Discover Your Deeper "I" | 20 Minute Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

Welcome to another live meditation. We call it meditation, but that's not really what it is. Meditation is another concept that creates a compartment in your mind or your life different from other things. But we are not really here to do a meditation as such, but to realize the essential you. Or to put it more accurately and directly to. To realize the essential I. Because one could say, and don't take this too literally, because whatever language one uses is always somewhat wrong. So they're only approximations, they are only helpful hints used temporarily. Whatever words we use here are helpful pointers, not the absolute truth can't be expressed in words. So all pointers, of course, have certain limitations. Knowing that I can use one or two pointers. So we could say then that there's two of you here or at any time. There's the I that is circumstantial, relative, fleeting. And it's not a unified body. It includes all kinds of sub eyes and patterns. Its form, the form of who you are, the psychological form, the physical form conditioned by circumstances, reacting to circumstances, having fears and desires. And then there's the deeper I, which one could say is the dreamer of all the circumstances and the events and the experiences that make up a person's so called life. So I'm comparing then circumstantial existence to a kind of dream, which is what it is because it dissolves fairly quickly. Not only your life, but every event and circumstance in your life changes continuously. And that's why we can compare it to a kind of dream which also is not substantial. It's also fleeting and subject to change and subject to impermanence. Just as this world that looks deceptively solid but is also subject to constant change, it's not really solid. And physicists agree if you look deeply into matter, you see that there is ultimately nothing. There is no solid matter, only energy fluctuations. But the energy fluctuations appear to us, it's an illusion. They appear to us as solid. So there is a solidity to the world that is not absolutely real. It's part of the illusion. And then people always get shocked when they realize how fleeting it all is. And whenever you think you've just now your life has a secure basis, very quickly you realize, oh, it wasn't that secure. Because something happens. And you realize that sense of security that one seeks in circumstances is also an illusion. So the deeper I is that which illuminates the circumstances, creates them in a way like a dream creates a dream. The question is whether that deeper I, which is the light behind it all, without which there would be no world that deeper I question is whether the deeper I is totally lost in the dream or whether it knows itself as the deeper I, even while the dream continues. Lucid living, similar to lucid dreaming, which some people are interested in, which is staying conscious while you're dreaming and knowing that you're dreaming. But here we're talking about that may or may not happen. But here we're talking about lucid living, which is to know yourself as the light behind it all, the presence behind it all, and to sense that presence that has no form as the life that you are or the consciousness that you are. It's no longer the separate you that's behind it all. Now the important thing is to know that not conceptually, but in the background. And over the years, I've used many different pointers to point to it. Every pointer is, of course, limited. It's not that, but it can be temporarily helpful. I've said the stillness in the background, the space, the inner space, or the spaciousness, or the light. Light. Jesus also used that term to point to it. You are the light of the world. There is the world and there is the light in which it appears. You are the light of the world. Is the light God? If we even want to use that term. Well, if we use that term, I would say the light is the emanation of God. In the same way that the sunlight emanates from the sun and is not really separate from the sun. God is the absolute, unmanifested, timeless. We can't say anything about it. And from the absolute, unmanifested, something shines into this world and creates this world. I've used other pointers also. Yes. Stillness, inner space, spaciousness, presence. Or in negative terms, the cessation of thinking, the end of compulsive thinking. That's why we're here, to realize that possibility. What's left of you when you stop thinking, and of course I'm inviting you to stop thinking now, you can't make it happen. You can. Can allow yourself to just be present. There is the essential I. Not much you can say about it. But you are, whenever this. You enter that dimension, so to speak, power flows into you. You could call it spiritual power. It may not immediately become transformed into something in this world. It could become creative action, could become an emanation of love towards your fellow human beings. It could become other things as it flows into this world. But it doesn't immediately necessarily have to do that. There's just. You're plugged into the source of all power. And it's not the power that the ego would call power, which is noisy. And there's a silent power that's far more powerful than that. So it's not the power of the monster, which is what the ego thinks of as power or power over others. Control. Very different. It's silent power, which, from the point of view of the ego, looks like weakness. The Tao Te Ching sometimes compares that power to water. It seems very soft, but it can erode the hardest rock and does. And that, of course, is the power of. Now, what that really means, don't expect immediate results. That I'm saying be content with opening yourself to this influx of silent power. And now the circumstantial you, with its situation, life situation, of course, is still there, continues the ups and downs of circumstantial existence. One day everything is going great, and the next day things collapse, and then it's fine again. New things arise. And while all that happens, you feel yourself. You sense yourself as the presence behind it all. And then you can sit there discussing this or that with people, even putting forward your opinion, and still sense a powerful spaciousness in the background, even while you say, no, I think that's how it is. Not like that. This is what I think. You don't lose yourself in the circumstantial I. You stay rooted in the essential I. You are essentially that. Of course, now they are not absolutely separate. The circumstantial I is the waves on the surface of being, the ripples and waves. And of course, there's no division between the waves on the surface of the ocean and the ocean. It just sometimes looks as if every wave had a separate existence. And of course, he could say, oh, this wave, that's called John, and there's wave Mary. It comes and there it comes. There it comes. Oh, it's gone. It's all terrible. It.