Eckhart Tolle guides a 20-minute meditation on finding genuine safety through inner stillness and presence rather than external circumstances. The practice helps you step out of survival mode by shifting awareness to what remains constant beneath the mind's constant threat-scanning.
Welcome to our meditation. People all over the planet at the same time now opening up to the spaciousness inside inner space. That which is prior to thoughts, prior to emotions, prior to sense perceptions. Always there can be called stillness, presence, inner space. You just have to pay attention to it. And that attention already is it attention to awareness or awareness of awareness. In other words, you become conscious right now of the fact that, that you are conscious. You can actually sense consciousness, that you are beyond the person, completely non conceptual, nothing to do with thinking. It's that which transcends the person and that which transcends the world. Without awareness of that, the world and the person are troublesome. And without awareness of that, the world will inspire fear. Because it's not all that stable. Continuous flux, especially at this time. Even if we are not affected directly by upheavals that are happening or have recently happened in different parts of the world. Japan, earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactors, North Africa, upheavals, Middle East. Even if we are not directly affected, we can get a heightened sense just knowing that this is going on. We can get a heightened sense of the fact that the world is not all that safe. Some people would say it's not safe anymore. It never was safe, of course, it never is safe. It cannot be and is not meant to be safe. It's the world of form continuously changing. So whether it's your personal life, if you're clinging for security, there's nothing wrong with arranging your life so that externally you have a certain degree of security to the extent to which it is possible. But. But if you are looking to beyond the practical, if you are looking to the world of form, whether it is the structures around you, whether it is in your personal life, through relationship, or through your job, or through your life insurance, whether you look to that for a sense of inner peace, what is sometimes called peace of mind, or whether you look to the collective structures of your economy, social structures, whether you look to that for a sense of security, it cannot provide you with that for too long. So it's finding something within where a true sense of safety arises that has nothing to do with the externals of your life, personal or collective, then if some kind of disaster comes, and of course inevitably some kind of disaster will come because this body is going to die, that's a big disaster sooner or later. And of course other disasters may happen or may not happen, or small, small ways in which things around you dissolve. Doesn't have to be big disaster. It's often those collective disasters that can bring about a leap in Awareness in many people who are personally affected by that. If that is your destiny, then fine, it may not be your destiny to be affected by some collective disaster. I am sitting here in California at the moment, probably on a fault line. So there is no absolute security that this chair that I'm sitting on and the floor the chair is on is still going to be here in 20 minutes time before we finish. It probably will be, we can't be sure. Or even that this body will still be alive in 20 minutes time, probably, we can't be sure. Now it's. For many people, it's the challenge of major or minor disaster in their lives that can push them into awakening without disaster. And I'm using this term now in a very wide sense, meaning any kind of dissolution of form around you. Without that, consciousness would not even evolve. So although on one level it is true to say that disaster, it is tragic, yes, it's terrible, yes, true. On another level, that also is part of. Is a part of a much larger context. And that larger context is the evolution of consciousness. Here consciousness, of course, is the formless essence within you, not a personal possession. So somehow the fluctuation of forms is part of the way in which consciousness evolves here in this dimension and comes into this dimension more fully. The dimension of time, the timeless coming into the dimension of time. There's a paradox here, but that's how it is. The timeless within you, coming into your personal life of time, that which is beyond the person, shining through the person. And that is security, because you can then sense, beyond any conceptual explanations or beliefs, you can sense that which is timeless in you, which means eternal, which means indestructible beyond death. It's not that consciousness, don't believe mainstream culture, which tells you that consciousness is an epiphenomenon or a byproduct of brain activity. The brain is born out of consciousness, not the other way around. There's a modicum of consciousness even in this chair or wherever you look, even inanimate. All around you, all the forms around you are consciousness having taken on a temporary form, life, another word for it. So there's life and there are forms of life. You move in that, between the two. That's the balancing act, the dance of life between who you are in your essence, which you can sense at this very moment, if this has any meaning to you. You can sense at this very moment that which is beyond the person in you, which is just the light of consciousness. And you are also aware of, you're still a person, the but the security, sense of security can never come from the forms. That's always an illusory security if it's there. And if illusory security is always threatened by an underlying fear. True security, true peace of mind, to use that expression. Although it's not the mind, we do not need for disaster to happen in our lives to find that. And perhaps if we find that without the disaster, or because we've already had our disasters and it has taken us there, perhaps we don't need to experience further external disaster. But if we do, it will just be a deepening. It will result in a deepening. Please know that the words that are being spoken here are only moving on the surface. Underneath the words which you hear, which become concepts in your mind. Underneath that is that to which the words point, that which is beyond concepts, beyond words, the underlying, deeper sense of beingness, which is consciousness itself. So as you sit here, as we sit here, as I sit here, I can sense that it's a little silly to quantify it, but I could say as I speak here, and this can also be true for you as you listen, 80% of my consciousness, or maybe 90%, is just an aware presence. And the remaining 20 or 10% is the mind formulating thoughts which become words. But the mind that is formulating thoughts is inspired by that which is beyond thoughts. It's just giving expression, always very limited to that which cannot be spoken but can be sensed here and now. Some traditions may call it the higher self or whatever. It doesn't. As long as higher doesn't mean that you. That concept could mislead you into thinking that it's floating up there. I'm looking for my higher self. So you're already looking somewhere else. Maybe if your inner self would be a better, deeper self, essential self, or don't call it a self at all, as the Buddhists do. The no self, the empty space, or call it the fullness. The main thing is not to get attached to any concept, but just use it as a pointer. What's important is not the concept as an explanation, but that to which it points. That's why we're here. It.
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