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August 2004
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August 1st 2004
From Consciousness -- An Unlikely Opening
You don't need to be a Christian to understand the deep universal truth that is contained in symbolic form in the image of the cross.
The cross is a torture instrument. It stands for the most extreme suffering, limitation, and helplessness a human being can encounter. Then suddenly that human being surrenders, suffers willingly, consciously, expressed through the words, "Not my will but Thy will be done." At that moment, the cross, the torture instrument, shows its hidden face: it is also a sacred symbol, a symbol for the divine.
That which seemed to deny the existence of any transcendental dimension to life, through surrender becomes an opening into that dimension.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
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August 2nd 2004
From Consciousness -- Inseparable From The Whole
The spirit of man is inseparable from the Infinite, and can be satisfied with nothing less than the Infinite.
James Allen
That which is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint Exupery
There is in all visible things ... a hidden wholeness.
Thomas Merton
The fact is that because no one thing or feature of this universe is separable from the whole, the only real You, or Self, 'is' the whole.
Alan Watts
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August 3rd 2004
From Consciousness -- The Nature of All Beings
The essential nature of this Reality is revealed in a stunning, timeless moment of Realization: at the moment of his Awakening, Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha) exclamed, "Wonder of wonders! This very enlightenment is the nature of all beings, and yet they are unhappy for lack of it!"
Later he said to his followers, "You are all Buddhas. There is nothing you need to achieve. Just open your eyes."
PSS
There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we 'are' reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be the day you laugh is also here and now.
Ramana Maharshi
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August 4th 2004
From Consciousness -- Just Life Moving
Life without a reason, a purpose, a position ... the mind is frightened of this because then "my life" is over with, and life lives itself and moves from itself in a totally different dimension. This way of living is just life moving. That's all.
As soon as the mind pulls out an agenda and decides what needs to change, that's unreality. Life doesn't need to decide who's right and who's wrong. Life doesn't need to know the "right" way to go because it's going there anyway.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 5th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Stillness of Awareness
Then you start to get a hint of why the mind, in a deep sense of liberation, tends to get very quiet. It doesn't have its job anymore. It has its usefulness, but it doesn't have its full-time occupation of sustaining an intricately fabricated house of cards.
This stillness of awareness is all there is. It's all one. This awareness and life are one thing, one movement, one happening, in this moment-unfolding without reason, without goal, without direction.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 6th 2004
From Consciousness -- Not in Space and Time
The ultimate state is ever present and always now. The only thing that makes it difficult to find that state and remain in that state is people wanting to retain their position in space and time.
"I want to know where I'm going. I want to know if I've arrived. I want to know who to love and hate. I want to know. I don't really want to be; I want to know. Isn't enlightenment the ultimate state of knowing?"
No. It's the ultimate state of being. The price is knowing.
This is the beautiful thing about the truth, ever-present, always here, totally free, given freely: It's already there. That which is ever presently awake is free, free for the "being."
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 7th 2004
From Consciousness -- Emptiness Becomes Love
But the only way that there's total and final absolute homecoming is when the humanness presents itself with the same unconditionality.
Every time a human being touches into that unconditionality, it's such peace and fulfillment.
In your humanity, there's the natural expression of joy and love and compassion and caring and total unattachment. Those qualities instantly transmute into humanness when you touch into emptiness.
Emptiness becomes love. That's the human experience of emptiness, that source, that ever-present awakeness.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 8th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Only Price
For the humanness to lay itself down -- your mind, your body, your hopes, your dreams, everything -- to lay itself down in the same unconditional manner in which awareness is ever present, only then is there the direct experience of unity, that you and the highest truth are really one thing.
It expresses itself through your humanity, through openness, through love. The divine becomes human and the human becomes divine -- not in any "high and mighty" sense, but just in the sense of reality. That's the way it is.
The only price is all of our positions. The only price is that you stop paying a price.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 9th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Ever-Present One
There is an eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Many people use the word God to describe it; I often call it Being.
The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it.
Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very presence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence.
So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 10th 2004
From Consciousness -- Your Own Deepest Self
Being is not only beyond but deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence.
This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it.
You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.
To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 11th 2004
From Consciousness -- Felt Oneness With Being.
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.
It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.
The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you.
You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously); as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflicts within and without become the norm.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 12th 2004
From Consciousness -- Incessant Mental Noise
The greatest obstacle to experiencing the reality of your connectedness is identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive.
Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal.
