Stillness Within – November 12th Meetup – Eckhart Tolle on Our Human Destiny
Eckhart Tolle – Our Human Destiny The November Stillness Within Meetup was well attended by 14 members. Due to a technical glitch we watched a rebroadcast of a talk called Our Human Destiny. As usual it was an exceptional talk. Eckhart emphasized the illusory nature of our reality and all the daily dramas there within, suggesting that our sleep states provide a valuable pointer to our awake journey toward deeper realization. He likens the dream state to that of our awake life, if lived from a place of ‘unconsciousness’. This unconsciousness is based in identification with thought as well as a long held egoic identity (our ideas about who we are + our unconscious programming). That conceptual identity is experienced, much like in a dream, through dramas that are appearing. We can observe this sense of self: reacting, asserting, defending and even feeling reinforced or ‘fed’ by these dramas… The trials and tribulations are almost as satisfying to the egoic self as the triumphs! He proposes that there is a ‘power’ within us that we can discover when we realize that we are actually ‘no-thing’ – there is a new sense that can be discovered that there is no one ‘here’… For many of us, this can be a startling suggestion. Eckhart shares his experience that the individualized personal self, egoic identity, once it becomes less ‘dense’ or even seen through, is replaced by an open sense of spaciousness. And the sense of self can shift to a sense of simply being: an expression of pure existence/oneness/consciousness/creation. He isn’t the only teacher to suggest that one can live primarily from that spaciousness (rather than as the personal self), although the personality can still make appearances. Looking to Krishnamurti’s teachings (“The First and Last Freedom”), there are some strong parallels in teachings. K. Talks about the self both in terms of the mind and also ideas within the mind, bringing in a suggestion of quiet awareness/observation: “When you recognize that every movement of the mind is merely a form of strengthening the self, when you observe it, see it, when you’re completely aware of it in action … then you will see that the mind, being utterly still, has no power of creating. Whatever the mind creates is in a circle, within the field of the self…” Similarly K. suggests: “Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas – which is the me, which is the mind… only when one can go beyond that, once thought is completely silent, is there a state of experiencing. Then one shall know what truth is.” Eckhart emphasizes that the natural state of humans is one of connection to our essential beingness and that state brings a sense of fundamental wellbeing (whereas the suffering, anxiety, fear etc. is linked to the state of separation). He also offers a sense of possibility… describing the self as being like a ripple in the ocean. The freedom comes when the ripple sees the larger view… realizing the rippleness in the ocean and the oceanness in the ripple. It can be discovered that the egoic sense of self is purely an illusory identity, and in fact, that the ocean (spaciousness/the infinity of existence) is the truth of who we are. Resting in that allows something quite wonderful (and indescribable) to pour through, sometimes called the transcendent state. This is really key to not only the end of personal suffering, but also (he speculates) could be a spark igniting a much broader expression of our collective human destiny.
