Eckhart Tolle explores what happens when you stop being trapped in your own thoughts. He describes a dimension of consciousness beyond thinking, where you find spaciousness and freedom from the constant mental chatter that usually runs your life.
When we use thoughtlessness, it has a very positive meaning. You've risen above thought. The way it's used in normal culture is you've fallen below thought and you don't know what you're doing. This spaciousness, this inner spaciousness. Can be there at any time in your daily life. You bring in until it becomes permanent in the background of your being. So that no matter what you do and even while you're thinking, there's still something you sense that's deeper than thinking. So you're no longer lost in thinking. In other words, you are not the slave of the mind anymore. You are not possessed by that entity anymore. And then it functions beautifully. Being here should help you to grow in, as I sometimes call it, presence power. So that this presence arises more through you, in you. So in your daily life you can suddenly enter the state of spacious awareness. In between two actions. For example, walking from here to there, picking something up, looking out of the window. Five seconds of alert, spacious awareness. As you're looking at the clouds. Instead of looking out of the window and having some kind of commentary about what you're looking at. Not another rainy day. You don't need that. And even more beautiful sunshine. You can go beyond that too. And just spacious awareness. Five minutes. Five seconds. Looking out of the window, getting dressed while you put on your shoes. Just be alert, the alert presence. Instead of projecting yourself mentally to some future moment. And as I said before, whenever you're waiting for something, a wonderful opportunity for entering that go into the body. That can very easily take you there. Or pay attention to sense perceptions. And feel as you pay attention to sense perceptions. Feel the presence without which there would be no sense perceptions. You can do that now. That's quite so. There's what you see and what you hear. These are the two predominant sense perceptions. Here, there's what you see and what you hear. That makes up what I call that, as you might know, the surface of the present moment. All the sense perceptions of the surface of the present moment changes all the time. And then there is the depth of the present moment. That does not change the now that is forever here, totally timeless. That is your presence, that space. So you are what arises. And more fundamentally, you are the space in which it arises. Ultimately, they're not separate, but we don't know to go into them. You are the space for whatever arises in that space of consciousness. So content, I call it. There's content. The content of your consciousness is sense perceptions. Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching. The content of your consciousness is thoughts. The Content of your consciousness is emotions. Those are basically your life consists of. Put these into a pot. Sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions. Stir, add a little bit of cayenne pepper. That's the drama. And whatever else, other spices that you want to add. But basically, that is your life. The life which changes your life is different from your life and your life and your life. They're all different lives in different worlds. But basically, the basic ingredients of your life and whatever your life situation is are sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions. Is there anything else on the surface? No. Now, all of that is content. All of that is form. Now, for most people, that's all they know about their lives. They only know their life and themselves as a mixture. And every mixture is somehow different of sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions. And that's all there is as far as they know. What they don't realize is without the light of awareness in which sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions appear, they wouldn't even exist. They couldn't exist. That is the space for them, and that is the consciousness itself. And that once you realize that dimension within yourself, the content of your life is of secondary importance. Before it mattered so much what happened or didn't happen, or failed to happen, or success or failure, that was. And you were so miserable when things went wrong and so elated when you fall in love. Of course, it doesn't last when you only know content. You get more and more frustrated with life. And then you realize there is a deeper dimension. And that deeper dimension is who I am, essentially. That is the true I, not the I that identifies with content forms that arise. So that is truly the secret of life for humans and others, I suppose, wherever they are on this planet and elsewhere in the galaxy and other galaxies. Because it cannot be that much different in other places. In this galaxy or other galaxies, there will be form and space, both externally. You can look around and you can always see stuff in a room. You see the furniture. If you're outside, you see trees and so on. Or if you look up into space at night you see stars, most of which are suns, distant suns. And what else do you see? Well, you don't see it, but there's vast spaciousness there. And even in this room, you might not pay attention to it. But this room could not exist if, in addition to the furniture in this room and the physical bodies in this room and all the other things in this room and the ceiling, floor and the walls of this room if there were not space. This space is the essence of this room. You can't say the room to describe the room. Usually people would write down, give children school exercise. Describe this room. Ceiling, walls, floor. What's in this room? Is that all there is? Yes. Forgotten anything? No. Except the most important thing for God. It's this sa.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
