Entering a State of Presence | A Guided Meditation by Eckhart Tolle

the essence of this is to join in the state of [Music] presence so it's not the words it's the Stillness it may be helpful and this is why we are doing this to look at me or the image of me on the screen because I'm not except in the moment when I speak I'm not thinking and so somehow I don't know how that state of pure awareness or presence kind of transmits itself if you're open to it when you look at somebody when you are with somebody who is in that state of presence then it's easier for you to be present when you're with somebody who is immersed in thought activity identified with thinking then it's more challenging for you to be present still possible but then the danger is that you may be pulled into the same vibrational frequency so to speak of identification with thinking and lose yourself in it it's just amazing that uh is not yet common knowledge that such a state of consciousness that we call presence or awareness that it even exists or is possible that it is a the secret dimension of Consciousness because very few people seem to know about it and it's not in the mainstream culture all that's been there in the teaching of the ancient spiritual teachers it's the essence of their teaching and yet misunderstood so if I could just put it in a nutshell of just in one short one brief sentence what this is all about is to be here with me and all the others who are joining us here we're all connected at a deeper level of the collective Consciousness human consciousness to be here and to enjoy being [Music] aware fully aware fully awake without needing to think conceptual thinking inner dialogues monologues interpretations viewpoints past future regret anxiety all produced by unconscious identification with thinking unnecessary thinking in many cases if thoughts come in while we sit here together don't follow them just let them dissolve don't follow them with your attention every thought wants to grow and says give me [Music] attention but you just let it drift away like a cloud sky is blue and occasional clouds may come the blue sky is the awareness the clouds are the thoughts now I'm here to help you free yourself from unconscious compulsive thinking and then you can do some real thinking that is effective and when it's needed so in essence you are the sky the vast empty spacious Sky Thinking of the movement of clouds in this analogy but it is a good analogy now if you if there were so much thinking in you that we could compare it to a sky that is totally covered in clouds then you would not even [Music] know what it is I'm talking about right right now there needs to be in you at least a small [Music] opening an interval between two thoughts a brief a small opening a tiny bit of blue sky that you see as the clouds separate for a moment and there you sense a spaciousness a Stillness and then you know what it is that I'm talking about and then you can begin to become comfortable with it and then actually realize how deeply enjoyable or [Music] satisfying that dimension of Consciousness is it frees you not only from compulsive thinking which is a dreadful Affliction it frees you also and perhaps even more importantly from a sense of identity a sense of self that is created by identification with compulsive thinking a sense of identity that is derived from thought and then you tell yourself and others who you are that is connected with your life story a narrative in your mind which is the story of me whatever it is that it consists of whatever you identify with whether it's possessions or achievements or non achievements or successes or failures whether you are proud or ashamed of yourself it all comes down to thought forms that you confuse with who you are in material [Music] possessions of course the only way you can experience a material possession or anything the in the outer world world is as a thought form it gets translated your sense [Music] perceptions get translated into a mental [Music] formation so you see a big house there and then the visual perception gets coded into nerve impulses that are sent to the brain and the Brain decodes in some way and then you'll end up with a thought [Music] form and that says my house and then you identify with the thought form of your house which may add to your sense of who you are for a while but there are many thought forms that you can identify with positive or negative you can have a thought form that you are you have no house and you have no car are and perhaps you don't even have a bed does that free you from self-identification well it frees you from self-identification with a certain type of thought form that corresponds to physical [Music] things but it does not necessarily free you from identification with thought because you could have the identification with the thought of yourself as someone who has transcended identify ification with possessions is therefore spiritually Superior to all these unconscious people who live in their big houses and drive their big cars you have risen above it a subtle form of also of fictitious self a subtle form of ego you have to be very careful of any kind of conceptual identity it's always derived from thought where is your true identity is nonconceptual cannot be found in any thought that you have about yourself in the same way that you cannot find the true identity of anybody else through conceptualization thinking about [Music] them the art of living is to be able to function in the realm of thought and function as well as possible without looking for yourself in the realm of thought and usually that means looking for a stronger sense of identity through thought which for example you create by having a hostile or antagonistic attitude towards other people or situations to make them into enemies so to speak that strengthens your conceptual identity even being angry with somebody strengthens [Music] it you can see how the ego can get inflated when you're angry with somebody or You observe somebody who is angry so this is all part of a live event can't cut it out and that's good so if you can use thought but knowing always who you are that you are not anything that can be defined by thought that you cannot know yourself as thought or a bundle of thoughts and so we are here to deepen your knowledge of yourself as awareness as Consciousness and that's nothing to do with conceptual knowledge you can't break it down into bits and pieces knowledge may not even be the best word to describe it perhaps a better word would be knowing knowing yourself