- Eckhart Tolle
What helps you to stay resting in the unshakable ground of being that you are is the recognition – everything that arises, arises from the One Source. Its not just the breath, its everything – thoughts feelings sensations reactions. Ultimately everything comes from that source.
There is only one Actor in the whole universe. The One is breathing, the One is speaking the One is emoting the One is reacting.. and always doing so in a way that serves the totality. But from one tiny little mind there is no way that can be know. So you’ve got to be standing prior to mind to know this, at the ground of being, AS the Source. Then all these things that are thought to be problems are seen in a different light. Everything is just happening. Everything is perfect. It has to be because only God is doing it all.
At some point, something dramatic happens. You find out that what started out as a practice – you becoming aware of presence - it takes on a life on its own. Something else emerges. You no longer need to practice because you’ve become the very thing you’ve been putting your attention on. There’s no longer a practice; you just are living presence. You have always already been that, but now its know, its alive, its your living experience of who you are. There never was anyone to practice, there has only always been the Self. It started out seeming like two – you and the presence (you being the one practicing) and became the realization that there are not two. There is only that one living presence, and you are it.
There is a concept that when thoughts start moving and the mind starts thinking, that you’ve lost presence. What I suggest is that concept is the only problem you have. What we do is we believe its true that when thinking happens, we lose presence. Because we believe that, it brings up some degree of either resistance or suffering or unhappiness. What if that’s not actually true?
Lets be very practical and real. My invitation is for you to go on a discovery and find out the truth for yourself. The first part – if you were no longer present, how could you be reporting about what’s been happening, what happened in the mind at that moment?
Who is it that’s aware that those thoughts are moving?
Freedom is the end of the concept that thoughts take us out of presence. Presence is simply the awareness before thoughts, in the midst of thoughts or in between thoughts…there’s something that’s aware that thinking is happening. That's the freedom that's alive in you, the freedom that you are.
You need to explore this in your own experience to make it fully known, realized. When you see in your own experience that its not actually true that thinking is a barrier to being present, that thinking doesn’t actually ‘take you out of presence’ necessarily, what immediately begins to happen is that we stop being at war with our thinking. And, after all, if thinking is happening, its part of what is. So then there is acceptance of what is instead of fighting or resistance.
Already, through the simple act of full observation, you have stepped into presence. Or, in other words, presence has awoken in that moment. Because the part of you that’s aware of the thoughts and the effects in the body/emotions, the part of you that’s seeing it all is standing outside of it, is not part of it. It’s the witness. The silent awareness ‘in the background’ we could say. What you may have missed is the importance and power of stepping into being the observer. The way of unhappiness, non-freedom or bondage is that we’re so involved in the thoughts and feelings that there’s ‘nobody’ there to see it – you are it, there is no witness. [By nobody I mean no awareness, not no person.]
You have already become the evolutionary miracle in the very fact that you can observe it. That observation alone is the very essence of enlightenment. Being the awareness which sees. You already are that but now you know it; you know yourself to be the awareness instead of knowing yourself only as the thoughts, emotions, reactions.
Find out - what is present RIGHT NOW, underneath, prior to, or around thoughts/feelings/reactions. Not as an idea, as an actual living experience.
Don’t use the teacher as your example, use yourself. You are it. No one is more it than you are.
The most important thing that you can do is twofold, first bring attention to the ever-living, ever-present being that you are before thoughts arise, what’s already here. Take time to temporarily withdraw from activities just to touch this, to be aware of this. It seems like a practice in the beginning but its just becoming more familiar with one’s true nature. And after all, as the old saying goes, what we put our attention on, grows. Secondly to actually, instead of believing concepts about reality, find out the truth of your experience. For example, the concept ‘thinking takes me out of presence’ if that concept is believed, then thought becomes the enemy and is resisted. Instead, investigate. If thoughts happen and you can report about what the thoughts were, something must be present, listening, hearing. The observer of the thoughts, the listener, awareness, that which is free of thought. Something is standing outside of, or prior to, thought and is aware of it. That something is presence, awareness itself, and its what you are.
