Practice Meditative Listening: 20 Minute Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

So just being present with your sense perceptions. Some people tell me that sometimes I have to demonstrate the arising of the inner space without thinking. I sometimes go like that. So in between the left hand and the right hand, there's a space of no thinking. So normally, in the unconscious thinking state, there's no space, just one thought after another. And then you become alert enough to create a space between thoughts. People have told me that they actually find it helpful occasionally in daily life. When nobody's looking to hold your hands like that. Because that's an outer representation of an inner state. And it can be helpful to have the outer representation as an anchor. At least as you practice the thoughtless state. To have that as an anchor for thoughtless. So you're holding that space of no thought. Both externally, so to speak, and internally, more importantly, of course. So eventually you don't need it anymore. But some people do find it helpful. I will talk just a little bit more. But with lots of spaces between the words. So that you can practice meditative listening. Which means you're aware of the words that you're hearing. But you're also aware of the spaces between the words. And while you are aware of the spaces between the words. You may notice you are not thinking. If you are thinking, you cannot be aware of the spaces between the words. And this is good practice to be aware simultaneously of form and formlessness, of things and of space. And you may notice when you are aware of that space. You are really aware of yourself as the presence. Because that presence is inner space. And you may notice when you're aware of space. You're not waiting for the next thing to happen. You are not waiting for what I'm going to say next. No need, because you know that what I'm going to say next, whatever I'm going to say next. Cannot add anything important through the realization of your presence. And so, intentionally, I am not saying anything very interesting right now. Because if it's too interesting, you will get drawn back into the words and into thought and into form. So it's good that this talk is boring. That leaves more room for the awareness of space. Music, when it has a spiritual dimension. Also has spaces in it. Or an underlying spaciousness. Some visual art also has spaciousness in it. And when you look at it, you may find there isn't much there. For example, certain Asian paintings. A little tree in the corner, a little distant mountain. A tiny human standing somewhere. And 85% of the painting is empty space. It might be the sky or just empty space. And you look at it. And if you really look at it, you become aware that the essence of the painting is not what's there to be seen, but the essence is what's not there. Space. And so looking at that can be a realization of your own spaciousness. It. It's so liberating to realize the essence of yourself as stillness, space. You are so much more than the little me, more than your personal history, successes and failures. The successes that turned into failures, the failures that turned into successes. It One little practice I would recommend take five minutes or so. You can practice here, of course, but at home, everybody has five minutes. Don't believe your mind when it tells you you don't have five minutes. And the practice is sit somewhere outside or indoors for five minutes and practice perception without interference of thinking, which means you just look around. Wherever you are, you may look at. Occasionally your gaze rests upon one thing for a little while, and then you look on. Then you take in the totality of whatever surrounds you. And as you do, you're aware simultaneously of what you are seeing, but without calling it anything. And you are aware of the stillness that is your essence. That's the background to the visual sense, perceptions, like a canvas. And so this is a blank canvas. And whatever you see is the painting on the canvas that appears and disappears, appears and disappears, but the canvas is the spacious stillness. It's a beautiful way of perceiving the world. And another practice similar to this, particularly good when you're outside but also indoors. Sit for 5 minutes again and be very alert. Pay attention to whatever you are hearing. Alert, listening the slightest sounds. No sound is better or worse than another. Just every sound is received. Beautiful bird song, a motorbike driving past. But you are again the canvas for the sound this time, and it's all just registered. And you have no preference. Any sound is fine. And you are aware of yourself as the presence, the listening presence, the alertness that makes the hearing possible. And again, as much as possible. No mental labeling. The subtlest sounds are the best that wake because they require your greatest alertness into some distant sound. So if you sit in a very still place in nature, perhaps see how far you can hear. Do you remember the story in A New Earth? The Zen master walking with a disciple. Then they sit down, have something to eat, and then the disciple says, can you explain how to enter Zen? Which means, can you explain how to enter the state of consciousness that is Zen? And the master can you hear that distant mountain stream? And the sound must have been really distant. And the disciple at first can't hear, and then he becomes more alert. And of course, as he becomes more alert, he stops thinking because you cannot be really alert and think. Thinking implies a certain degree of non alertness. So the disciple listened. Can you? Yeah, I can hear it now. And the master enter Zen from there. In other words, that's a portal into presence. It.