To Think or Not to Think | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

So as we sit here, I'd like to put a little question mark into your mind and like you to ask yourself whether at this moment you're thinking. So you will know the answer and try it again. I'll stop speaking for a few seconds and just be alert inside yourself to find out whether you're thinking. Because usually you don't even know that you're thinking. You're just. You are the thinking. So there's no outside thing that knows that you are thinking. You are just the thinking. You become the thinking, the thinker. And the thinker is the person. And to step out of the person, you have to experience that there is a dimension in you where the person is not, but something deeper is there. That's why what we want to explore. So again, a moment of stillness in the Power of Now, I talk about a mouse, sorry, a cat watching a mouse hole. Now, if you've ever watched a cat watching a mouse hole, then you will have noticed that the cat could spend a long time there being extremely alert and just watching, in the same way that my dog watches a treat when I put it down and say, not yet. And then the dog goes. And so the cat watches. The mouse hole is in a complete state of complete attention. So one spiritual master, I believe it was a Sufi master, said his teacher had been a cat. When he was asked who had been his spiritual teacher, he said, a cat. How is that? And he said, I watched a cat watching a mouse hole. And by watching a cat watching a mouse hole, I realized I awakened because by watching a cat, he entered a state of alert attention in which there's no thinking like now, just that there's no. So just a short moment, but it's not matter how long. It's a wonderful thing to realize that you can not think. It's a wonderful thing to realize that you are still there when you're not thinking. As Oprah said, when we started for the first time with a moment of silence and we started to talk again, she said, okay, I'm still here. I just checked in. I'm still alive. I'm still here. I haven't disappeared one more time. Be alert. You need to be alert to know whether you're thinking or not. So there's an alertness like a cat. And they may be thinking or they may not be thinking. They may just be the alertness. I also mentioned in the Power of Now that another question you can ask yourself is, what's my next thought going to be? I'm going to just watch out, see what the next thought is that's going to come into my mind. If you're very alert, it'll be quite a while before the next thought comes. But the moment the degree of alertness decreases, thoughts come flooding back in. Interesting experiments you can do with yourself and your mind. Now, from the point of view of the usual thinking mind, the realization that there is a dimension in you where thinking either does not happen at all or becomes unimportant to the thinking mind, that is either a threat or completely uninteresting. Because what could be less interesting than not thinking? So from the point of view of the thinking mind, the state of consciousness in which there is no thinking is either a threat or, oh, I don't want to go there. I'm going to disappear. But of course, Oprah didn't disappear. After the stillness, I'm still there. I'm still alive. And then when she said that, I said, perhaps you're even more alive now. And that is pointing to something you. There is an intensification of aliveness when you begin to enter that. Let's call it dimension in yourself, the dimension in which compulsive thinking doesn't operate anymore. But you have to be careful, because you could easily. Because it's okay. What we're doing here is we rise above thinking. We become so alert that thinking either doesn't happen or is seen as unimportant. From there, you can easily suddenly drop through thinking to below thought. In other words, you go towards sleep. So when you stop thinking, there's the alertness. Here's the thinking level. But normal level for most human beings while they are awake. And even when they dream, they're still going on. Here's the thinking level. Underneath the thinking level, there's consciousness. Above the thinking level, there's consciousness. And even within thinking, there's consciousness. Thinking is an expression of consciousness. But there are infinite varieties of manifestations or expressions of consciousness. This flower is an expression of consciousness, taking on the form, this beautiful form, incredible beauty, consciousness being born into forms and consciousness. Not all consciousness is form. There is a dimension of consciousness that is formless, out of which all forms come, the ground of all being. And that's what we are exploring here. Thinking. You rise above thinking, or you fall below thinking. It.