ECKHART TOLLE
STILLNESS SPEAKS
Summary with supplement
Meditation, philosophy, self
– realization
CONTENT
Introduction
The only function of spiritual
teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth of who
you already are and what you already know in the depth of your being. The
spiritual teacher is there to uncover and reveal to you that dimension of the
inner depth that is also peace.
If
you are looking for food for thought, you won't find it. The words are no more than signposts. That to which
they point is not to be found within the realm of thought but a dimension within yourself that is deeper, and
infinitely vaster than thought.
Sutras are powerful
pointers to the truth in the form of aphorisms or short sayings with little
conceptual elaboration. The Vedas and Upanishads are the early sacred teachings
recorded in the form of sutras, as are the words of the Buddha. The sayings and
parables of Jesus, too, when taken out of their narrative context could be
regarded as sutras as well as the profound teachings contained in the Tao Te
Ching, the ancient Chinese book of wisdom.
There is also an
added sense of urgency here. The transformation of human consciousness is no
longer a luxury, so to speak, available only to a few, isolated individuals, but
a necessity if human kind is not to destroy itself.
The thoughts within this book don't
say “look at me", but “look beyond me.”
Chapter
1 - Silence
and Stillness
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch
with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Stillness is your
essential nature.
The equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of
thinking. The equivalent of external silence is inner stillness. You are
present.
Allow
nature to teach you stillness. Feeling the oneness of yourself with all things
is love.
Silence is helpful,
but you don’t need it in order to find stillness. Even when there is noise, you
can be aware of the stillness underneath the noise, of the space in which the
noise arises.
Any disturbing noise
can be as helpful as silence. Acceptance also
takes you into that realm of inner peace that is stillness.
True intelligence
operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are
found.
In the Bible, it says
that God created the world and saw that it was
good. That is what you see when you look from stillness without thought.
Wisdom
comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. Let stillness
direct your words and actions.
Chapter 2 - Beyond the Thinking Mind
The human condition: Lost in thought.
Most people spend
their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They
never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is
conditioned by the past. There is a dimension of
consciousness far deeper than thought. Finding that dimension frees you. Love,
joy, creative expansion, and lasting inner peace cannot come into your
life except through that unconditioned dimension of consciousness.
Every
thought pretends that it matters so much. Don’t take your thoughts too seriously.
You have to be larger than thought to realize that however you interpret “your life” or someone else’s life or behavior,
however you judge any situation, it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many
possible perspectives.
Whenever you are
immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don’t want to be where you are. Here, Now. People
love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false
sense of “I know.”
Spiritual
awakening is awakening from the dream of thought. When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of
thought and see clearly that the thinker is not
who you are.
Even
boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not. Boredom, anger, sadness,
or fear are not “yours,” not personal. They
are conditions of the human mind. They come and
go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.
Thinking
that is not rooted in awareness becomes self-serving and dysfunctional. Cleverness
devoid of wisdom is extremely dangerous and destructive. It doesn’t mean not to
think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought,
possessed by thought.
You may find yourself
looking at the sky or listening to someone without
any inner mental commentary. Your perceptions become crystal clear, unclouded
by thought. The truth is that it is the most significant thing that can happen to you. It is the beginning of a shift from thinking to aware presence. There is no decision-making process anymore; spontaneous
right action happens, and “you” are not doing it. Mastery of life is the opposite
of control. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it.
Chapter 3 - The Egoic
Self
When you think or
speak about yourself, when you say, “I,” what you usually refer to is “me and
my story.” This is the “I” of your likes and dislikes, fears and desires, the
“I” that is never satisfied for long. It is a
mind-made sense of who you are, conditioned by the past and seeking to find its
fulfillment in the future. I am. This is the deeper “I” that has nothing to do
with past and future.
When
each thought absorbs your attention completely, it means you identify with the
voice in your head. This is the ego, the mind-made “me.” When you recognize that
there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking,
you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of
thinking. The egoic self is always engaged in
seeking. It is seeking more of this or that to add to itself, to make itself
feel more complete. This explains the ego’s compulsive preoccupation with future.
Almost every ego
contains at least an element of what we might call “victim identity.” Complaining and reactivity are favorite mind patterns
through which the ego strengthens itself. By doing this, you make others or a
situation “wrong” and yourself “right.” In reality, of course, you are only strengthening
the illusion of ego. The egoic sense of self needs conflict because its
sense of a separate identity gets strengthened in fighting against this or
that, and in demonstrating that this is “me” and
that is not “me."
