Eckhart Tolle on Perceiving without Thinking

The mind stopped. Lovely. Spiritual practice I recommend is. Well, you may remember we talked about sitting in a. Quietly in a room. That in itself can be a spiritual practice. Like now, you sit in a room or anywhere else and look around, taking in individual things, but also the totality of the space. And the practice is to perceive without any thought, just be aware. There's no need to interpret or label. So you're aware simultaneously of the totality of the room. And then occasionally little things as a fan. But you don't label it. I'm just saying it now. And that's not all, though. What you're perceiving is not just visual. There may also be auditory perception. There might be certain noises coming from somewhere. And you may also become aware not only of the content of the room, what's in it, and what constitutes the room, which is the limits, the boundaries of the room, the floor, the ceiling, the walls. But you're also aware of something that you cannot actually see or perceive with any of the senses. And yet it's out there. What is it? What is the most important thing about this room? The space? Now, is space something? Well, not really. It just enables everything to be. But it's not a thing. And yet there's. The space of this room is the essence of this room. But you can't actually say there's the. Where's the space? I can't see it, but I think it's here in the Tao Te Ching. There's a line. I think it's about a bowl. There's the bowl. And what makes it useful is the space that's the essence. And that outer space corresponds to something we could call inner space. There's also something in you that is the inner space of awareness, presence. And again, you can't say there it is, because it's the. That which makes all sense perceptions possible is the consciousness. So as you sit in the room, you're aware of not only the content of the room, you're also aware of the. One could almost say the presence of the room. Simultaneously, you're aware of the presence of yourself, which, again, you cannot see. And you can't perceive it with the senses because it's the very foundation for all perception. So it's the presence. And then somehow the outer space and inner space become a single thing, or rather a single no thing. And that means you are aware of this space that is within and without the presence. The presence. Do you want to attach other words to it? The transcendent presence, the light of the world, the Light of consciousness, divine presence. And if you are not resistant to theistic terms, you could go so far as to say the presence of God, the emanation of God into this world. And when you become so acutely conscious within and without, then you do notice something that we could call a sacred presence. That's always there when you become fully conscious of presence. But fully conscious of presence is a little. When I speak about it, it sounds like two things, conscious of presence. That's because I'm formulating words as sentence structure, subject and object. But it's not. There's no duality there. It's becoming self aware. Awareness becomes self aware. So there's a. You become aware of a presence that is both within and without, that is essentially who you are and infinitely transcends who you are as this entity, but is essentially who you are and connects you with the totality of all life and connects you with the source of all life, in fact, emanates from the source of all life. You are an emanation from the source of all life. And that is your ultimate and your essence, reality. And that emanation is, if we want to use it term, consciousness, the light of consciousness. And it's not subject to what everything else is subject to, and that is time. So that is the timeless dimension, because everything else is subject to time, this thing that is at work within every life form, the thing that enables everything to grow and yet is also that which destroys it. Eventually, time builds you up and then it tears you down. You grew up in time, reached maturity. Maybe some kind of success finally paid off the mortgage. Then, okay, I made it now, and that's the beginning of the downward journey. And that's often regarded as bad. And the first stage of growth is regarded as good. But the two are interdependent. One cannot be without the other. So we are all being consumed by time, devoured by the fire of time. And that applies to all life forms. Buddha. One of the central teachings of Buddha is the impermanence of all forms.