Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks and Shri Mataji's Thoughtless Awareness are in perfect harmony
STILLNESS SPEAKS
A book designed for meditative reading
The essence of Eckhart Tolle's message is easy to grasp: If we
connect to the stillness within, we move beyond our active minds and
emotions and discover great depths of lasting peace, contentment, and
serenity. With his bestselling first book, The Power of Now, his
message has reached millions of people worldwide. Now, in his much
anticipated new book, Tolle gives us the essence of his teaching in
short, simple pieces that anyone can easily understand.
Stillness Speaks is organized into ten chapters whose subjects range
from"Beyond the Thinking Mind"to"Suffering and the End of
Suffering.”Each chapter is a mosaic of individual entries, concise
and complete in themselves, but profoundly transformative when read
as a whole.
Eckhart Tolle understands the spiritual needs of our time. He draws
from the essence of all spiritual traditions, expressing these truths
in startlingly fresh new ways. The result is a book that is
paradoxically both ancient and contemporary, filled with timely and
powerful messages. Stillness Speaks can be no less than an awakening
for readers willing to give the words a chance to work their quiet
magic.
Eckhart Tolle is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned
with any particular religion or tradition. In his writing and
seminars, he conveys a simple yet profound message with the timeless
and uncomplicated clarity of the ancient spiritual masters: There is
a way out of suffering and into peace. Eckhart travels extensively,
taking his teachings throughout the world. He lives in Vancouver,
British Columbia.
Extracts from Stillness Speaks
The transformation of human consciousness is no longer a luxury, so
to speak, available only to a few isolated individuals, but a
necessity if humankind is not to destroy itself.
At the present time, the dysfunction of the old consciousness and the
arising of the new are both accelerating. Paradoxically, things are
getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more
apparent because it makes so much 'noise'.
The book Stillness Speaks, of course, uses words that in the act of
reading become thoughts in your mind. But those are not ordinary
thoughts — repetitive, noisy, self-serving, clamouring for attention.
Just like every true spiritual teacher, just like the ancient sutras,
the thoughts within this book don't say, ''Look at me',' but ''Look
beyond me'.' Because the thoughts came out of stillness, they have
power — the power to take you back into the same stillness from which
they arose. That stillness is also inner peace, and that stillness
and peace is the essence of your Being. It is inner stillness that
will save and transform the world.
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.
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.
Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner
space or awareness in which the words on this page are being
perceived and become thoughts. Without the awareness, there would be
no perception, no thoughts, no world.
You are that awareness, disguised as a person.
The equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of thinking. The
equivalent of external silence is inner stillness.
Whenever there is some silence around you — listen to it. That means
just notice it. Pay attention to it. Listening to silence awakens the
dimension of stillness within yourself, because it is only through
stillness that you can be aware of silence.
See that in the moment of noticing the silence around you, you are
not thinking. You are aware, but not thinking.
When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of
inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of
thousands of years of collective human conditioning.
Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it.
How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach
you stillness.
When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still
yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a
oneness with whatever you perceive in and through stillness. Feeling
the oneness of yourself with all things is true 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. That is
the inner space of pure awareness, consciousness itself.
You can become aware of awareness as the background to all your sense
perceptions, all your thinking. Becoming aware of awareness is the
arising of inner stillness.
Any disturbing noise can be as helpful as silence. How? By dropping
your inner resistance to the noise, by allowing it to be as it is,
this acceptance also takes you into that realm of inner peace that is
stillness.
Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is - no matter what form
it takes - you are still, you are at peace.
Pay attention to the gap - the gap between two thoughts, the brief,
silent space between words in a conversation, between the notes of a
piano or flute, or the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath.
When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of ''something'
becomes - just awareness. The formless dimension of pure
consciousness arises from within you and replaces identification with
form.
True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity
and solutions to problems are found.
Is stillness just the absence of noise and content? No, it is
intelligence itself - the underlying consciousness out of which every
form is born. And how could that be separate from who you are?
The form that you think you are came out of that and is being
sustained by it.
It is the essence of all galaxies and blades of grass; of all
flowers, trees, birds, and all other forms.
Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then,
it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world.
When you look at a tree or a human being in stillness, who is
looking? Something deeper than the person. Consciousness is looking
at its creation.
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.
Do you need more knowledge? Is more information going to save the world, or faster computers, more scientific or intellectual analysis? Is it not wisdom that humanity needs most at this time?
But what is wisdom and where is it to be found? Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.
www.eckharttolle.com/stillness_speaks
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