Eckhart Tolle explains that awakening is a direct experience of presence, not something you can grasp through concepts or words. He distinguishes between teaching as a map pointing to obstacles and teaching as the underlying stillness itself. Mistaking the concept for the reality is like confusing a map with the territory.
One important thing to realize with reference to Awakening is that you cannot understand Awakening, you cannot understand what it is conceptually. What you can understand is the obstacles that tend to arise to Awakening, that you can see, "Oh yes, I can see that." But what is it that these obstacles obscure or cover up? And that is the state of Presence, a state of consciousness And any school of awakening, any spiritual teaching, needs to be aware that the essence is always beyond concepts. So, and as I speak here to you, I'd like to remind you that the teaching, if you even want to call it that, happens on two levels. One is the conceptual level, which of course means words that you hear and then you decipher in your mind and they become thoughts. It's all conceptual, and it can be helpful. Conceptual works in a kind of way— one could say in two ways. One is already, as I already mentioned, it is pointing out the obstacles to Awakening. Also, conceptual can work to some extent as a signpost towards that state. Certain statements one can make, even simple things like, "I am consciousness," that in itself is not the truth, it's a signpost towards the truth. So, you don't have a realization when you say, "I am consciousness," rather than a person, or, "I am..." consciousness temporarily manifesting as a person, that's true. It's not the truth in the sense that you actually realize the truth of it, and so there's always a danger with concepts that you start believing in concepts and you confuse the belief in a concept with the realization. So then the signpost is taken for what it points to. And so, for example— or another way of putting it is that the map is confused with the actual landscape or the territory. So, maps can be helpful, and maps here— I use it as an analogy for conceptual understanding can be helpful up to a point, but the essence is transcendent. It cannot be understood through concepts, and this you need to be aware of while even at this very moment while I speak to you because here again I'm using concepts. Every word is a concept that becomes a sound and then becomes a concept again in your mind. But there's another dimension to this, and it requires a certain degree of a loudness on your part to be aware of that dimension here. And again, the moment I speak about it, that dimension which transcends concepts becomes a concept. But I'll speak about it anyway. So, you need to be alert to an underlying energy field here that is more important than the words that I'm speaking. So, the words can be helpful, but they are not the essence. Now, if you become aware, if you're alert enough, attentive enough to become aware of something that underlies or transcends the words that are being spoken— and again, I'm now going to use maybe a couple of signposts To point you to it, for example, I could say, "Become aware of an underlying field of stillness." As I speak, the words come out of this underlying field of stillness, and if you are sufficiently alert, you can be aware simultaneously of the words and the underlying field of stillness. Another stillness— Pointers work for different people. Some pointers work for certain people and for other people they need other pointers or signposts. Another favorite signpost of mine to point to it is inner spaciousness. The essence of Awakening is to be aware of that inner spaciousness. So that you are not totally in the grip of the conceptual mind. Then the conceptual mind can operate, operate very well, but you are not totally trapped in it. It doesn't drag you along with it. If you listen, if you're sitting somewhere and you listen to people talking, or you might watch television and listen to people talking, having a discussion or just a conversation, And as you awaken, it becomes easier to become— to be aware of the extent to which people are identified with their minds, their conceptual minds, and that they're dragged along by it. —then that is complete loss of spaciousness. Complete loss of spaciousness, inner spaciousness, is the unawakened state. Complete loss of inner spaciousness—there's no awareness of anything in you except just complete identification with the stream of thinking that is mistaken for who you are. And that's the ego. To mistake who you are, to confuse who you are with the incessant stream of thinking plus the emotions that accompany the incessant stream of thinking, that is what we call unconscious living, and that is what we call the ego. The ego being a sense of self, a sense of identity that is based on concepts, that is based on Concepts are thoughts and thinking, and that kind of unconscious thinking is amplified by the emotions that are created by that unconscious thinking.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
