The pause that changes how your mind works | Eckhart Tolle

The last words of the Buddha before he passed away were, work out your own salvation with diligence. Work out your own salvation with diligence. So this last message to the world is to awaken to that dimension. Because otherwise life is suffering. The historical conditioned entity, the person, unconnected, unaware of its being, is condemned to experiencing suffering and will transform— we've mentioned it before— it'll transform every challenge of life into suffering. And it will experience life as heavy, very serious, often traumatic, and ultimately always frustrating. Always looking for something where it cannot be found. And so that's the reason why Jesus in his teaching talked about salvation, he used the term salvation. Of course, that has been interpreted in a certain way by conventional Christianity, but if you know more about True spirituality, and no matter what tradition, you will know that the real meaning of salvation is salvation from only knowing yourself as that limited entity, salvation from the. Heaviness of life and the fear, the constant fear that is your companion when you only know yourself as the historical person, but you do not know the being that you are. And so that's why he speaks of salvation, you need to be saved from From you need to be rescued, one could almost say. And in some traditions, if I remember correctly, the Buddha also sometimes used the word salvation. I believe I don't. My memory is not very good, but in one tradition, the last words of the Buddha. Before he passed away, where, work out your own salvation with diligence. Work out your own salvation with diligence. So this last message to the world is to awaken to that dimension. Because otherwise life is suffering. So space is a lovely way of connecting with inner space. Awareness of outer space brings about Awareness of inner space, and it stops your mind. That's what is required. It does not mean that when you connect with the deep eye at first, like now, it may be that you can only feel it when somebody is pointing you to it, as I am now. Or in rare moments of solitude, perhaps. But it doesn't mean that you can either be The deep I or the historical I? At first it seems that sometimes you shift to the deep I, the mind becomes still, as happens when you look at the vastness of space, the mind becomes still, awareness remains, that is the deep I. And then usually what happens when you Get up, open your— start moving and talking and thinking again, within a minute or two you're back completely in the historical I, the person, the surface I, I think would be a good way of describing it. Surface I, deep I. But ultimately, it's not being either in one or the other. The two can come together so that even while you speak or perform some action or are engaged in some kind of activity, whatever it may be, But even while you think, there can be some spacious awareness of this is the Deepak in the background. This would be a— it's an interesting new way of thinking, and one way to describe it— you should try it out— is that... I'm listening. When you think about something specific, after a few thoughts, learn to step back, so to speak, into stillness or presence. It must only— maybe just for 3, 4 seconds, length doesn't matter. And then you step forward again into thinking, then you step back into, into a pure awareness of presence. Cessation— the mind stops, conscious awareness remains. And so if you want to do some very effective and powerful thinking, you learn to step back and forth Into thought and then out of thought, into thought, out of thought. I would suggest that you practice that when you have something specific to think about, you have some kind of situation that needs to be resolved but you don't know how yet, or you're you're planning a certain course of action or whatever it may be, let's say you've decided you're setting aside 15 minutes, 20 minutes to think about a particular subject matter or a particular so-called problem in your life and to see what you can do, what's possible. Or you might be engaged in some creative endeavor that requires thought. You want to create or even write a book or set up something, set up an organization, if possible one that is conscious rather than unconscious.