Eckhart Tolle on the Silent Presence of Your True Nature

Unfortunately, most humans still are unaware of the transcendent dimension of who they are. They are trapped in a little sense of self. It's a terrible limitation to be trapped in. To only know yourself as this conditioned entity that continuously anxious and worried and regretful and just all kinds of terrible burdens to carry around. The burden of the self, the burden of yourself. And if you. Whenever you watch movies, unless there's a little bit of spiritual dimension that occasionally, very rarely happens in the movie movie being a reflection of life, you see, that's all they live. All the problems they have ultimately derive from the fact that they are completely unaware of the transcendent dimension to life or to who they are completely. They're just trapped. Then every relationship goes wrong eventually. Without complete lack of awareness of the transcendent dimension in yourself and in the other, every relationship very quickly becomes problematic and unsatisfying. And that's the basis of most movies where most relationships go wrong. It's a reflection of life, of course. And ultimately, without the awareness of that transcendent dimension of who you are, every human being is unsatisfying. You experience every human being as lacking in something. Or in other words, they let you down. You had certain expectations, they are not met after a while. And then every time you enter into a new relationship, you become disappointed, that was the wrong person. And then you choose another one. Or maybe you're more passive and you're chosen by another one. And same thing happens. Situations also, not just human beings. Any new situation that you encounter, your new job, a new field of activity, or a new place where you live, after a little while, it's not that satisfying anymore. Nothing is. Because the most vital thing is missing. The transcendent dimension. So you're there, you're only human. But you have not realized that you are a human being. So that's. I always say, I love it that the English language does not have a word for. That talks about. That includes man and woman. So you have to use two words, human being, to talk about men. In some languages, not many, you have words. One word applies to both men and women. Like in Germany, of Mensch. Mensch is a human being. But it's one word. But it's wonderful that we have this human being. So the being dimension is what's overlooked traditionally, unless there is an opening into the transcendent. And if the being dimension disappears completely from a society. And the disappearance of religion in the Western world, the gradual, especially in Europe, Western Europe, to some extent America too. Although religion to a large extent has been used by the ego and has become ideology in many cases religion. Nevertheless there was always a little bit of transcendence left, just a little bit tiny opening. Even though it might have been mostly ideological belief systems that strengthened the ego rather than freed you from the ego. Often religions do worked and do work like that. But nevertheless there was an element of transcendence still left. Even if only at church. They read some sayings of Jesus or something and there was perhaps a slight inkling of what he was talking about. Or perhaps a person in deep suffering talking about Christianity, perhaps in deep suffering could look at the archetypal human on the cross and field identify with and participate in the suffering of Christ and therefore come to complete surrender and therefore to inner peace. So there's been always the possibility of transcendence, although most of it might have been egoic and ideological through the religions there was always still a little bit of light shining through, sometimes more. But. And even that disappearance of religion then remove that possibility. So humans are then now seeking for pseudo religions. They have some kind of cause that they identify with and becomes part of their egoic sense of self. And then they emphasize the other, not the other who is not part of that cause, so on. We don't need to go into that. It's all that dysfunction of egoic consciousness. The transcendent dimension is realized the moment you enter. You step out of thinking into presence. Who are you? When you are not thinking for a moment, what is left of you? When you just, let's say, as we've talked about, you look around the room, but you're not thinking, you're just taking it in. There's an awareness when you look around the room. Let's go back to that little exercise. You're sitting in the room and you look around, wherever you are, whatever outside to or inside, and you take everything in as if you had just arrived. And you're not labeling it mentally, you become aware of the silent presence of each thing in the room. The silent presence of. I'm describing what I see, the desk, but I don't call it desk. It's just here there's a desk, I've got a bookcase there. The silent presence of that picture, the floor, wooden floor here. The entire room exists in that silent presence. It just. Even though they are so called inanimate objects, inanimate meaning, they have no life, but they do have some life. This you notice a silent presence of each little thing. You can single out one thing and give that attention for a little while. A few seconds. And then there's the totality of the room, the silent presence of this room. But there's more. There would be no silent presence of this room without your presence. The silent presence of the room and your presence are one presence. So you're not only aware. You suddenly realize you're not only aware of the silent presence of this room. The only reason why you can be aware of the silent presence of this room is that it is one with a silent presence of yourself, of who you are as presence. So you have there's the presence of each thing in the room, and this an underlying awareness in which the silent presence exists. The objects exist within the space of awareness, and you are that you are the awareness in which these objects in the room appear. And so there's no longer a separation ultimate between what you perceive and who you are as a perceiver.