How Can I Balance Stillness & Awareness? | Eckhart Tolle Answers

The most important spiritual practice is to bring together the stillness and the doing.

I can experience, since a few months better, the stillness in myself. But I'm not sure if this is the full experience because I don't have that oceanic feeling. I don't feel myself expand into the universe or I don't feel myself being one with you. For example, when at the end of your last lecture, you said you can feel that something unites us. It pretty much seems to end at. About my body in. And so I don't know if that is awakening light or if I. Or if I'm simply at the beginning of the process. And my second question is, when I sense that stillness, I usually look in. I cannot combine it with looking out or perceiving what happens in on the outside or speaking to someone. Then I lose the stillness again or so. And you also say your attention cannot be divided. We feel the inner body or we watch our breathing in order to remove the attention from our thoughts so that the thoughts don't bug us as much. And so how is it possible to clearly feel stillness yet have full awareness of the outside? That's the second part. And. Sorry, I have a third part that you don't have to answer, but that is when I feel that stillness, I don't perceive any transmission to my body. Is there any contact point or any. Any point where consciousness moves the body or affects the body? But that is. That's probably. Maybe. Nobody knows. And so. Okay, thank you very much.

Well, thank you. There are a few questions there, but all connected with stillness. So that's the common thread, stillness. It's already a wonderful thing that you are able to sense the stillness, which is, of course, the temporary cessation of thinking. That's really what stillness is. So a momentary gap, whether it's a few seconds or a few minutes in the stream of thinking, but no loss of consciousness, but rather, one could almost say an intensification of consciousness. You're very. A lot. But still, is that what you experience?

Yes, that is what.

Now the. The rest is the. The mind comes in again and is asking questions about it. And it might say, as it does in your case, which is not uncommon, the mind says, is that all there is? There must be more. I can't quite feel what some other people talk about. That's unnecessary to go there and try to figure out mentally or from somebody else to tell that there is more you should let go of. It's really connected to the desire of the mind to understand stillness. That's. That's often part of that. And you cannot understand it. I don't understand it. Understanding can arise out of the stillness. That is true. The deeper understanding of certain things arise out of the stillness. But the stillness itself you cannot understand. And that's very reason why Jesus described this inner peace as I think it was Jesus, OR Was it St. Paul? I don't remember. The peace that passes all understanding, this peace, which is the inner peace, which is stillness, you cannot. It passes all understanding, you cannot understand it. Understanding involves concepts, and concepts is thought. So the stillness you cannot understand. In fact, it is the stillness comes when you relinquish the desire to understand, understand yourself, understand the world. When you relinquish the desire to understand, then the stillness is immediately there. And then don't fall into the mistake of going back into thought and say, yes, but I need to understand whether one can go deeper or whether that's all there is. You don't need to. It's. It is sufficient if you are able to relinquish your need to understand. And that looks like almost sacrifice, but it isn't it. You're the most important. Renunciation, which is a renunciation, is a term that is used frequently in many spiritual traditions. Renunciation, you can renounce possessions, you can renounce position and worldly position, you can renounce money, you can renounce personal relationship, you renounce your name. Sometimes when you enter a monastery or something in various traditions, you renounce many, many things. And. But if you haven't renounced the fundamental thing, then none of these renunciations actually are very helpful. And the true renunciation is the renunciation of thought. You can still use thought when you need it for practical purposes, but for awakening to a deeper dimension of consciousness. Thought does not help you, but is a hindrance. Then once you are connected with the deeper dimension of consciousness, then it can sometimes. The inspiration from that level can sometimes flow into your mind and use your mind in order to speak or to do something, to create something that is possible. But before that became possible, there needs to have been the renunciation, so that you're not trying to understand this anymore. That by Socrates, said Socrates, the Greek philosopher. I am. Why do people call you the wisest of all men? They asked him and he said, well, that is because I am the only one who knows that he knows nothing. He in other words, he was comfortable with not knowing. Not knowing is an interesting state to be in. Not knowing is really to become comfortable with the state of not thinking, because all thinking is a kind of knowing or Wanting to know. So you become comfortable with not thinking, which is not. Not that you fall below thinking, which is. Can happen when you drink alcohol or take certain drugs or all kinds of things can take you below thinking. There's a. There's a longing in every human being to become free of the thinking mind because it's. The thinking mind is so troublesome and so heavy. And most humans seek some kind of liberation through falling below thinking. Few drinks, whatever else they do, sensory experience or some. There are many ways of falling below thinking. That's not the way to go because then you go into unconsciousness. Rising above thinking is the conscious renunciation of thought when it's not needed, then when thought. So you no longer. In other words, you're no longer looking for yourself in thought. You're no longer looking for your identity in some increase of mental knowledge or whatever. You're not looking for yourself there anymore. And then the every. The thoughts that arise are no longer imbued with a sense of self. So you can think without egoic contamination of your thinking. And that's great when thinking does happen, but you're able to become still and become comfortable with not knowing. And in that not knowing. But this is not knowing conceptually. When you no longer know anything through thought, then suddenly a deeper knowing arises that is non conceptual. You may not be able to talk about it, but there's a deep knowing there. Some people can verbalize it in some way because their mind can kind of express it to some extent and others cannot at all. And so the. It always gets distorted the moment you talk about it. So first of all, then be content that you are able to access the dimension of stillness. But the next step is how not to lose it completely when you start thinking again. How not to lose it completely when you start acting, when you start taking action in this world, as you have to do. Because that's part of your question. So in a. In a protected setting, perhaps you can be still. You sit in your room, close your eyes or look around and become alert and still. It's wonderful. And then somebody comes into the room. Why didn't you do this? I asked you to do that, says your wife. That sometimes happens. And you. Well, immediately it's completely gone. The whole stillness is immediately just. It takes us one little. So that challenge. I'm not talking necessarily in your case, just in general terms. So how do you. Or having a conversation with somebody discussing something, let's say you're discussing. There's somebody who says we are totally overreacting. To the virus. It's what it's doing to us. It's this is terrible. And you say, no, well, we, this, we had to do that. It would be irresponsible not to do all the lockdown and all this. And then you start discussing. Do you lose yourself in the movement of thought? Or are you able to when you speak and particular when you listen to somebody, are you able to have an. Still have this alertness that is inseparable from the stillness so that you can introduce these alert spaces into a conversation? That's a kind of spiritual practice. One could say, are you able to introduce these alert spaces when you're talking to somebody and let's say every time he or she says something, are you preparing the next thing that you are going to say? Or are you already dismissing what this person is saying mentally? Or are you able to listen in a state of alert presence? Let's say the person is talking and you are. If you are able to listen in a state of alert presence, then you haven't lost the stillness. The stillness is still there. And the amazing thing is when you start speaking again, you are uttering something that is unprepared. So there is suddenly you may find your intuition, intuitive realizations, and there's a certain power behind what you speak because it comes from a deeper level. You're not just repeating something that you read somewhere or whatever. The bring in alert spaces of alertness into a conversation. Then that is a practice of. So that you don't lose the stillness. When another thing is when you take action. When you take action, usually you want it to be over already. The action you, you're going from here to there, you're doing this or that. It's easy to lose the present moment when you want to achieve something. Even just you have to go do some go to the supermarket. It's all you are you able to. To be when you take action, to be not to devalue the present moment, not to always make into means to an end. But are you able to just honor the present moment every step you're taking now while you are walking to the supermarket or whatever, if it's. Or. Well, these days people don't go go anywhere, but you get from one room to another, you have to go to the bathroom. Even that can be a practice. You take one step at a time so that the moment of arriving at the destination where you want to get to is not more important than this moment. This moment is actually more important than the arriving. This applies on a small Scale as well as on a large scale. This moment is of primary importance because it's all there ever is. So it's more important than arriving at the. At your. Achieving your goal, or arriving at your destination. That is a spiritual practice. Also, when you're present in what you do, instead of losing yourself in the doing, then the stillness is still there in the background. When you are listening to someone while you're having a conversation, if you can be so alert that you can just listen when the other person is speaking, then you are not losing yourself in your mind and the stillness is still there in the background. So both when you take action and when you speak, and when you think, let's say you are alone and you are thinking, are you losing yourself in your mind? Anxiety, thoughts, all kinds of thinking arises. And the moment you realize, and also very often the realization will be, I'm unhappy, I'm anxious. Why am I unhappy and anxious? My mind is making me unhappy and anxious right now, because in this moment I'm not being threatened. My mind is creating unhappiness. When you have that realization, meaning you've lost yourself in your mind. The opportunity for there is there for you now to direct your attention away from the mind and into your breathing or into the body, for example.

