This is a YouTube video titled "30 Minute Guided Meditation | Sitting Together in Presence with Eckhart Tolle" created in May 2023. The content is a guided meditation session led by Eckhart Tolle, focusing on presence, letting go of thought, and spiritual awareness. The session includes spoken guidance and meditative pauses, emphasizing the experience of being present beyond thinking and personal identity.
We are only interested in one thing here for our life, meditation. And that is to sit together. Not physically together, but nevertheless together in presence. Thinking is not important here. As much as possible, let go of thinking without any effort and realize that you are more fully yourself when you're not thinking. And when you're not thinking, you can realize what being is, what it means to be. And you can sense the being that you are, which can be expressed as the first person singular of the verb to be. I am. So you sense or you are the presence prior to thinking, the clear space of presence. That's why we're here, to be that, to realize that we are that. I don't think as I sit here. The words just come out of the stillness. There's no thinking prior to the words. And as soon as a word has been uttered, there's just presence or stillness. So you can join me in that as I don't need to think. You don't need to think right now, but just be present.
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The great teacher Ramana Maharshi, who taught during the first half of the 20th century in India, was once asked by a visitor to his ashram, this, how do I know whether I'm making progress on the spiritual path? And he said, the degree of absence of thought is the only true criterion for your progress on the spiritual path. The extent, in other words, to which you are free of thought in daily life, stable, able to use thought whenever it's needed, perfectly, more efficiently than before, more creatively, because you have access to the unconditioned intelligence itself, which is presence. How long you can sit in meditation. Formal meditation is not a good criterion for progress on the spiritual path. But to what extent presence comes into your daily life, which initially may just mean little moments of presence in between all the doings of your life. Little moments of being, awareness, alertness, alert stillness, conscious, consciously looking at something, consciously listening, consciously walking across the room, consciously washing your hands. Which does not mean when you walk across the room, you're thinking, I am now crossing the room, or when you look at something, I'm now looking at that tree, that you're not present yet. It can be an intermediate step. But the actual presence is when there's no background commentary and when there's virtually no background commentary throughout your life, that is the awakened state. It may still be fragments of thoughts saying this or that, but basically or fundamentally, three of the involuntary, compulsive background commentary in your daily life. That's an enormous evolutionary leap to live like that, totally free. Just be Free of background commentary. Now, that's easier than to say, throughout my life, I want to be free of that, but just do it now. Renounce unnecessary thinking. Be present instead. Then the ego diminishes and eventually cannot survive in you when you are present.
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People have practiced traditionally all kinds of renunciations in spiritual life, in Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism and so on. And they are still being practiced in many cultures to some extent. Renunciation of possessions, renunciation of your name, let go of your old name, adopt a new spiritual name. Renunciation of physical comforts, exposing the body to discomfort. All these can be helpful. But if the most basic renunciation is not known, then the most basic attachment will still be there. And that's attachment to your thoughts. You haven't renounced unnecessary thinking.
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Setting aside a period for being present is traditionally called meditation. So you could say that that's what we are doing here, although we are not really doing anything. All we are doing, which is not a doing, is realizing our presence. Realizing presence right now in different parts of the planet, little points of consciousness, waking up. Where before there was only a person, there's now conscious presence arising different parts of the planet at the same time. It. And this, of course, has no form and there's no time. Past and future become irrelevant in presence. And that's an amazing realization that who you essentially are, your feeling of identity, of essential identity, does not need the future to complete itself. It is already complete. It does not need the past. So you don't need past to know who you are. That's a delusion. It's a story. You don't need future to finally arrive at some more complete version of yourself, because presence is already complete. You are already complete in presence. One could say presence is the cream. Whatever happens in time and whatever happens in future to you is the skimmed milk. But once you know the cream and have the cream, then skimmed milk is not that important anymore. So as more presence arises, you lose the fear of death, which of course arises because you unconsciously think you need more time to be fully yourself. Of course, the truth is you need to get out of time to be fully yourself. So we are here, relaxed and alert at the same time. Alertness does not require tension. And to be free of tension does not mean that you are going towards sleep. And at this moment, who are you? With no reference to your story, the space of presence, not a person, you still look like a person from the outside. So with this shift, the person recedes and presence arises. You don't lose anything real in this. But what about my personal identity? I don't want to lose that. If you look more deeply at the bottom of what you feel is your personal identity, there's the fact that right now you are conscious. That's the foundation of what you send and call your personal identity. Consciousness is your personal identity. It gives light to the story of who you are, which consists of thoughts and the past. Past is thoughts. The consciousness is the light behind your story. Without it, there would be nothing.
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Let'S close our eyes for a moment and just continue to be present without any visual perception.
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If thoughts interfere, take your attention into the inner body. Feel the aliveness inside the body. Be present with every cell of the body. Presence, of course, transcends the body, but it shines through the form.
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Open your eyes.
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Look around the room, wherever you are, and stay present. Be the awareness behind the perceptions. Innocent, fresh perception. Alert perception. A hand back at the screen. As we finish our meditation, you may want to sit a little longer. And the stillness. And when you then start moving again, start doing things. Carry that presence as much as possible with you. As I don't have my bell with me, I will now simulate the bell as best I can. I think once is enough. Thank you.
