Eckhart Tolle explores living with lucid awareness, drawing on Buddhist and biblical traditions. He argues that most people move through life asleep, and that awakening to consciousness beyond ordinary perception transforms how you experience each moment.
What does it mean to become aware of a. Of a space, a silent space? What are you aware of if it's silent? There's nothing there to be aware of. There's no object in your, in the earth's consciousness. You can be aware of the words that every word is a thought that has become verbalized. Sound has become sound. Yes. You're aware of a word, that's an object that you're aware of in consciousness. Not a material object, but an object in consciousness. Yet you are aware of the words that I'm speaking. That's fine, that makes sense. But to be aware of the silent spaces between words, it doesn't seem to make sense. Why not? Because there's nothing there to be aware of. There is no object that you are aware of. It's a silent space. So if there is no object that you are aware of, what is it? What does it mean? And the answer is very simple. It's called awareness of awareness. Self awareness in some Indian traditions called self realization. You are aware of being aware. You are conscious of being conscious. You are the consciousness that is conscious of itself that has awakened completely. Because before that happened, this consciousness was always identified with some object of consciousness. It was identified with the sense objects. I want this, I like this. I don't want this, I must have that. And it was identified with mental objects that to a large extent represent physical objects. The object of the thoughts and add the object of the senses. It was continuously identified with this, that and the other and running after this, that and the other. And that is called the unawakened state. Other words, you're asleep. Not asleep in the conventional sense, but very similar. You are unaware of yourself. You seek yourself in the objects of the senses and in the mental objects. Looking. You're really always looking for yourself in things and in thought and never really finding yourself. Everybody's lost. Amazing. So this is the, the dream of consciousness, that consciousness is dreaming. Consciousness is dreaming your, your entire life, the so called life. All the things that happen to you and that you do and that happened to you and you make happen is, is the dream of consciousness. It's dreaming, it's dreaming you. It's fine. But the important thing is are you completely captured by this dream? Are you completely immersed in this dream? Are you completely lost in this dream? Or is it the case that you know that, that this dream is happening? Is it a lucid dream? There is a possibility for your life not to become, not to just to continue to be a dream. A lot of the dream by the way, is not all that pleasant. And for some people, or many people, the dream is very often is a nightmare and they're trapped in a nightmare. But you may have experienced in an actual dream when you were in bed asleep and you were dreaming in bed. That's the dream in the conventional sense. Sometimes you, in the middle of the dream, you suddenly realize that you're dreaming. That can happen in some. Many people have experienced that. It's called lucid dreaming. And that's quite interesting because then you go, oh, wow, this is a dream. I can make anything happen and nothing really matters that much because it's a dream. So even if you saw a monster in your dream, but suddenly you become aware that you're dreaming, the monster is no longer that threatening. Oh, there's a dream monster. Isn't that interesting? And when the, when you're no longer running away from the monster, usually the monster changes into something else that is not threatening anymore. So there's lucid dreaming that sometimes happens. But more importantly, there's the possibility of lucid living. So that while you live this life and you participate in this life of the external world, the senses, while this happens, there is an undercurrent of awareness. So it's very important for us to be here to become familiar with that dimension in yourself, the awakened dimension. Become familiar with this awareness. And once you had a taste of it, you can access it more easily. And you will want to access that dimension that is the awakened state. As you may know, when the Buddha was asked, who are you or what are you? He said, I'm awake. That's where the word Buddha comes from. On the Sanskrit root to be awake. That's all, I'm awake. When God was asked in the Old Testament same question, somebody asked, don't know who asked was it Moses asked God, who are you or what are you? The answer is I am or I am. The I am. What is I am. I am is the first person singular of the verb to be. Easy to forget that the being that underlies all existence, the being that underlies all existence sa.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
