Staying Still Inside and Out: A Meditation with Eckhart Tolle for Inner Peace

Foreign. Welcome to our live meditation. Wherever you are, whatever the time is, where you are, it's the present moment. There's nothing else ever. We are here to become comfortable with something very precious that is both within and without. Within you and without you, outside of you. And that is stillness. If you lose touch with that, as many millions of people in our civilization have lost touch with that inner stillness. If you lose touch with that, no matter what you achieve or attain or do is always going to end up in frustration and some form of unhappiness because the foundation will be missing from your life. Stillness, of course, is only a word. We use it here as a pointer. We could use other words, other pointers to that same reality within you that is usually overlooked, covered up. Everybody has stillness deep inside, no matter how mad their mind may be. The French philosopher Pascal must have realized this important truth when he said, all of man's misfortunes derived from one single thing. And that is their inability to be at ease in a room. Of course, that implies stillness, their inability to find that inner place. And so they cannot be at ease in a room, as he put it, which is at ease with themselves. They haven't touched that sense of inner being, beingness or rootedness that is the foundation of all spiritual. So this is what we are here to realize, not to do, because we are not doing anything. We are not doing a meditation. If you have the idea in your head that we are doing a meditation here, that will detract you from being. We are not doing anything. We are not even saying, okay, now we have to become still, we don't have to become anything. We just have to be with what is in this moment. And then find that underneath all the stream of thinking that usually gives you your sense of identity, there is something more vital that, however, cannot be defined through thinking. It is here, particularly in between the words. You encounter it as the space in between the words, which to the conceptual thinking mind, is completely uninteresting and completely unimportant, completely meaningless. So to the extent that you are completely trapped in your stream of thinking, our meditation here is meaningless to the conceptual mind. And if you are trapped in thinking, you are the conceptual thinking mind. You are unaware of any other dimension. So you are trapped on that surface level of who you are. Or you could be aware of the gaps in between the words and just notice that there are gaps in between the words. What does that mean? What happens then, when you notice, for example, now there's a gap. Nothing is happening in that gap. What Is there in that gap, is there anything in that gap between two words or between two thoughts? No, there's just a space. And yet there must be something. Because there is an awareness that there is just a space. In this gap, there is still an awareness, an awareness that there is a gap. But there is nothing happening. In that awareness is just a spacious awareness, an awareness of no thing, nothing. And what happens inside you when you're aware of the gap. Suddenly you've become still, or you've realized that dimension of stillness that's always there in you. No thought. For a moment, you're aware of the gap between two thoughts. Or in this case, a brief gap between sentences or words, or even in between words. So in that gap, something arises within you that before was covered up by thinking or emotions that go with thinking. We could call that stillness, we could call that being. A sense of being or beingness, a deep sense of I am ness. I am being. Of course, the same as be is the first person singular of the verb to be. The realization that you are I am, that you are. Without any definition of who or what you are. In that space, there is an awareness you are. That essentially it is the very foundation for everything else. When a thought comes, it can only come because there is an awareness in which the thought appears. When a sense perception comes, it can only be there because there is an awareness in which the sense perception appears. What you see, what you hear, what you touch, feel, taste, smell. There is an awareness in which the world appears. A light in which it appears. You could say a consciousness in which it appears. A field, a space. The words don't matter. The realization matters that the foundation of who you are is that space or that light of consciousness. It has no form. You have no form on that level. Everything else is form, thought forms, emotional forms, and sense perceptions of the physical forms around you. It's all form. Now, to most people, that's all there is. Their life consists of absorption in forms. Thought forms, sense perceptions, emotional forms. That's their life. They pursue form. What's the next form that can be more fulfilling than this one? Because this one isn't fulfilling enough. It never is, never for long. No form can be fulfilling for that long. It cannot serve as a foundation for your life. It's ephemeral, fleeting, short lived, impermanent, comes and goes. But what is it that enables it to be you? The entire world arises where you are. An entire world, an entire universe arises at that focal point. But you are essentially not what arises. You are the space you are not the form. That's a temporary aspect of who you are. So the most vital thing in your life on this planet here is the realization of who you are in essence. And that essence has no form. It's just spacious consciousness. And that word is only a pointer, stillness, just a sense of being with no particular content. Now, does it have to be lost? Let's say you have glimpses of it here. Or perhaps more than glimpses, connectedness with who you are on the level of the formless and that you are the formless, the timeless goes together. Now, does this have to be confined to brief moments like this? Or can that be active, an active realization in your daily life when the world of form makes continuous demands on you, the demands made by the thinking mind. Give me attention, says every thought, so that I can become bigger, so that I can give rise to lots of little children which are other thoughts. Give me attention. I am so important, says every thought, and pulls your consciousness into it. And your consciousness becomes form, the thought form and more thought and more thought. And every emotion that gives me attention, I want to grow. You can observe it even with anger, how the anger takes you over. It wants to grow and use your mind, add more thought to it. I matter. Give me attention. And in the outside world, every event, every situation says it's so important. It may be important relatively, but it's not important in absolute terms. Because whatever the problem is now won't be the problem in a few years or tomorrow or in a hundred years. Everything changes. The people that lived on the planet a hundred years ago, everybody had their life problems and dilemmas and difficulties and things they had to worry about and think about continuously, even at night. Where are all their problems now? Gone with them. The forms have dissolved. And everything was so important, so important. My life. But it was only a tiny aspect of what this wasn't truly my life. Their life, they thought it was. But most of them, and perhaps very few, realize the deeper dimension where the problems and the preoccupations and whatever makes demands upon you on the level of form is secondary, is not of absolute importance, as Jesus puts it. Only one thing matters, he says to Mary, while Martha, her sister, is preoccupied with lots of things and busy. Only one thing matters, and you have chosen that one thing. Many parables. Jesus is about the one thing. He finds the one valuable coin and sells everything else. The one, the one thing that truly matters. Everything else will be added. It's an addition. But there's a one thing. But of course, the one thing is not a thing. We have to call it thing because words reflect things, the words in themselves things. But that one thing that matters absolutely is not a thing. It has no form. It's not subject to decay. It's nothing to do with time. It's inseparable from who you are. It.