This is a YouTube video titled "Becoming Aware of Presence: A 20 Minute Meditation with Eckhart Tolle" created in June 2022. The content is a guided meditation or spiritual talk by Eckhart Tolle focusing on the nature of presence, consciousness, and the experience of timelessness beyond ordinary thinking and doing. It explores themes of beingness, the deeper self, and the connection to the universe, encouraging listeners to move beyond conceptual knowledge to a direct experiential awareness.
If you think that we are doing something here, doing a meditation, that can become a big obstacle to actually entering the state of meditation. The notion that you're doing something, one minute you're doing, you're answering the emails and then you are putting the dishes away, and then you're doing the meditation. And every doing has a certain aim you're doing in order to get it done, get it over with, achieve the goal. So enduring involves time. Can't do anything without time. And the ordinary state of consciousness is always involved in time, inseparable from time. There's a deeper dimension within you that could be called timeless. But as long as you're doing something to get there, that becomes a paradox. You can't use time to get to the timeless because you don't need to get to the timeless. It's already there in you. You just need to notice that it's there. So that removes all sense of doing, all you need to do, so to speak. It's not a doing is notice right now that there's a deeper dimension in you. Deeper than the physical, that which you perceive through your senses. Deeper than thinking, deeper than the emotions, emotional layers. Where is it? I still can't feel it. Somebody thinks. Become aware that you are. Become aware of the beingness of yourself, aware of your own presence. Thinking doesn't help you here. It actually prevents you from dropping down into the core of your being. So you can allow yourself to let go of thinking or trying to figure something out. Become aware that right now you are conscious. Right now you are aware. And in the gap between two thoughts, there's a space or a spaciousness. And in that spaciousness, that space you are aware. You are conscious without any particular content. You are conscious of consciousness, that which is prior to all content, but not separate from. Deeper than all content, but not separate from. From all the content of your mind. Whatever you are aware of, sense perceptions, thinking, emotions, all these things you are aware of in many cases. Not just aware of, identified with. You derive your sense of self from those things, life situations, which you aware of through your sense perceptions, plus mental interpretations, plus emotional reflections. That makes up the content of your consciousness and that makes up what you call your life. It's my life. And you try to figure out your life by thinking about your life. There is a place for that too. Yes. If that's all there is to your life, however, then you are, to use my. One of my favorite analogies. You are like a wave or ripple on the surface of the ocean. Who does not realize that it is not only a wave or ripple on the surface of the ocean being surrounded by other waves or ripples, but this wave or ripple does not realize that it is also and more fundamentally the entire orbit ocean, and that this wave oracle is only temporarily a manifestation of the entire ocean. Somebody once said, I believe it was Alan Watts said something like you are something that the universe is doing in the same way that the wave is something that the ocean is doing. So you are something that the universe is doing or being. And if you can realize that, rather than just thinking, oh, that's an interesting idea, let me think about that. I'm something that the universe is doing the same way that the wave is something that the ocean is doing, you can start thinking about it. That's one way you might come up with a few more related ideas. Or the mind might say, well, this may be true, may not be true. Or the mind might say, that doesn't make sense to me, or I have no idea what he's talking about. Now, like with all statements that point to a spiritual, spiritual dimension, they are just pointers. And they are to be used as pointers, signposts. So if you can get even just a little taste or a glimpse experientially of what this means, and perhaps you can do it by visualizing just little yourself as a wave or ripple on the surface of the universe, the surface of the ocean should keep the analogy and allow yourself to drop into the core of your being in space between two thoughts and realize your essential beingness. I am no particular content as such, but you feel connected to something limitless, timeless, vast, deep. You're not only connected with it, you are an extension of it, an expression of it, inseparable from it. You have to have the courage in order to experience that, to realize that, the courage to enter the realm of not knowing anything and of not being anybody in particular. That's the most beautiful experience, if you want to call it that. It's deeper than experience. The most beautiful realization, the most liberating realization that you are not just this little person, which is just like a brief momentary spark that appears and then disappears. Oh, that was you. That was me. So every human being, a brief momentary spark of light is born and dies, so to speak, goes. Oh, that was it. Yes. And all over the planet new sparks are born. Consciousness, beings, human beings. Right now, at this very moment, new sparks are rising right now, and right now, other sparks are extinguished. And each little spark has a name attached to it that gives the impression that there's something permanent there well that spark originates in the central fire the central consciousness each spark is a manifestation of that and returns there. So the most liberating thing is for you to become aware that there's more to you than the person that you are connected with that depth within yourself that is the universe not just the sense perceived universe and galaxies and so on but more essentially something deeper that underlies the sense perceived universe. But as I said you need to have the courage to step into the unknown. Become comfortable with not knowing anything. Don't worry all the things that you know when you need them you can still use but to know who you are essentially you need to become comfortable with not knowing anything Become comfortable with not knowing who you are conceptually become comfortable with being ignorant so to speak and then something that cannot be known emerges. You can't know it because it's the source of all knowledge all knowing and all knowledge originates but you cannot know it but it knows itself through you it.
