Awaken Your Inner Self: A Guided meditation on Stillness and Presence with Eckhart Tolle

As you know, stillness is the essential ingredient in our life meditation. The important thing is to become aware of it. Notice seems strange at first. To become aware of stillness, almost impossible. Because what is there to be aware of? You can be aware of noise. That's easy. But still, there seems to be nothing there. So at first, some people may find it hard. Or not even know what it means to be aware of still. Stillness. Now, stillness, of course, is just a pointer. And usually in normal usage. What stillness means is the absence of noise. Another word is silence. Stillness. But when we use the word stillness here as a pointer. It's not just the absence of noise. But also the presence of something. And that's, of course, the wrong word already, because it's not something. Let's use it anyway, Knowing how limited words are. It's also the presence of something. No, not really the presence of something, but the presence of presence. Now, don't try to figure out conceptually what that means. But use this opportunity to experience it firsthand. To realize for yourself the meaning of this presence of presence. You become aware, in other words, of. Let's put it like this. For a moment, you become aware of your own presence. Not the presence of the person, you as the person, but the presence of something deeper. Almost as if the person that consists of whatever you experience externally. And whatever you experience in the mind. Or whatever you experience in the emotional field. Those things coming together. Usually becomes what one experiences as the person. And for most people, that their life consists of that. But that really is a surface phenomenon. Like ripples on the surface of the ocean. Maybe even waves on the surface of the ocean. But no matter how huge or little the waves are on the surface of the ocean. They are nothing compared to the depths of the ocean. So to become aware of the presence of presence. Or to put it slightly differently, to become aware of yourself as the presence. Is like the ocean becoming aware of its own depths. And to become aware of yourself as presence or the presence of presence. It's helpful if the mind. Activity of the activity of thinking subsides for a moment. And you realize you're still there. The essence of who you are, which you cannot define in any way. What is that that's left when I'm not thinking about who I am, when I'm not thinking at all? Perhaps now this great opportunity to experience the state of thoughtless awareness. When I'm not thinking at all? Who am I? Presence. So there is something left that is vital and essential. The most vital part of you. Something that usually humans are Unaware of. Because they are only aware of the surface of their lives. And when you are only aware of the surface of your life. The tendency is for life to become quite frustrating and never really satisfying. Because it's in the nature of surface phenomena not to be satisfying. Except for brief moments. So in conventional terms, we have heard the word superficial. As applied to humans. And in conventional usage, a superficial human would be somebody who is only concerned with external appearance. Or what other people think of me. How I look to others and myself. That's conventional usage. But in a deeper sense, anybody superficial is anybody who is unaware of that which underlies all their experiences. Or they're experiencing sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions. And they are so drawn into every sense perception. And especially thought and emotion. And those get mixed up in a bowl, the bowl of your experience. So you can't even distinguish anymore. Between your mental interpretation of an experience that you're having. And the actual external facts of that experience. So you bring your conditioning into the way in which you perceive the world. Situations, events, people. Are always then immediately interpreted. As the perception of them happens. The perception is colored and distorted by the conditioning of your mind. And you don't know that. So that's all the unconscious state. And in a wider sense, you are superficial. Then when that depth or spaciousness in you. That is presence, is lacking. So that is a wider meaning of superficial. It's not just being concerned with external appearance. Really. Superficial means there is no spaciousness in you. In other words, you are trapped in the person or the personality. The conditioning of all that with nothing else. Or maybe occasionally little glimpses of spaciousness that come and then they're gone again. But those glimpses that come occasionally in many people's lives. Are enough to keep them going. And prevent them from falling into complete despair. Because occasionally they have little awakenings. And they don't even really know it. They just think, oh, this life is good right now. It feels good to be alive. Because suddenly there's a moment of stillness. Has opened. A sense of aliveness, of just presence. For some people, it happens when they engaged in strenuous physical activity. That can bring about temporarily that opening into spaciousness. Unless the ego becomes involved in it. You want to win? That's a different matter. Again, some people have to fall ill. And when they are ill, they become a little bit spacious. They haven't got enough energy to keep the egoic conditioning going. The continuous thinking, the continuous compulsive mind activity. And so for some people, illness is an opportunity to experience a little bit of that spaciousness, usually it doesn't last, or you're getting close to death, or you think you might die soon. And. And that can bring about that opening. But why wait for some illness or for you to climb a mountain. For your mind to stop or approaching death? This is the opportunity for realizing that there is a dimension in you that is the essence of it all. And that really is the secret of what traditionally in many spiritual traditions is called detachment. That really means there is a spaciousness. And that spaciousness in you enables you to be not totally drawn into every thought that comes into your head. That's not detachment. That's attachment. Really, attachment is when your attention or your consciousness is continuously absorbed. Not just by things that happen, but for many people, primarily as their mind's activity. Every thought that comes in, sometimes fueled by emotions that go with the thoughts, totally overpowered by the continuous stream of thinking. And in some many cases, emotional thinking. It's a complete dream world compared to being present. You are in your own, immersed in your own dream world. And that's how drama arises in people's lives. That's attachment. So attachment really means to be completely identified with every emotion and every thought that comes. And detachment means there is a spaciousness around the thoughts or the emotions or any experience that you have. There is a space around it, one could say. That space, of course, is in you. You're aware, in other words, not only of what's happening externally and internally, but more fundamentally, you are aware of yourself as the space in which whatever is happening is happening. And when you live your life like that, there's always a sense of peace or spaciousness in the background. Even while you're thinking. You're not totally drawn into every thought. Thought happens, and yet you're still aware of the consciousness that gives rise to every thought. Ultimately is not separate from the thought, is not separate from the consciousness. In the same way that the wave is not separate from the ocean. It just looks for a moment as if the wave had a separate existence. And especially if you give it a name. If you say, oh, there comes wave. That's wave, John, and that's wave. Mary. This wave is called Mary was born 10 seconds ago. I wonder how long Mary is going to live. And then Mary comes rolling in, and before you know it, it's gone. Oh, now Mary is dead. So ultimately, all the mind activity is not separate from the consciousness. The the presence is just Consciousness has assumed this temporary form. And you could say that even all sense perceptions are ultimately temporary forms. That consciousness appears as the tree, the chair, the dog, that human, that noise, sky. Whatever appears in your consciousness because the entire world becomes a world in you, in the consciousness that you are.