Are You Skimming the Surface? with Eckhart Tolle

So the people who cut down the ancient forests, they don't know what they are doing because they cannot sense that there's more there than what appears to be there on the surface of things. But since they themselves are trapped in the surface of their own mind only they have no idea what they are doing when they log an ancient forest. To them, it's just a utilitarian thing. They talk to them and say, what are you talking about? We're going to plant trees again? Yeah, but it'll take a thousand years to reach that sacredness. No idea what you say, sacredness. What do you mean? It's a tree. We are harvesting the trees. And so, and this is one example of what happens when you cannot get out of the conceptualizing mind. Life has no depth anymore. And getting out of the conceptualizing mind is what I call spiritual awakening. So spiritual awakening has nothing to do with some kind of suddenly you have a new spiritual thoughts in your head and you start talking about angels or, or even God. If you suddenly start talking about God all the time. And then people say, oh, he's become spiritual. No, he hasn't he religious. Religious without spiritual is an ideology. You could be a communist and then talk in those terms. Whatever, it's an ideology. Sometimes religious and spiritual can go together, but in many cases, religious only is just more thoughts in your head, but different kinds of thoughts. Then God, of course, becomes my God, and your God is not the right one. And then you become my enemy. And I will conceptualize you as the non believer, for example, and the non believers are evil, another concept. And the non believers must be killed because we know the truth and the truth is our God. Concept, concept in the mind you can no longer sense. And then when you do kill somebody, you're not killing a human being because you cannot sense that there is a being there, another human being you are killing. There's a mental concept there. You've conceptualized, you have deadened. Just as you've dead into the forest to yourself. You've deadened the other human being and made him into a. You put some label on non believer American. And so it's not a human being is American. This is. And that's how it's. This is how the madness grows. So, and of course they don't know what, what's happened to them. They don't realize what's happening. They are unconscious and not unconscious in the conventional sense of the word, because unconscious in the conventional sense of the word means they're lying there. No, not that unconscious they seem to be very. Seem to be very alert with their guns, whatever they're doing. But they are unconscious because they are totally trapped in the conceptualizing mind. They no longer sense the aliveness of life. They have deadened themselves. They don't know who they are beyond the conceptualizing mind, where they are completely identified with their belief structures. That gives them the belief structures, give them their identity, their sense of who they are. I am a. Whatever label they have, we are the we, we are the only true, etc. Etc. And then it's the others. Is the others them. They're not alive. They're just. They're concepts. So it's easy to. When you no longer sense what you're doing to kill another human becomes easy because you no longer know that the depth of the human being has disappeared. And that's perhaps why Jesus on the cross said, they know not. Forgive them for they know not what they do. In other words, they are unconscious. They have not awakened. And so we are coming here from the tourists, going into a cathedral, and we've arrived at terrorists. Just an extension of really what is considered a normal state of consciousness. And what it does to you to be trapped in that your whole life is a dreadful fate. And the reason why we on this planet, why we have arrived at such a point of extreme crisis, is that this state of consciousness that we have been trapped in for thousands of years has created and is creating increasing havoc and destruction. It destroys nature, it destroys human beings, destroying each other. What we do externally is always a reflection of the predominant collective state of consciousness. And if you read the 20th century history, you see what human beings have done to each other. The only conclusion you can reach is they are mad. It's quite mad. And 20th century is just the most extreme form of that madness where human beings kill each other by the millions. Often they don't even know what for. In the end, you don't even know anymore what the whole thing is. For the first world born, the. What was that whole thing about? And then the First World War led to the Second World War and so on and innumerable other wars. So we need the spiritual awakening then is for the planet or humanity to survive is an absolute necessity. So having realized then that what is needed is to awaken out of complete identification with the continuous stream of thinking in your mind. Okay, well, how do we do that? Simple first step is to realize that there is a continuous stream of thoughts in your mind. This is the first step of awakening. It's not saying I shouldn't be thinking. No. The first step is to realize that there is a voice that talks most of the time inside you. And perhaps that until now you had been so identified with the voice that was you, you were talking to yourself. Sometimes people talk to themselves as I. Sometimes people talk to themselves as you. You have a little voice that says, you should have done that. Why didn't you do that? You're talking to the voice, is talking to some other voice. And then perhaps there's an answer. Well, I couldn't help it. Yeah, but you should have. Sometimes the voice splits itself into different voices talking to each other becomes even more mad. And sometimes the voice also can have certain streams. That one stream of the voice only comes up in certain circumstances. What? Some psychologists have discovered that this is the case. Some psychologists call it sub personalities. So in certain circumstances, perhaps a whining little girl suddenly comes up. But you're 30 years old. Why are you still. It's a subpersonality. And suddenly you have a whining voice in your head that complains about how unfair life is treating me. It's a subpersonality, talking. And then when that subsides, something else happens and another voice suddenly comes in and becomes extremely aggressive. Another stream, another aspect of that has arisen. And so sometimes different voices take over. But really, it all belongs ultimately to the one thing, the one voice in your head. So the first step to awakening, the beginning of awakening, is to realize, there's a voice in my head.