Eckhart Tolle argues that clinging to certainty and rigid conclusions closes you off from reality. When you stop pretending to know everything, you become more open in relationships and better able to respond to what's actually happening instead of what you think should happen.
If you place excessive focus on the imperfection or areas of unconsciousness, you can no longer meet this person in a space of openness. I always start with not knowing what to say. That's the reason for the silence. And I recommend that you do that too. Before any creative activity or anything, just become comfortable with not knowing, which means not thinking, which does not mean you are going to sleep or unconscious. Or it could happen that you suddenly drop below thinking. It happens to some people here. Now, normally, to sit in front of an audience and not know what to say could be a nightmare. In fact, some people have nightmares of that kind. They're sitting somewhere and suddenly the curtain opens and it's a theater and they're all looking. I've forgotten my lines. Public speaking for many people is one of the most stressful things. And that's because they can't go. Become comfortable with not knowing. The big difference is becoming comfortable with not knowing and feeling. I don't know, but I should know. That's very uncomfortable. Remember what the great philosopher Socrates. They call me the wisest of all men for the reason that I'm the only one who knows that he knows nothing. Nobody really has truly understood what he meant. People thought he was just pretending not to know. But I'm convinced that he was referring to the state of not knowing, which is also of course the state of not thinking but awareness, out of which is the whole philosophy emerged. The creative use of mind emerged out of the space of no mind. If you have no access to the space of no mind, then your mind will not be creative in any way. In other words, it's just you can only have to rely on what you have acquired and you will be moving within the conditioned realm of the mind. Whatever the mind has been conditioned by. That's all you have. Then another area where it's very helpful, this not knowing is not to formulate conclusions on limited insufficient evidence to come to conclusions that become rigid thoughts in your mind concerning for example, other people or yourself or what you call your life, such as, for example, let's say you have a relationship, an intimate relationship. Then he or she betrays you in the conventional narrative and then immediately the mind jumps to this conclusion. I'm never going to trust any woman or man again. Never. You just would have constructed a dreadful prison for yourself. So you have a thought that suddenly dominates your mind in order. I'm not going to suffer again in that way. This is no more. These conclusions can become self made presence. And then you walk in and you shut the door. And there you are, stuck in that mind pattern, never again being able to relate openly to a man or a woman. And then you have other weird, weird conclusions that people arrive at. Some of them are so called prejudices and so on. They're very rigid mental formations that deprive you of openness towards reality. So it's good to be with relation to other people. Also frequently to be very careful with formulating conclusions about other people, individuals or groups of people. People remain as much as possible in the state of not knowing conceptually. And yet there is a deep knowing there, but it's not a knowing that creates separation between you and the other. So it's easy to find imperfections in people when you start working with them or living with them. And if you place excessive focus on the imperfection or areas of unconsciousness, then that can obliterate the totality of that person. For example, let's say somebody lies to you about something for whatever. People lie for different reasons, maybe even to not to hurt you or whatever. Who knows what the reason is. And then you find out, and then you say, oh, he's a liar. I know what kind of a person that is. Now he's a liar. He lied to me. To me. Of course, that makes it much worse than me. And once you've formulated an opinion or a judgment of that kind, you can no longer meet this person in a space of openness, because immediately the judgment you formulated is there between you and you relate. This becomes part of the screens of conceptualization through which you then relate to that person. Now, if you formulate a judgment about an entire group of people as political group of people, religious group of people, all, whatever they are, are like. Or then when you meet an individual representative of that group, you will no longer be able to meet him or her because you're meeting your mental image that you have created. So the true meeting is no longer possible. Very dangerous traps in your mind created by your mind by unconscious mental activity, what is conventionally called, which is fashionable these days, identity politics and stuff like that, is also dangerous because you have entire groups of people. And anybody who belongs to that group, you don't no longer look at the individual human being. Anybody who belongs to this group is like that. It could be a political, racial group or whatever it may be. So it's all to do with forming mental screens that make communication almost impossible. True communication.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
