To Think or Not to Think | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

so as we sit here i'd like to put a little question mark into your mind and like you to ask yourself whether at this moment you're thinking so [Music] you will know the answer and try it again i'll stop speaking for a few seconds and just be alert inside yourself to find out whether you're thinking because usually you don't even know that you're thinking you're just you are the thinking so there's no outside thing that knows that you are thinking you are just the thinking you become the thinking the thinker and the thinker is the person and to step out of the person you have to experience that there is a dimension in you where the person is not but something deeper is there that's why what we want to explore so again a moment of stillness in the power of now i talk about a mouse sorry a cat watching a mouse hole now if you've ever a cat watching a mouse hole then you will have noticed that the cat could spend a long time there being extremely alert and just watching in the same way that my dog watches a treat when i put it down and say not yet and then the dog goes and so the cat watches the mouse hole a state of complete attention so one spiritual master i believe it was a sufi master said his teacher had been a cat when he was asked who would be in his spiritual teacher i said the cat how is that and he said i watched a cat watching a mouse hole and by watching a cat watching mousehole i realized i awakened because by watching a cat he entered a state of alert attention in which there's no thinking like now does that there's no sort of just a short moment but it's not matter how long it's it's a it's a wonderful thing to realize that you can not think it's a wonderful thing to realize that you are still there when you're not thinking as oprah said when we started for the first time in the moment of silence and which then we started to talk again she said okay i'm i'm still here i just checked in i'm still alive i'm still here i haven't disappeared one more time be alert you need to be alert to know whether you're thinking or not so there's an alertness like a cat and there may be thinking or they may not be thinking there may just be the alertness i also mentioned in the power of now that another question you can ask yourself is what's my next thought going to be i'm going to just watch out see what the next thought is that's going to come into my mind if you're very alert it'll be quite a while before the next thought comes but the moment the degree of alertness decreases thoughts come flooding back in interesting experiments you can do with yourself and your mind now from the point of view of the usual thinking mind the realization that there is a dimension in you where thinking either does not happen at all or becomes unimportant to the thinking mind that is either a threat or completely uninteresting because what could be less interesting than not thinking to so from the point of view of the thinking mind the state of the state of consciousness in which there is no thinking is either a threat oh i don't want to go there i'm going to disappear but of course oprah didn't disappear after the stillness i'm still there i'm still alive and then when she said that i say perhaps you're even more alive now and there's that is pointing to something you there is an intensification [Music] of aliveness when you begin to enter that let's call it dimension in yourself the dimension in which compulsive thinking doesn't operate anymore but you have to be careful because you could easily because it's okay what we're doing here is we rise above thinking we become so alert that thinking either doesn't happen or is seen as unimportant from there you can easily suddenly drop [Music] through thinking to below thought in other words you go towards sleep so when you stop thinking there's the alertness here's the thinking level but it's a normal level for most human beings while they are awake and even when they dream they're still still going on here's the thinking level underneath the thinking level there's consciousness above the thinking level there's consciousness and even within thinking there's consciousness thinking is an expression of consciousness but there are infinite varieties of manifestations or expressions of consciousness this flower is an expression of consciousness taking on the form this beautiful form incredible beauty consciousness being born into forms and consciousness not all consciousness is formed there is a dimension of consciousness that is formless out of which all forms come the ground of all being and that's what we are exploring here thinking you rise above thinking or you fall below thinking you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

Views: 148,731

Keywords: to think or not to think eckhart tolle teachings, to think or not to think, eckhart tolle teachings, eckhart tolle, eckhart, tolle, thinking mind, eckhart tolle teachings youtube, eckhart tolle youtube, eckhart tolle thought, personal growth, eckhart tolle 2022, stop thinking, thinking, spiritual awakening, mindfulness, self improvement, eckhart tolle youtube channel

Id: a_sMdudnswM

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2022