“Allow the Presence to Shine through the Person” | a Guided Meditation by Eckhart Tolle

Now, when we go deeply into the present moment, which is the same as being still, when you're still, you're very present, you can sense within yourself this essential presence right now, which you cannot define or analyze. It can only be sensed directly. It has no form. Every thought has a form. It's a thought form, an energy formation. It arises and it subsides. So everything has form except the presence, without which you wouldn't even be able to be aware of any form, the light of presence, it is formless. It has nothing to do with. With time. And there, when you sense that presence, that is the deeper self, that is a deeper sense of identity than anything in your personal history or your life situation, because all that is form, but underlying that and pervading that is something much more vital, that is the presence of consciousness itself. And you can sense the presence with your entire being, with every cell of your body right now, here and now, every cell of your body can partake of this sense of or pervasive presence in which you need no thinking to tell you who you are. Because beyond concepts, beyond thinking, you realize, this is who, essentially I am, not some thought in my head that tells me who I am, good or bad. So sense the presence, that vital presence, with your entire being. Feel it in your legs, in your hands, in your entire body. But it's not the body, it's that which animates the body. It's the presence. So here we have another word, another pointer. The presence is the stillness. The stillness is the presence. The term stillness points to that reality, one could say, in a negative way, in the sense that to most people, stillness means lack of absence of noise. In this case, of course, it's the noise of thinking. Yes, it's the absence of the noise of thinking, but it's also a very powerful presence. The Buddha called it emptiness, but it would be equally true to call it fullness, the fullness of life, the unconditioned life prior to form, prior to the arising of form, another term the Buddha used to point to it. He called it the unmanifested, the uncreated, the unborn. And he said, you can be aware of that within yourself. It is already here. It requires a redirecting, one could say, of your attention. In the unawakened state of consciousness, which is the normal state of consciousness or unconsciousness, your attention is continuously, or your consciousness is continuously absorbed by form, thoughts and sense perceptions and emotions, and you go into the seductive power of every thought, of every emotion, of every sense perception, and then suddenly, you become aware of the silent space between two thoughts. Or you become aware of a sense perception without the interference of thinking. Then you have the sense perception. Like right now, you may be looking at the screen and hearing the words. So you have visual and auditory perception. But if this is working for you right now, there is little or no thinking. And you haven't disappeared. There is a presence. And if it's working for you right now, there is. You are aware in the background of your sense perceptions, so to speak. You are aware of a powerful sense of presence. Now, that is self realization. That is spiritual awakening. That is enormously liberating. Because it liberates you from the prison of your conditioned mind, from being controlled, possessed by your conditioned mind. And whatever energies the conditioned mind attracts to itself. Without this. Without this dimension operating in your life, you are, to a greater or lesser degree, insane. And this is why. A large part of human history, when you look at it objectively. Is a history of collective mental illness. And once you discover this deeper dimension. And you sense and realize its intense aliveness. But at the same time, peace. So not the peace of drowsiness or unconsciousness, but a vibrantly alive sense of peace. And once you realize that that dimension is there in you. And how it frees you from the conditioning. Which maybe not all at once, which may continue to operate in your life here and there. But you're able to step out of it and go beyond it. And a deeper intelligence can then operate in your life. And that is the unconditioned intelligence which can then operate through your conceptual mind. Also, it can use. You can move through it. But you're not identified then anymore with the conceptual mind. Because you're not looking for yourself in it. You don't need to identify with the thoughts. You can use thoughts. You are no longer used by thought. In other words, you know who you are when you are used by thought. You don't know who you are. You mistake every thought for who you are. It takes you over the presence beyond thought. It's there. Why don't they teach that at school? It's here, at this very moment. That's the real meaning of the power of now. The power of now is the power of presence. And the presence is primordial intelligence. In theistic language, which I don't use very much, it would be called God. Not the childish God of the angry or jealous man controlling entity somewhere. But in a deeper sense, the source of all life. And that can then it wants to, for some reason, express itself fully more and more in this dimension. Through you, you become a channel for. And you bring something new into this world. And above all, you bring peace, you bring creativity, joy, aliveness, whatever form that may take. Then you can become whatever it is without loss of being. Root it in being. And then you do whatever life wants you to do, always realizing being is primary. The present moment is primary, presence is primary. Everything else flows out of that. Or any doing or thinking is secondary. So this is being fully yourself. And being fully yourself also is relinquishing ultimately ideas about yourself, the need to tell yourself who you are, good or bad. For many people, it's more bad than good. And this presence that you sense now, that you are now, can operate in your daily life. When you do things and deal with things, just remember it's there. Not once you remember it's there, you can sense it's there. So you are both the presence, the unconditioned, and you are also a person with his or her history and life situation. But allow the presence to shine through the person and then be the presence more than the person. That's the most liberating thing that you can walk through life being essentially a conscious presence and secondary. Yes, you're also a person. Sa.