The ego’s
identity depends on comparison and feeds on more. If all else fails, you can
strengthen your fictitious sense of self through seeing yourself as more
unfairly treated by life or more ill than someone else. So there is “me”
against the “other,” “us” against “them." The ego needs to be in conflict
with something or someone. You say you want happiness but are addicted to your unhappiness.
Chapter 4 - The Now
Since
there is no escape from the now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it. When
you make friends with the present moment, you feel at home no matter where you
are. When you don't feel at home in the now, no matter where you go, you will
carry unease with you. The only thing that is real, the only thing that ever
is, is the Now. Find what is primary first, and make the Now into your friend,
not your enemy. What is more important: the doing or the result that you want
to achieve through the doing? This moment or some future moment? The future
never arrives, except as the present, it is a dysfunctional way to live. Now is
the only place where life can be found. When you say “yes” to what is, you
become aligned with the power and intelligence of Life itself. A simple but
radical spiritual practice is to accept whatever arises in the Now– within and
without. No room for problem making. Just this moment as it is.
People
confuse the Now with what happens in the Now, but that’s not what it is. The
Now is deeper than what happens in it. It is the space in which it happens. You
begin to realize how much vaster and deeper you are than your thoughts.
Your innermost sense of I Am has nothing to do with what
happens in your life. Confusion, anger, depression, violence, and conflict
arise when humans forget who they are.
I am
not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things
happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.
Chapter 5 - Who You Truly Are
You
find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life but by realizing
who you are at the deepest level. The truth is you don't have a life, you are
life. Self-realization–which means knowing who you are beyond the surface self,
beyond your name, your physical form, your history, your story. You cannot find
yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself in
the Now. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you.
By knowing yourself
as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations,
places, and conditions. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. Playfulness
comes into your life.
When you know
yourself as that, then you recognize yourself in
everything. It is a state of complete clarity of perception. You are no longer
an entity with a heavy past.
Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself
more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something, being cannot be given or
taken away.
Chapter 6 - Acceptance
and Surrender
It has been said:
wherever you go, there you are. In other words: you are here. Always. Is it
so hard to accept that? “No” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it.
Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender.
“Doing one thing at a time.” This is how one
Zen Master defined the essence of Zen. Doing one thing at a time means to be
total in what you do.
The
world cannot give you anything of lasting value. You then continue to meet
people, to be involved in experiences and activities, but without the wants and
fears of the egoic self. And the miracle is that when you are no longer placing
an impossible demand on it, every situation, person, place, or event becomes
not only satisfying but also more harmonious, more peaceful.
When
you fully accept that you don't know, you give up struggling to find answers with
the limited thinking mind, and that is when a greater intelligence can operate through
you.
Whatever
you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you
cannot accept, that you are in resistance.
Chapter
7- Nature
We
depend on nature. We have forgotten how to be–to be still, to be ourselves, to
be where life is: Here and Now. See how every animal and every plant is
completely itself. Unlike humans, they have not split themselves in two. All
things in nature are not only one with themselves but also one with the
totality.
Give yourself
completely to the act of listening. Beyond the sounds there is something
greater: a sacredness that cannot be understood
through thought. When you perceive nature only through the mind, through
thinking, you cannot sense its aliveness, its beingness. The moment you become
aware of a plant's emanation of stillness and peace, that plant becomes your
teacher. Bring your attention to your breathing and realize that you are not
doing it. It is the breath of nature. You are not separate from nature. We are
all part of the One Life.
When
human beings become still, they go beyond thought. There is an added dimension
of knowing, of awareness, in the stillness that is beyond thought. Nature can
bring you to stillness.
Chapter
8 - Relationships
As
long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts, emotions, and actions
arise from desire and fear. In relationships you then either want or fear
something from the other person. Attention, which is alert stillness, is the
key. How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love
does not want or fear anything.
If
her past were your past, her pain your pain, her level of consciousness your
level of consciousness, you would think and act exactly as she does. With this
realization comes forgiveness, compassion, peace. When you receive whoever comes into the space of Now as a noble guest,
when you allow each person to be as they are, they begin to change.