This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 13th 2004
From Consciousness -- One With All That Is.
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship.
It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God.
It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other."
You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 14th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Possessing Entity
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.
To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly -- you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease.
You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The Instrument has taken you over. It's almost as if you were possessed without it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 15th 2004
From Consciousness -- Watching The Thinker
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity -- the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity.
The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter -- beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace -- arise from beyond the mind.
You begin to awaken.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 16th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Witnessing Presence.
The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now.
Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can.
Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old audiotapes that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years.
This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: Listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 17th 2004
From Consciousness -- A New Dimension of Consciousness
When you listen to that voice (in your head), listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door.
You'll soon realize: There is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it.
This 'I am' realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.
So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 18th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Joy of Being.
As you listen to the thought (in your head), you feel a conscious presence -- your deeper self -- behind or underneath the thought, as it were.
The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.
When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream -- a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer.
When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 19th 2004
From Consciousness -- Raising Your Vibrational Frequency
As the troublesome thoughts in your mind are witnessed, they begin to dissolve and are replaced by a sense of stillness and peace which deepens. In fact, there is no end to its depth.
You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 20th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Presence That is Essentially You
As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness.
In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it.
And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as "your self." That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 21st 2004
From Consciousness -- The Essence of Meditation
Instead of "watching the thinker," you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment.
This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking.
This is the essence of meditation.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 22nd 2004
From Consciousness -- Be Totally Present.
In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself.
For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present.
Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions associated with the activity: the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap, and so on.
Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence.
There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 23rd 2004
From Consciousness -- Seeking Confirmation
Spiritual seekers are some of the most superstitious people on the planet. Most people come to spiritual teachers and teachings with a host of hidden beliefs, ideas, and assumptions that they unconsciously seek to be confirmed.
And if they are willing to question these beliefs they almost always replace the old concepts with new more spiritual ones thinking that these new concepts are far more real than the old ones.
Even those who have had deep spiritual experiences and awakenings beyond the mind will in most cases continue to cling to superstitious ideas and beliefs in an unconscious effort to grasp for the security of the known, the accepted, or the expected.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 24th 2004
From Consciousness -- Nothing But Awakeness
It is grasping for security in all its inward and outward forms which limits the perspective of enlightenment and maintain an inwardly divided condition which is the cause of all suffering and confusion.
You must want to know the truth more than you want to feel secure in order to fully awaken to the fact that you are nothing but Awakeness itself.
Shortly after I began teaching I noticed that almost everyone coming to see me held a tremendous number of superstitious ideas and beliefs that were distorting their perceptions and limiting their scope of spiritual inquiry.
What was most surprising was that in almost all cases, even those who had deep and profound experiences of spiritual awakening continued to hold onto superstitious ideas and beliefs which severally limited the depth of experience and expression of true awakening.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 25th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Courage To Question
Over time I began to see how delicate and challenging it was for most seekers to find the courage to question any and all ideas and beliefs about the true nature of themselves, the world, others, and even enlightenment itself.
In almost every person, every religion, every group, every teaching and every teacher; there are ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, that are overtly or covertly not open to question.
Often these unquestioned beliefs hide superstitions which are protecting something which is untrue, contradictory, or being used as justification for behavior which is a less than enlightened.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 26th 2004
From Consciousness -- Only Ever AWAKE
The challenge of enlightenment is not simply to glimpse the awakened conditioned, nor even to continually experience it, but to be and express it as your self in the way you move in this world.
In order to do this you must come out of hiding behind any superstitious beliefs and find the courage to question everything, otherwise you will continue to hold onto superstitions which distort your perception and expression of that which is only ever AWAKE.
Adyashanti (Steven Gray)
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August 27th 2004
From Consciousness -- Smiling at the Voice
The single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: Learn to disidentify from your mind.
Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.
One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child.
This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 28th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Phantom Self
As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning.
We may call this phantom self the ego.
It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking.
The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 29th 2004
From Consciousness -- The Mind in Ego Mode
To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional.
It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it -- who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: "One day, when this, that, or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace."
Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected future.
Observe your mind and you'll see that this is how it works.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 30th 2004
From Consciousness -- Finding Inner Stillness.
The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.
Enlightenment means rising above thought. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.
You use it mostly for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
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August 31st 2004
From Consciousness -- Between Mind and No-Mind
When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought.
Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power.
Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.
Eckhart Tolle -- Practicing the Power of Now