You.

Realize the futility of making yourself unhappy. And then you decide otherwise. For that freedom to come in, you need to have already achieved a certain level of awareness. Because if you had not achieved a certain level of awareness, you would be so identified with your thinking, you wouldn't even know it. Identified means you are your thinking. So even to say you can. You can become aware of your thinking. If there's not enough awareness, then you can't. But for you, of course, there is enough awareness. You can become aware that your thinking, for example, is making you unhappy or is creating anxiety or fear. And then you have a choice. Now you can carry on, or you can remove your attention from the thinking. Movement directed into the body, so it merges with the body. And then stillness is back suddenly. And you may notice the mind wanted to come back in and pull you. It wants you to reincarnate again into another thought. Come this way. You can feel the pull because it's been there for thousands of years. The pull comes again, and then maybe you lose yourself again. Or maybe you're able to say, no, thanks. Stay, stay present. So there. This is a. For you and many others, the most important spiritual practice is to bring together the stillness and the doing, which really means the being and the doing and which really means coming back to what I talked about earlier. It really means bringing the vertical and the horizontal dimension in so that you have. You exist in both dimensions instead of having them separately so that you're. So this is. This is the practice. And the more challenging situation is, the more alert you need to be.

Yes.

So when you are, when you are a spiritual, in the process of spiritual awakening, everything that is particularly intense challenge is also a particularly wonderful opportunity for you to become present through it and intensify your presence through it. And this is whatever whether the challenge is what everybody's now experiencing or personal challenge, collective challenge, doesn't matter. Talents can come as a difficult person. All kinds of things can be challenging. And there's particularly important to every challenge is an invitation to intensify its presence. And then whatever happens is great because it can only intensify your presence. So that's the practice. I wish you well. I hope it makes sense what I said completely.

Thank you so very much, Eckhart. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sa.