Knowing
about and knowing are totally different modalities. One is concerned with form,
the other with the formless. One operates through thought, the other through
stillness.
No
relationship can thrive without the sense of spaciousness that comes with stillness.
Meditate or spend silent time in nature together. When going for a walk or sitting
in the car or at home, become comfortable with being in stillness together. If
spacious stillness is missing, the relationship will be dominated by the mind
and can easily be taken over by problems and conflict.
True
listening is another way of bringing stillness into the relationship. 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. And now the other
person is no longer “other.” In that space, you are joined together as one
awareness, one consciousness.
Human interaction can
be hell. Or it can be a great spiritual practice. The
outer form is a temporary reflection of what you are within, in your essence.
That is why love and beauty can never leave you, although all outer forms will.
When
there is self-identification with things, you don't appreciate them for what they
are because you are looking for yourself in them. A moment of attention is
enough. You are no longer acting out a script. You become real. Ultimately, of
course, there is no other and you are always meeting yourself.
Chapter 9 - Death and the Eternal
Wherever
you look, you will find death as well as life. Death isn’t to be found
anywhere. There is only the metamorphosis of life forms. Death is not the
opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is
eternal.
Death
enters your life as the awareness of your own mortality. When you see and
accept the impermanent nature of all life forms, a strange sense of peace comes
upon you. When death is denied, life loses its depth. By lerning to die daily
in this way, you open yourself to Life.
When
a form that you had unconsciously identified with as part of yourself leaves you
or dissolves, that can be extremely painful. It leaves a hole in the fabric of
your existence. Accept that it is there. Can you face and accept that strange
sense of emptiness? If you do, you may find that it is no longer a fearful
place. Suddenly, there is no more fear, just peace and a knowing that “all is
well” and that death is only a form dissolving. Death is not an anomaly or the
most dreadful of all events as modern culture would have you believe, but the
most natural thing in the world, inseparable from and just as natural as its
other polarity–birth.
Chapter 10 - Suffering and the End of Suffering
This inner alignment
with Now is the end of suffering. See what happens when you just allow a
feeling to be. Much suffering, much unhappiness arises when you take each
thought that comes into your head for the truth. Situations don't make you unhappy.
They may cause you physical pain, but they don't make you unhappy. Your
thoughts make you unhappy. Your interpretations, the stories you tell yourself
make you unhappy. “The thoughts I'm thinking right now make me unhappy.” This
realization breaks you unconscious identification with those thoughts. Unhappiness
or problems cannot survive in the Now. When you go beyond the habitual naming,
the power of the universe moves through you. Bring acceptance into your
non-acceptance. (1)
About
the author
Spiritual teacher and author
Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany
and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge London Vancouver ,
Canada
Eckhart Tolle is the author of the
New York Times bestsellers The Power of Now (translated into 33 languages) and
A New Earth, which are widely regarded as two of the most influential spiritual
books of our time. In 2008, A New Earth became the first spiritual book to be
selected for Oprah's Book Club as well as the subject of a ten-week online
workshop co-taught by Eckhart and Oprah.
Eckhart's profound yet simple
teachings have helped countless people throughout the world find inner peace
and greater fulfillment in their lives. At the core of the teachings lies the
transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next
step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in
transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not
only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic
on our planet. (2)
Reference
“Stillness Speaks” is a gentle journey, one that could take you to a spectacular and very
special place of new awareness and deeper understanding. Yet one that leads
nowhere in particular.
Tolle
is very much aware that it is in the nowhere that the everywhere exists, that
it is in the nothing that everything is found. This is not an easy concept for
most people to grasp.
The
trick with Tolle’s work is to not think about it. Most people, the author says,
are lost in thought. The idea is to be out of your mind and into your
experience of exactly what is happening, right here, right now.
We
think of death as being the opposite of birth. Life, in its essence has no
opposite. The opposite of life is non-life; just living without consciousness
is opposite to living life consciously. — Neale Donald Walsch,
Author of Conversations with God (4)
Used literature
- Eckart Tolle “Stillness speaks”
- Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/EckhartTolle/e/B001H6GZ5K/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
- Official web-site of Eckhart Tolle: http://www.eckharttolle.com/home/
- Personal development, growth and
relationship blog: http://thistimethisspace.com/2010/05/12/eckhart-tolle-stillness-speaks-1/
Nav komentāru:
Ierakstīt komentāru