The Mind’s Limitation in Understanding Awareness | Eckhart Tolle

I wrote you a note in which I explained a Dark Night of the Soul experience that I'd had a number of years ago in which um really culminated in a catastrophic breakdown of sorts For Me Maybe sort of similar to what I read in your book The Power of Now and during that there was a cathartic release I was in the fetal POS position on the floor crying frankly and there was a utter and complete surrender this is sort of a humbling story after that happened um I was sitting in an empty room in a in a chair and there was this unbelievable post cathartic Stillness that took took over me and there was complete silence and then the strangest thing started happening I I began witnessing my thoughts and as I witnessed my thoughts I had this unbelievably simple uh awareness that if I'm witnessing my thoughts what am I and that completely changed my life I I can't even begin to tell you what happened um a after after that awareness happened and then one thing led to another and then uh there was a point where I started realizing that what I am I couldn't find a a boundary for okay and so I was sort of interested because in your book you talked about this in the in the Power of Now about the Dark Knight of the Soul experience but I'm sort of wondering about your journey from there through the process of realizing that this awareness that I am is not personal it's intimate but it's not personal and that seems to be the toughest part of it all to really get a handle on so if you could walk me through that I'd appreciate it it seems that uh I will comment but the most important thing I think is the your it seems that what your mind is trying to do is to understand awareness and you can't really the mind can't uh um so you cannot really come to a satisfying conclusion about the nature of awareness it's only awareness itself really in Awareness awareness is known but awareness as an object for thought is not it and that's why the Dow itting starts with the line the da that can be spoken of is not the true to so all that language can do is use pointers to point you in the direction of awareness or language can point out the obstacles the likely or possible obstacles in yourself to the state of awareness so that these two kinds of pointers one is points the pointers to the Moon awareness being the moon so the words there's only this moment and so on it all it all points to the same whatever I talk about is really they're all pointers they either pointers towards awareness or they are Pointers that look at the obstacles that may arise in yourself in a human being so that you recognize them when they happen so that the obstacles in the form of certain mind patterns don't take you over and obscure the arising awareness but once awareness has arisen the mind is not useful anymore uh and you don't need further pointers uh in order to the mind will continue wanting to understand a bit more about awareness but really this is where conceptual understanding comes to an end and I can call awareness personal and I can call it impersonal it's not personal in the usual sense um everybody has a certain sense of I'll just say a few words about it but we're not trying to understand awareness we can't um everybody has a sense of eyess of identity everybody has the sense of him or herself as a hard to describe this the sense of eye now usually the sense of eye is mixed up with certain movements thought patterns which you could also call stories they thought patterns that hang together as a story and so your sense of eye gets mixed up with a story thoughts in your mind and that is called the personal sense of self but the story really is nothing they're just thought forms temporary thought forms the real sense of I is the awareness inside the thought forms without which thought forms could not even be there so the true sense of of of I is the awareness that got mixed up with the story or the thoughts so most people have a sense of identity that is of that mixed kind where Consciousness or awareness has become entangled in thinking and then people only know themselves through thinking they believe they are what their mind tells them they are and their memories and so on and that's called the personal sense of self but even there the real the substance behind it and in it is the Consciousness it's not the story that's where the sense of the preciousness that everybody feels that I am and where the mind says I don't want to lose that I don't want to die this is what people are scared of they might lose themselves they might lose that preciousness everybody deep down un feels that preciousness inside even people who unhappy still they're still here they haven't dumped off the bridge yet they feel a preciousness still inside hiding somewhere and that now that preciousness is consciousness itself it's not your story now that Consciousness is not personal it really only becomes personal when it gets mixed up with memories and a story or expectations and memories so if you did see what happened to you then was the disentanglement happen spontaneously and so there was the realization of that which is there when Consciousness is no longer entangled in form because the Consciousness is the formless it's the unconditioned Consciousness so that is called then self-realization in some traditions or it's called Awakening in other Traditions whatever you call it that's the realization of the formless essence of who you are and and so the mind of course continues but there's no longer investment in it stum Consciousness still flows into mind activity but the important thing is there is no longer a self in the mind activity and so because the self is realized as essentially formless and Timeless so that's a beautiful thing now the fact that mind activity still continues means that occasionally the mind is wondering about Consciousness and awareness um and so the Mind needs to then see that it is futile and since there's no self in it anymore it won't be too difficult the mind will just needs to be told that it cannot you cannot come to any kind of satisfying or satisfactory conclusion about the nature of awareness or further conceptual understanding what awareness is all about the mind would like that but there is a vastness in awareness and awareness begins to operate through your mind without needing your mind to understand more about it because that's what the Mind always says I need to understand more you don't you can understand a lot more about the things of this world there's many things that you can still study everybody can you can there many books you can still read things you can still learn there's always the possibility of acquiring more in this world it's fine nothing wrong with that but as far as self-realization is concerned there's no more there may be a deepening or or the the aware state may Express itself more and more fully through your mind at your mind may have the your your mind becoming the servant of