Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Finding the 'Stillness' of Our Being

"Be still and know that I am God."
-- Psalms 46:10 --

What is the deepest truth of human existence? What is the deepest truth of who and what you are?

". . . thinking without awareness
is the main dilemna of human
existence.
"


These are the the fundamental existential questions which enlightened spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, examines in the attached video excerpt introducing his talk/teaching, "The Deepest Truth of Human Existence."

In the video, Tolle asks the listener to acknowledge and focus on his or her "realm of stillness underneath the stream of mental noise," underneath what the philosopher/psychologist William James termed the "stream of consciousness," underneath the mental phenomena of the human ego which Tolle rightly observes most people are mistakenly identified with as "themselves," or 'who' and 'what' they are in their essence.

"We are here to explore the deepest truth of who you are," Tolle observes, "because you are human existence. We are here to explore the deepest truth within yourself. Knowing yourself at the deepest level, (is) a level so deep that knowing yourself and knowing God become one and the same."

"That which acknowledges that dimension in you," says Tolle, that "which is able to listen to that dimension - (to) listen not to something but to nothing, (to) listen to 'no' thing - that in you which is able to acknowledge that dimension and to be attentive to that dimension, is a realm of existence underneath the stream of mental noise."

It is because of "this stream of mental noise," because of the misidentification of our egoic 'selves' with our real essence, that nearly all of us struggle with our thoughts and the existential questions of 'what' we are, 'who' we are, and 'why' we are here.

"Through thought you cannot pay attention to silence," Tolle notes, "because thought is noise." And, it is because of this conditioned way of constant thinking we have learned, that most everyone in this age struggles to experience the consciousness of God, and experientially witness the 'state of grace.'

Thus, as the psalmist urged millennia ago, it is now - as ever - necessary for the spiritual aspirant to "(be) still and know that I am God."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *


"The world is too much with us. . . ."
-- Wm. Shakespeare --


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