Becoming Comfortable with Being: 20 Minute Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

Becoming comfortable with just being, but remaining alert. It. Become aware that there are moments when you're not thinking. And then thought happens again. And then there's another moment of just spacious presence, which could arise spontaneously. Or you could invite it into your life. Consciously bring more spacious presence into your life. In daily life, with a simple thing like, for example, occasionally looking up in the sky. Well, I don't see the sky. There's trees out there, but mostly, usually there's some sky somewhere. Look up at the sky and for a moment be aware of whatever is there, whether it's clouds or clear sky or completely overcast. Just be aware of the totality of the sky, which is a vast spaciousness, without calling it anything in your mind. Just looking at the sky during the day. It's amazing that people go throughout. Many people go throughout today without ever really being aware of the sky to bath because they're so concerned with what's happening down here below. So they're never aware of that spaciousness that surrounds them. So just looking at the sky brings about a moment of spaciousness and an interruption in the flow or the stream of thinking, identification with which constitutes the person. The personal selfhood, sense of self. So sometimes that arises spontaneously in your daily life. A moment of space, a gap between thoughts. And when you don't know you're not really aware of it, you then. You only sense it as a moment that feels good. A moment where you feel some joy or a heightened sense of aliveness or some inner peace, or even just. Just a contentment with what is. And usually that means there's been a gap has arisen in the stream of thinking. You may not know that and may only interpret it as. As I said, peace, joy, aliveness, happiness, a generic term that covers all of. And when you become conscious of it, when it arises spontaneously, then it can deepen and you can be in it for longer. You can be in the timeless dimension for longer. Slight paradox. I'm talking about it from the dimension of form, where there's time, looking at the times, and then the paradoxical statement arises. You can be in the timeless for longer. I've told the story before. Some of you may know it. When I lived in London and traveled on the Underground or the Tube or the subway, every day there were a couple of stations where there was a more than usual, usually more than usually wide gap between the train and the platform. So when the train arrived at the platform, the doors opened and the recorded announcement would say, mind the gap, and repeat again and again. Mind the Gap. Mind the gap. Well, I. And of course, some tourists who didn't know English well enough. Gap. What's. What's gap? Where's the gap? And then they would fall into the gap. But that would be a spiritual pointer. Be aware of the gap, the inner gap. Be aware of what is a gap. A gap is a space between two things. I don't think that's the dictionary definition of it, but I would define it as the space between two things. There's one thing there, and there's one thing there in the middle. There's nothing. There's the gap, no thing. So finding the gap inside you between two thoughts, either being aware of it as it arises spontaneously in your life when you're looking at beauty or something new and unusual before you interpret it, there's a moment of just spacious perception, and there's the gap. Look at the sky. So let's say you're working on your computer, and then the phone rings, you answer, text messages come in, and this. And then you become aware of, okay, the moment of spaciousness, and then you look at the sky. Completely different state of consciousness immediately arises. And give yourself half a minute or one minute to look at the sky. Half a minute, it's fine. It's not that long. It brings about a gap when the stream of thinking subsides. And this the most important thing you can do, if you even want to call it doing, because it frees you from being here only as the person. And you become aware that there is another dimension to who you are, which is the traditionally called the spiritual dimension. Spirit dimension is not elsewhere, it's ada mentioned within you, where who you are as a person is transcended. And if you don't find that transcendence in your daily life, then there is no spiritual dimension in your daily life. Even if you talk about and quote spiritual books, there's still no spiritual dimension in your daily life. Unless there's the gap, and it becomes as familiar to be the space as it is to be the person. In fact, more familiar, more satisfying, you really feel it. There you are yourself in that space. Of course, there are other ways in which you can invite that gap, that space into your life. Apart from looking at the sky, anything natural you look at can be helpful and bring about the gap, the tree. But you have to look innocently with innocent perception, not judging it, comparing it, or referring to your knowledge or memory about it, or associations, mental associations, none of that. Just looking like a child who hasn't learned the names yet. So you can either look at one thing and sense the spaciousness behind the perception, the peace. Or you can look at the totality of whatever surrounds you. Whether it's the room or you look out of the window. If you're outside, just take in the totality of your surroundings, no matter where you are. You could be in a mansion or in a prison cell. It works in the same way. And then you become aware of the. Yes, there's the. All these perceptions, but there's also a sense of spaciousness behind them. Peace. And when you access that dimension, whether you live in a mansion or a prison cell still of course makes a difference in your. But it's no longer of absolute importance. That's how I put it. It is of relative importance before you have access to that dimension. Whatever happens in your life is of absolute importance. It absorbs you completely. It determines your happiness or unhappiness. Would I rather be in the mansion than in a present cell? Yes, of course I would. That doesn't have to be a mansion. It could be a lovely cabin in the woods. But if I had to be in a present cell, I could still be the space for it and look around and surrender to whatever is there. So just looking around you is another way of. If you don't name it, of being the space rather than being the. The person. Then after a while the person comes back and you start thinking again about your past and your future and your problems and what you have to deal with and people around you. But imagine living all your life with nothing but that. Thinking about things. You have to deal with the people around you in the situation and liking it and disliking it and reacting to it and your inner state depending on whatever happens to be happening around you and whether person close to you is nice and not nice, terrible. At the mercy of whatever happens, a little thing falls and you go. You're upset and never really happy anywhere. There's always something missing. And then figuring out in your mind how you can become happy. Never getting there because you haven't found who you are beyond the person. Having moments of insight while you meditate in formal meditation. Where suddenly perhaps you have a glimpse of just being the presence, being the space, place. It's wonderful, but it needs to translate into everyday life. Otherwise you can only be free when you sit cross legged on the floor and have your eyes closed and your hands in a particular position. And then you go and then you open your eyes again and it's time to get up. And immediately you are flooded with mental stuff stream of nick. So you just meditated what you have to do now it has to. So therefore I say it is more important if you made it have formal meditation, it can be a wonderful help. Even more important, it is to have spacious moments throughout the day, so that you become liberated from your attachment to the person, your complete identification with the person. And then the depths within you is there. You suddenly feel sense that you are deeper than you thought and ever could think. Because in that spacious presence where the you are the unconditioned consciousness, that is not confined to this body, that is where you are connected with the one universal consciousness, and it merges with the one universal consciousness. So when you look at a statue of the Buddha, this is not a. This is not the statue of a person that once lived. Nobody knows what the Buddha looked like. The study of the Buddha represents a state of consciousness, and it is a state of consciousness of being, the presence transcending the person. And that's why the good statues of the Buddha have a hint of a smile, because that is where true peace is found alive peace. And so the Buddha goes like freedom from the person. It.