Eckhart Tolle guides you into stillness and presence, teaching how to move beyond the thinking mind and personal identity. He leads you toward an inner awareness that exists beneath thought and form.
I just want to remind you that we are not here to do anything. We are here to, one could say experience something rather than do something. And what we are here to experience. And even that's not quite right. I'll come to that in a minute. What we're here to experience is very subtle, but very powerful. Whatever name we give that reduces it. It's not that it's very V for the time being, let's just call it stillness. Now, when I said we are here to experience something, that's not absolutely right. But whenever we use language, we are bound to falsify that which goes far beyond concepts. It's not so much that we're here to experience something as to find that which lies, which underlies all experience. A dimension that is deeper than any experience, becoming aware of that within yourself. So some of you may have written down or have in your mind goals you want to achieve in life, and that's good. It's unlikely that achieving stillness will figure prominently as one of your goals or even number one. And yet it's the most important thing in your life. But it's a good thing that it's not on your list of goals to be achieved. Because if you make it into a goal to be achieved, it implies that you need the future to achieve stillness, which is, of course, true for all other goals, but not for that which we call stillness temporarily. We just call it, for the time being, stillness. If you make it into a goal to be achieved, you place it into the future, and you'll never find it because it's inseparable from the present moment, the now. The now that usually people are not aware of as an actual presence. And here we have another pointer we could use instead of stillness. And that is presence. And as the word implies, presence is inseparable from the present, the now. Now, for most people, yet the now is not a living real. They are only aware of what happens in the now. And even that's not quite right. They're not really aware of it. They are reactive towards it, and they are identified with it. They identify it with their thoughts that arise. They are reactive to what happens outside. So I'm here just talking a little bit, giving you pointers with every sentence, Every word is really a pointer towards that. And I trust that as we sit here together, giving up the idea that we are here to do something, as we sit here together, a realization arises within you. That is the living presence within the thinking mind stops for a moment, and there's just spacious awareness, stillness. You haven't gone to sleep. You've become still without falling into dreamless sleep, without falling into dreams. Just something has arisen that usually you would have overlooked. And our meditation here, if we want to call it that, is to become aware of the space within another pointer. The stillness, the space becoming totally at ease with the present moment. A very rare state for most humans. Usually they're only at ease when some desire has just been fulfilled. And then they're at ease for a little while, a few minutes perhaps. Or they are at ease because they are so tired, they're moving towards sleep. So I'm here to lead you into that realization of inner stillness, of that dimension within. Lead you through words which are only pointers, and through the demonstration of presence which you can sense if you pay attention to the underlying stillness that is here. As I speak, behind the words, between the words, tune into that. Nothing personal in that. Nothing to do with this person. And as you tune into that, the same dimension arises within you, which again, has nothing to do with that person that you think you are. So there is a dimension that transcends the person. It's in this person, and it's in that person. The dimension that transcends the personal and the person and everything to do with the person. The personal history, the personal problems, the life situation, the ups and downs of the life situation. There will always be there the ups and downs of the life situation. But the miracle is finding the transcendent dimension within you, without which life cannot be a pleasant experience. Not for long. It cannot be satisfying. Not for long. Never for long. So without the realization of the transcendent dimension, the formless, spacious stillness, nothing will satisfy you. It's frustrating. Life is very frustrating. Without that dimension. You haven't found it. But of course, the dimension is there in everyone. It's not something that you need to achieve. You can't achieve it, let alone achieve it in the future. You can discover it here and now, within. It's lurking there, underneath all the doing, underneath all the thinking. It's always there, but completely ignored by most people. If you are comfortable with theistic terms, you could say God is always present but completely ignored by most people. Because if God has any meaning, it is the transcendent dimension of life. It transcends means. It is beyond whatever arises in life. Beyond thought, beyond physical forms, beyond form. It transcends form. It is beyond past and future. It transcends time. It has nothing to do with time. It is presence. Eternal presence and presence. Eternal presence or eternity is not some weird, abstract, philosophical concept. It can be, and it points to a living realization. So the most precious thing to find in life. Is that there is stillness inside you. Always. You just have to pay attention to it. But then the strange thing is that when you become aware of stillness. You realize that the awareness and the stillness are not two, but one. So it's only when we use language. We say, I'm aware of stillness. You put it into language. So when you are aware of stillness. There is a knowing. Where concepts are not needed, words are not needed. There is no duality, really. It's only when you translate it into words. There's a duality. And you say, I'm aware of stillness. But what really happens is that awareness and stillness are a single realization. There is no subject and object in this realization. When we talk about it, it sometimes seems that there is a subject. I am aware of stillness. I can feel the stillness inside me when you put it into words. That's how there's subject and object. But when you look more deeply beyond words. You see that there's nothing. Me as an entity who is aware of stillness as something in me. It's only when we use language and that duality appears. When I'm aware of stillness. Really, the awareness and the stillness are one.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
