position, it's a judgment, not completely identified with it. It's a story that you are telling yourself. It's amazing how many stories people tell themselves in their head. Many are completely distorted. It's not the reality, it's the story. It's how you see the reality. The reality usually is much more simple and more benign than the story. One of the early lessons in A Course in Miracles says you're supposed to look at things around you in the room and say, nothing that I see in this room means anything. This table doesn't mean anything. This glass doesn't mean anything. This hand doesn't mean anything. This floor doesn't mean anything. Now, what does that lesson mean? It doesn't mean anything. What it means is it's attempting to erase the continuous conceptualization of reality, like scribbling on a blackboard. Because whatever you think it means is a concept in your mind. And if you deny the continuous and compulsive conceptualization of reality, it's like erasing the conditioning of your mind and coming to the place where the Dalai Lama is. Don't know. So this lesson in the Course of Miracles, all its teaching, is to come to the place of spacious emptiness, alertness, no longer trapped in conceptual thinking, doesn't mean anything. And of course, that's another. You are moving into a different dimension by living in this way. It's just. You inhabit. Suddenly, life opens up and all the narrowness that the mind had imposed on it dissolves, and life becomes spacious because you found the space within. There's suddenly a spaciousness to life and not a threatening place anymore. What's life going to do? Where is my next threat coming? And again, the same thing. For example, there's an entire spiritual teaching based on denying the reality of your story. Byron. Katie's teachings is based on the simple fact of denying your story. How do I know? Do I really know that this is true? No, I can't really know that. So you take you to the same place where the Dalai Lama is. Don't know. So it's a wonderful thing. You can enter that not knowing and then. But it's only not knowing. From the viewpoint of the conceptual mind, you are actually connected with a deeper intelligence, unconditioned. And if you really need to know something, it comes. But it comes out of the spaciousness of not knowing. Well, it's a little bit like jumping off a cliff and then seeing if you can fly to the ego. It's a little bit like that. The ego says, don't go there. Because the ego has worked it all out. It explains the whole. It has its philosophy of life. It might be very defective limiting philosophy, but it has some kind of philosophy of life. Every person has their story through which they interpret reality. And usually it's not a pleasant work of fiction, but at least you think you know, it gives you some illusory foothold. And of course the ego thinks if I let go of that, I won't know anything anymore. Which in a way is true, but not completely true. In a deeper sense it is only let go of a distortion of reality created by the conditioned mind which is part of the collective human mind in its present state of evolution. And so the collective mind of which your mind is part has created this human made world which is full of problems. And they seem to be. They pop out one after another. When you think one thing is better now, suddenly, oh God, now it's the economy and then it's that. And there's that another war.
