Eckhart Tolle – Stillness Speaks 1
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 it’s 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
Stillness Speaks
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.
Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.
When each thought absorbs your attention completely, it means you identify with the voice in your head. Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self. This is the ego, a mind-made “me.” That mentally constructed self feels incomplete and precarious. That’s why fearing and wanting are its predominant emotions and motivating forces.
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. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice — the thinker — but the one who is aware of it.
Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom. True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such a way as if you had completely chosen whatever you feel or experience at this moment.
This inner alignment with Now is the end of suffering.
Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no.
If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion. You would not be reading this now. Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, and then comes a point when it has served its purpose.
Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.
If you haven’t read this collection of thoughts on stillness I highly recommend it to you.
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17 Comments on “Eckhart Tolle – Stillness Speaks 1”
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When I was a horribly abused child, I thought my situation was “bad.” When I got older & wiser, I learned that it wasn’t “bad” so much as “hard.” Without those tough lessons I wouldn’t be who I am today & I think I turned out well enough (to date.)
.-= Lana´s last blog ..A Morning at Big Branch =-.
That’s an interesting observation. My childhood was also hard and I love me as I am. :)
I do enjoy Tolle’s work and am glad to see you offering an invitation to it,
…and I’m in agreement with both of you regarding all our difficult pasts.
(I’m finally getting around to writing the history of my past encounters with psychic phenomena.)
.-= Invisible Mikey´s last blog ..Adventures in Woo-Woo (Pt.2) =-.
Hi Mikey,
It’s good to hear from you. It’s the way we react and respond to harsh circumstances that shapes our characters.
“If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.” — John Heywood quotes (English Playwright and Poet, 1497-1580)
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TT–I loved this post and I am looking forward to reading this book. I have been thinking a lot about suffering lately–because I have been revising some of the most difficult parts of my book. Whenever I delve deeply into my childhood, all the suffering comes back.
I don’t think any child should be abused and to have to suffer in that way–but throughout each of our lives, we DO suffer–some of us suffer in childhood, some in adulthood, and some (unfortunately) suffer throughout their lives. What each of us has to do, to truly find peace and happiness, is to accept our past–whatever it was and take the lessons we need from the events that made us suffer. Then, to find true peace (for me) means to pass along service work to those who are still suffering. When we help others who suffer the way we did, it gives us peace for what we suffered as well.
Thanks for passing this along, my friend!
Love,
Melinda
.-= Melinda´s last blog ..Fire, Serendipity, and Gratitude =-.
Dear Melinda,
You are so wise and so compassionate.
Love and peace,
TiTi
TiTi,
I haven’t seen you on friedeggs and was wondering if all is well, when I went to Robin’s blog and saw your comment there. I want you to know that I empathize and SHARE your sense of loss. There is nothing I can say to comfort you, except that I understand your pain.
Keep on planting and making color in your garden, and your friends will remain alive in your dear, strong heart.
xxx
@Lynda
Thanks so much for your kindness. I still find my friends’ things in the house. I still have moments of forgetfulness when I’m expecting the phone to ring and then have to remind myself it isn’t going to. Grief is a journey we take alone but it sure is wonderful to have friends who support our choice to actually experience it.
Thanks for being a friend,
TiTi
Dear TT, this is lovely. And so timely for me right now. I needed this today and am grateful for it. I love the line: “Feeling the oneness of yourself with all things is love.” Yes, it does me good to remember this. And that we can even experience stillness without silence. I like that and know it to be true, but it is still a good reminder.
I also wanted to tell you again how much your comment on my blog touched me. I am grateful for you. Just who you are. I relate so strongly to your comment to Lynda above. I too know this.
I am just glad that you are in the world.
Much love,
Robin
.-= Robin Easton´s last blog ..Finding Your Way Home =-.
Dear Robin,
I love you and thank you for being my friend throughout this awful time. I treasure your friendship and can say little more online as I’m barely holding myself together right now. One day when I am stronger I will share my personal story with you privately. Then you will know why I am devastated by the loss of these two people from my life. In the meanwhile I will do what I do best.
Namaste
Left a comment, but I’m not sure it went through, dear TT. I hope so. Regardless, I am sending you much love. You are a beautiful soul. Robin
.-= Robin Easton´s last blog ..Finding Your Way Home =-.
Hello again,
I found your 2 comments in the spam filter. It appears that spammers consider my period of grief to be an open invitation to barrage my blog with hundreds of spams daily assuming I will be stupid enough to approve and post their trash. Of course, I’m feeding every spammer’s email address and every IP to both Akismet and to Defensio. I may be grief-stricken but I have never been stupid.
I enjoy Tolle, greatly, and am convinced that you would enjoy Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Living just as much…The translation by his daughter is my favorite edition, and the one I recommend…if you haven’t already read it, that is.
I’m so glad you dropped in and shared that book title with me. I shall ask for it through interlibrary loan as I haven’t read it. I hope you have been well and happy too. :)
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