An Invitation to Stop Thinking: A Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

What's the most important thing in your life? It's to discover the unconditioned dimension of consciousness. The unconditioned dimension to who you are. You, the unconditioned you, the unconditioned I. Which has nothing to do with your past. Or your physical body or your personality. And the unconditioned dimension is not something that you achieve because it's already here. It's something you just something to discover here and now. Achievement. If you think in terms of achievement. And associate achievement with spiritual awakening, enlightenment, realization, or achieving the unconditioned consciousness. If you use the word achievement or if that's the underlying assumption that it is an achievement. There's an implication that it's in the past because you need to achieve it. Sorry. There's an implication that it's in the future because you need to achieve it. There's something to achieve. You're pushing it away out of the present. And so you miss it again because you're trying to achieve it. And continuously, as long as you're trying to achieve that spiritual realization. Or whatever you want to call it. Then it's always one step away from you. Or a hundred steps or 100 miles or a million miles. It doesn't matter whether it's one step or a million miles. It's not here. That's the underlying assumption. And so you cannot discover it because you think it's something to achieve. And the thought that there's something to achieve in the future. Prevents you from discovering what's in the present. On other levels of your life, achievement is fine. It's good to achieve certain things, to learn something new, to bring something into manifestation, to create something, even to have goals. But when it's about finding out the deepest reality of who you are. The very foundation for your life, your existence. Then the idea of achievement is a hindrance. So the unconditioned dimension of consciousness is to be discovered. It is, one could almost say, hiding or concealed, covered up. Behind and in between your thoughts, behind and even within all sense perceptions. And so to discover it, you need to find that space in your consciousness. In consciousness where you are not thinking. So to stop thinking may not be the best way of pointing towards it. Although I might have used that expression a few times. To stop thinking again implies that there's some active doing involved. It might also make you believe that thinking needs to be forcefully pushed out of your consciousness. Which is not how it works. It's to discover that that space of not thinking is already there. Between when one thought subsides before the next thought comes. There is a space of pure awareness without mind activity. You can do it here, because this is a live meditation. Whenever I'm not speaking, which is part of the time here, be aware that I'm not speaking. So we have the gaps between one sentence and another sentence, between one word and another word. The moment you become aware of the gap, like now, you're not thinking. It's very subtle and very simple. And yet that's the most important thing in your life, to become familiar with that dimension. Conscious without thought. Spacious still, but alert. Not the stillness of moving towards sleep, but alert stillness. So in daily life, become aware of that space, that inner space of alert stillness, as much as you can.