The Seer

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Question: What do we experience when we connect with our real self? How does that experience change the way we live our own life?

Eckhart: You no longer create suffering for yourself. Anger, resentment, regret, grievances, anxiety, guilt, etc, which are all inseparable from the egoic state of consciousness, no longer arise. And when you no longer create suffering for yourself, you no longer create suffering for others.

You have deep empathy, not only with other human beings, but also with nature and all life forms. You see all life forms as manifestations of the one formless and eternal Life, which is what you are in essence, and you can sense that essence not only in yourself, but in all beings. In other words, everywhere you encounter yourself.

Question: Wouldn’t it be more encouraging to set ones goals and try to fulfill them? That could also give us a strong purpose in life … What is the difference between the two approaches?

Eckhart: There’s nothing wrong with goals and trying to fulfill them – as long as the main focal point of your attention remains the present moment. It’s like being on a journey and knowing where you want to get to, but realizing at the same time that the entire journey ultimately consists of one step – the step you’re taking at this moment. That one step is all there ever is, and so you give it your fullest attention.

In other words, the step you’re taking now is primary, the destination – the goal – is secondary. If the destination becomes primary, you will become stressed and anxious and you will miss life. You will suffer, and the destination will not make you happy even when you get there, when you attain your goals.

From an interview with Eckhart Tolle published in the May 2007 issue (#25) of the Spanish-language magazine Mente Sana

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“One day I will be free of the ego.” Who is talking? The ego. To become free of the ego’s control is not really a big job, but a very small one.

All you need to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions — as they happen. This is not really a doing, but an alert seeing. In that sense, it is true that there is nothing you can do to become free of the ego’s domination.

When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego’s cleverness begins to operate in your life. Emotions and even thoughts become depersonalized through awareness.

You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.

Eckhart Tolle

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True listening is another way of bringing stillness into the relationship. When you truly listen to someone, the dimension of stillness arises and becomes an essential part of the relationship.

But true listening is a rare skill. Usually, the greater part of a person’s attention is taken up by their thinking. At best, they may be evaluating your words of preparing the next thing to say. Or they may not be listening at all, lost in their own thoughts.

True listening goes far beyond auditory perception. It is the arising of alert attention, a space of presence in which the words are being received. The words now become secondary. They may be meaningful or they may not make sense.

Far more important than what you are listening to is the act of listening itself, the space of conscious presence that arises as you listen. That space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking. And now the other person is no longer other. In that space, you are joined together as one awareness, one consciousness.

~ Eckhart Tolle

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Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. For most people it is not an event but a process they undergo.

Even those rare beings who experience a sudden, dramatic, and seemingly irreversible awakening will still go through a process in which the new state of consciousness gradually flows into and transforms everything they do and so becomes integrated into their lives.

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.

Awareness takes over from thinking. Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of awareness.

Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence. Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought.

The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace. You cannot make it happen nor can you prepare yourself for it or accumulate credits toward it. There isn’t a tidy sequence of logical steps that leads toward it, although the mind would love that.

You don’t have to become worthy first. It may come to the sinner before it comes to the saint, but not necessarily. That’s why Jesus associated with all kinds of people, not just the respectable ones….

Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose — what you do — with your inner purpose — awakening and staying awake.

Through awakened doing, you become one with the outgoing purpose of the universe. Consciousness flows through you into this world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it.

Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.

From the book, A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle

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To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means now.Ask yourself, “Is there negativity in me at this moment?”Then, become alert, attentive to your thoughts as well as your emotions. Watch out for the low-level unhappiness in whatever form it takes, such as discontent, nervousness, being “fed up”, and so on. Watch out for thoughts that appear to justify or explain this unhappiness but in reality cause it.

The moment you become aware of a negative state within yourself, it does not mean that you have failed. It means that you have succeeded. Until that awareness happens, there is identification with inner states, and such identification is ego.

With awareness comes disidentification from thoughts, emotions, and reactions. This is not to be confused with denial. The thoughts, emotions, or reactions are recognized, and in the moment of recognition, disidentification happens automatically.

Your sense of self, of who you are, then undergoes a shift: before you were the thoughts, emotions, and reactions; now you are awareness, the conscious Presence that witnesses those states.

From: A New Earth, Chapter 4. by Eckhart Tolle