Already Still | Guided Meditation by Eckhart Tolle

Our purpose, of course, just to remind you, is not to become still. Then you create a problem. But you discover that you are still already underneath the thinking. Your sense of identity, your sense of who you are, derives from the stillness underneath the thinking. That's the essence of your sense of I am or your sense of being. Most people don't know that because that essence shines through the veil of thinking and emotions. You could also call it the light that shines through the essence of who you are. I am that sense of I am. And most people don't know that it derives from that which is deeper than thinking in you. And they think the thinking and the emotions are who they are. So they confuse the I am with what happens in their minds. And that's the state we call ignorance. Nothing to do with education. How much or how little as I speak, really, every word, every sentence is a pointer to that dimension. But as we sit here together, be aware of the gaps between the words. That's more important than the words, because that's what the words point to. What is that gap? It's stillness, space, the light of consciousness itself. Formless spirit, nothing in it to understand. Nothing you can work out. To get closer to it, work out conceptually, mentally, by asking another question and waiting for another answer. You have to give up trying to understand spirit, God, even understand yourself. So as we sit here, thinking is not important. If it arises, allow it to arise. But be the presence behind the thinking. Be the deeper I am that you are already. Otherwise the I am gets lost in the thinking. And then the thinking assumes the pseudo identity of I am. Dreadful condition normal, of course. So as we sit here, we have the courage, with a little bit of help, we have the courage to embrace the state of not knowing. There's no knowing, no judgment. It's a wonderful liberation when you no longer need to look to mind activity to tell you who you are. And that's why we are here, to access that state of connectedness with being. The depths of being. You are this formless light that shines through anything that arises in your life. It's formless. So there's always, at any moment now, there's always that which happens in your life. Here very little happens. Just the words that are being perceived. Peripheral sense perceptions, where you are sitting, perhaps the periphery. You are aware of that a little bit, maybe some thoughts come occasionally. So there's always that which happens. And then there's always something more vital. And that is, we could say, the light in which that which happens appears. That is also the only thing that is. That cannot be doubted. You can doubt the reality of whatever is happening around you. And of course it has a dreamlike quality. It comes and goes. But you cannot doubt, because it's immediately obvious that you are conscious or that there is consciousness. That even if it is a dream, there is a light in which that dream appears. That's the timeless. And knowing that you can be awake in the dream. Because things continue to happen in your so called life. But you can be aware of the dimension of depth, aware of formless consciousness itself, like now. And this is the meaning of what you read in the New Testament, where Jesus says, you are the light of the world. And that is to know yourself as that. Not conceptually, but directly. To know yourself as the light that underlies everything. To know yourself as consciousness is liberation from the world. Liberation from taking the apparent reality as something that is absolutely real. It is not absolutely real. It is borrowed from the light of consciousness. It's like the light of the moon. The moon has no light of its own. It looks like that, but it's the sunlight. So the world has no life of its own. You have no life of your own. There is no such thing as my life. You are an expression of the one life. So I don't have a life. I am life. Not my life, just life. The moment you say my, you create a duality, me and life.