Become Aware of Yourself: A 20 Minute Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

Allowing the flux of experience to be there, to unfold one thing after another. And instead of demanding that there should not be impermanence, just enjoy the flow. Comings and goings, gain and loss, hot and cold. So these are all forms that arise in your experience. And you experience yourself as a form. You experience yourself as a physical form and as a person. The larger part of who you are is, of course, not visible. Only the physical body is visible. And as you know, there is more to you than meets the eye. All your inner space, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and even the way in which you experience your body is an inner phenomenon. But even that inner self is still form on that level, consisting of mental activity, thoughts, emotions and perceptions. And that also is subject to, of course, impermanence. The physical body changes. With some people it's very noticeable. With some people, you might have noticed it. If you look at a photo when they were 20 years old, and then you look at a photo when they were 40, or you look at a photo when they were 30 and then a photo when they were 50 or 60. Sometimes they are hardly recognizable. The entire shape of their face has changed, not to mention the rest of the body. So all is subject to the fleetingness of things, form, whether they are inner forms or outer forms, thought forms, sense perceptions, or physical objects which can only be experienced as sense perceptions. So all external phenomena are really inner phenomena. So you yourself, your person, the person who you are for a little while, subject to change. And eventually, sooner or later, it disappears. One day you're here, the next day you're gone. Is there anything beyond that? That's the question that has been asked by spiritual seekers for thousands of years. And of course there is. But just believing that there is a transcendent realm that is not subject to time and decay. Well, believing in that as an article of faith might serve as a little crutch on your life. It can be a comforting thought, similar to the thought of there is a God. It's a comforting thought, but it does not really help you experience the reality of it. It's still just a belief. And of course, as a belief, you might be wrong in the power of now, probably I wrote. I used the term form identity and essence identity, referring to the human being. So you know a lot about your form identity, which changes and not going to last, even if it lasts. If an aspect of your form identity lasts beyond your physical existence, that will also be subject to change as form, because no forms are permanent yet. So if you. If there is life after death, you are not going to be Mr. So and so or Mrs. So and so for the rest of eternity. Your personal identity. Of course, all forms are subject to metamorphosis and change and transform formation. So who you experience to be on your form level of your form identity is temporary, even if it's continuous for a while beyond the physical form, that is also temporary. And then it shifts and changes, dissolves. But as physicists tell us, energy itself remains. It changes form. There's an essence to life that is formless. And that can be known not as an object in your experience, but as the very subject of all experience. And that is who you are in your essence. And who you are in your essence is identical with what the universe is in its essence. And that is the realization of your essence identity. That frees you from unhealthy, let's put it like that, attachment, compulsive, obsessive attachment to your form identity. And all the things that make up the forms in your life, the objects around you, and so on. And so there is a clinging. If you don't know who you are on the essence level, then there is a clinging to the world of form that is unhealthy. And by that I mean it creates suffering. Because if you cling to something that by its very nature is fleeting, and deep down you know that there's suffering even while you still have it. Not only when it finally dissolves or decays or leaves you, even while you still have whatever you're clinging to, there's already that anxiety and that nervousness in the background. Form identity. Essence identity. Essence identity is not something that arises in your experience. Because it is the foundation of all experience. And it is, I sometimes call it, inner space. It is known not in a subject, object, relationship, but it knows, let's put it like that, you know it as yourself. When the mind subsides for a moment, thought activity ceases, like now. And all that's left is a sense of presence. It has no content from the point of view of form or form identity. It is nothing. And yet, undoubtedly there is a presence there. A knowingness, let's put it like that, a knowing. A knowingness. An awareness. Not of something, just awareness without the of, to use an analogy, light. Let's say you are a ray of light. And usually you know what. The light shines on things. And it shines on something. And you know it because the light shines on something. If the light doesn't shine on something, you can't see it. In order to see light there needs to be a reflection. So let's say you are the light, and suddenly you realize your essential nature as light and not what you thought before. You took yourself to be whatever the light reflects. So it's a shift in the direction of your attention, one could say, instead of going continuously, either outward to sensory experience or to thought. Experience involved in one thought after another, and your attention is drawn into that. And it has an hypnotic quality. Most people are completely hypnotized by their thoughts, in the grip of their thoughts, and they follow wherever they go. They follow them, the attention. And then you. Suddenly there's a reversal of attention, like now, this is why we're here. And you become aware of yourself, but not as a form, as the very consciousness without which there would be no experience of any form, and it has no features. That's why the Buddha called it emptiness. Sometimes he called it emptiness in other Buddhist traditions. I don't know whether the Buddha also used that term or it came later. Buddha nature is another term you have, not only the. And that, of course, is essence, identity. That is your Buddha nature, or if you want Christ consciousness, whatever you want to call it. So the greatest realization, the greatest thing to happen to you in this lifetime is the realization that there is the transcendent dimension in the background of your life and to have it there at first as glimpses, then sometimes it stays for a while, that realization, which I sometimes describe as a stillness in the background while your life unfolds in the foreground, and you become aware of more spaces arising in between thoughts, more stillness arising, more presence, more peace. And then you realize that essentially who you are is not what happens in your mind or what happens externally. That does not define who you are in your essence. Losing your job or getting the great job or the house or whatever it is, you get it or you lose it. All these constantly shifting forms, if you look to that for your real sense of identity, then you're going to find a lot of trouble in your life. You will be troubled continuously. But if you realize yourself as that alive stillness, spaciousness, then you can enjoy the world of form. And if you can't enjoy it sometimes, perhaps you can't. You can at least tolerate it with a sense of peacefulness in the background, knowing that it's not going to last. You can accept whatever is right now. If you can't enjoy it, at least you can accept that this is what is right now. It may change the next moment or in a year's time or 10 years time, but in the meantime, this is what is or you can take action to change it but even then in the meantime it is you take action I'm going to do that that that and then you do it also in the present moment at some point the situation changes either the change may be brought about by your action or it just comes it's in the nature but in the meantime you lived in alignment with the isness of the present moment which in itself that acceptance of what is as I have often said and that acceptance of what is if you realize you make that into your spiritual practice become one with the isness of this moment then the transcendent dimension your essence identity reveals itself as a piece in the background so the acceptance of form that whatever form arises in the present moment form forms change so there's a succession of forms arising and it's all in the now and you let go of dysfunctional mind patterns like this shouldn't be happening it.