Eckhart Tolle describes true being as non-conceptual awareness that collapses the moment you try to name it. He distinguishes a deep, essential self from the conditioned personality, comparing it to a ripple on the ocean. Awakening means resting in pure awareness without thought, though the ego often resists this loss of familiar concepts.
It's fairly easy to become aware of being, that you are, of the I am. The moment we talk about it, a mistake has already crept in because you don't become aware of it. Because you are it, and it becomes aware of itself. Being and doing. Deep I. Surface I. Space consciousness. Object consciousness. There are three pointers using different terminology, different words, but they're all synonymous. If you say, 'I become aware of being,' this happens easily when one uses language. Immediately you have created duality. But you, who are you without being? You're not outside of being. Any other entity that's not being. But when we talk about it, a sense of duality arises that could be misleading. So we need to be aware of that. And the deep 'I' is actually— let's just use those terms, deep 'I' and surface 'I.' As you know, surface 'I' is you, the conditioned entity, the personality. But there's not a duality there, although when we talk about it, you say there's this and then there's that. But there is a It's unity, but they're not two. To use an analogy, you as a person are like a wave on the— or ripple on the surface of the ocean, and the being is the ocean. But of course, the ripple on the surface of the ocean It's not separate from the ocean, it is the ocean. So ripple is another way of putting it. So I've come up over the years, different terminology has kind of emerged, but it's all the same. Essence identity and form identity. So you as the ripple— the ripple is your essence identity. It's the body in this analogy. It's the body and the mental, emotional entity, the mind, conditioned mind. That is, the body is a physical form, the conditioned mind is a non-physical form, but it's form identity. So that's the ripples' identity as form Now in the human case, your form identity does not necessarily immediately dissolve when the body dissolves because it exists underneath, beyond the body. There's still different form, etheric form, enough energetic form. The body continues without the physical. You're still a form. And if you've never realized your essence identity, then you're still unconscious and identified completely with the form of you. So the awakening is the awakening to your essence identity. And it comes with stillness. And even stillness is just one possible pointer we could use to point to it. Awareness. Usually awareness is awareness of something. And then you realize your essence as awareness itself. It's not realized through thinking, but through the absence of thinking. From the point of view of thinking, you have entered the state of not knowing, because all that thinking knows is concepts, thoughts. From the point of view of the egoic self, It requires courage not to run away internally, so to speak, and to seek refuge again in thinking, not to run away. When you touch that dimension of no thought, pure awareness, the egoic self, of course, is afraid of that. So in the moment of transition There could be fear. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know anything anymore. And yet there is a deep knowing in that, but it's non-conceptual. You know yourself very deeply, but not through any concepts. It is gnosis, direct knowing. You know your being. And again, when I talk about it, I say you know your being, you know yourself. There's a duality which doesn't actually exist. It's only when we talk about it, it's there.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
