What Does It Feel Like to Awaken Spiritually? | Eckhart Tolle
Summary
TLDRThe speaker explores the concept of spiritual awakening, highlighting how the constant stream of thoughts in the mind can obscure a deeper consciousness, referred to as spaciousness or presence. Through moments of pure awareness—such as experiencing nature's beauty or looking into a baby's eyes—people can briefly access this higher consciousness. These flashes of awareness offer peace and liberation from the mental clutter, even if momentarily. The speaker emphasizes that true spiritual awakening involves recognizing the gap between thought and presence, leading to a heightened sense of aliveness and connectedness.
Takeaways
- 🧠 Realizing the continuous stream of commentary in our minds is the beginning of spiritual awakening.
- 🗣 Recognizing the voice in the head is different from thinking; it's an awareness or presence.
- 🌟 Awareness or presence is the higher consciousness, marking the rise of new consciousness.
- 🙏 The concept of 'emptiness' in Buddhism, often translated from 'sunyata', can be better understood as 'spaciousness'.
- 📖 The zen teaching of 'emptying your cup' means clearing mental clutter to achieve enlightenment.
- 🌌 Spaciousness is a dimension of consciousness present in every human, often hidden by mental clutter.
- 🌄 Moments of perceiving natural beauty or connecting deeply with another being can provide glimpses of this spaciousness.
- 👶 Interacting with a baby can liberate one from continuous thinking, allowing for a moment of pure consciousness.
- 🌿 Little flashes of this deeper consciousness help maintain mental sanity and a sense of life's worth.
- 🧘 People burdened by noisy minds struggle to perceive these moments of spaciousness, remaining veiled from deeper consciousness.
Q & A
What is the beginning of spiritual awakening according to the speaker?
-The beginning of spiritual awakening is realizing that there is a continuous commentary in the mind, recognizing that thoughts are separate from awareness.
How does the speaker describe the recognition of thought?
-The speaker explains that the recognition of thought is not a thought itself but comes through awareness or presence, which is a higher consciousness.
What does the Zen master's phrase 'empty your cup' mean in this context?
-It means that to grasp deeper truths, one must empty the mind of mental clutter, allowing space for awareness and presence.
Why does the speaker find the word 'emptiness' a poor translation?
-The speaker believes 'emptiness' gives a misleading impression of something missing, whereas a better translation for the Buddhist term 'sunyata' is 'spaciousness,' which refers to an open dimension of consciousness.
How does the speaker differentiate between thinking and being thought?
-The speaker argues that most people don't voluntarily think; instead, they are 'being thought' by their mental processes, and their identity is created by these thoughts.
What is the significance of moments when one perceives beauty, like a sunset or a baby's eyes?
-In those moments, a person becomes free from the constant stream of thinking, experiencing a sense of spaciousness, peace, and connection with being.
Why do some people find it difficult to experience this spaciousness?
-Some people's minds are so noisy and cluttered with thoughts that they can't perceive beauty or moments of stillness, creating a 'veil' that blocks awareness.
How do moments of spaciousness manifest in everyday life?
-They can arise spontaneously in moments of awe, such as looking at nature or a baby's eyes, where a person momentarily stops thinking and feels a deeper aliveness.
What role does awareness play in spiritual awakening?
-Awareness allows one to recognize thoughts without identifying with them, opening the door to higher consciousness and a more peaceful state of being.
Why does the speaker emphasize the importance of spaciousness in consciousness?
-Spaciousness is the spiritual dimension of consciousness, and realizing it is crucial because it transcends worldly success or failure and brings deeper meaning to life.
Outlines
🧘 Recognizing the Voice in Your Head
This paragraph introduces the concept of spiritual awakening as the recognition of the continuous commentary in our minds. The awareness of this 'voice in the head' is the key to understanding higher consciousness. The narrator explains that this recognition is not a thought itself but comes through awareness, or presence, which marks the beginning of spiritual awakening. The speaker further emphasizes that thinking is often involuntary, and the term 'I think' is misleading since people are typically controlled by their thoughts. The paragraph concludes by discussing the Zen teaching of 'emptying the cup'—a metaphor for clearing mental clutter—and offers a deeper interpretation of the Buddhist concept of 'emptiness' as 'spaciousness,' a dimension of consciousness present in all humans.
🌅 Moments of Spiritual Realization
In this paragraph, the speaker explores brief moments when people might become aware of the underlying spaciousness within them, even if they are unaware of its spiritual significance. These moments often occur during experiences of natural beauty, such as sunsets or vast landscapes, when the incessant stream of thoughts subsides temporarily. The speaker describes how these moments bring a heightened sense of aliveness and peace, freeing people from their thoughts about the past or future. These flashes of presence, though short-lived, help people feel more connected to life and can provide a sense of sanity.
👶 Connection Through Presence
This paragraph illustrates how interactions with infants can also trigger moments of spiritual presence. When looking into the eyes of a baby, there is a pure consciousness without thought, and this can momentarily free adults from their own thinking. The speaker describes the experience of feeling good in such moments, as the baby’s presence liberates the adult from their mental stream. While these instances are not often recognized as spiritual, they provide a glimpse into a deeper state of consciousness. However, the speaker notes that some people are so consumed by their thoughts that they are unable to experience these moments of presence, whether through babies or nature.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Spiritual Awakening
💡Thought
💡Awareness
💡Presence
💡Voice in the Head
💡Emptying the Cup
💡Emptiness
💡Spaciousness
💡Mental Clutter
💡Higher Consciousness
💡Worldly Success
Highlights
The recognition of thought is not a thought; it comes through awareness or presence, which is the higher consciousness.
Spiritual awakening begins when we realize the continuous commentary in our minds and recognize it as the voice in the head.
The recognition of thought is not the voice in the head; it's a moment of higher awareness, leading to spiritual awakening.
Emptiness, often a term used in Buddhism, can be better translated as spaciousness, which represents the spiritual dimension of consciousness.
The zen master’s phrase 'empty your cup' signifies clearing mental clutter to experience enlightenment, which points to the concept of spaciousness.
Spiritual spaciousness is often hidden by mental clutter, but it exists in every human as a dormant faculty.
Momentary flashes of spiritual awareness can occur through intense experiences of beauty or nature, freeing people from incessant thinking.
The feeling of deep peace and aliveness comes from a temporary cessation of thought, triggered by profound moments of sense perception.
Looking into the eyes of a baby can momentarily liberate us from thinking, as babies exhibit pure consciousness without judgment or thoughts.
Many people experience brief moments of spiritual awareness, but they don’t recognize them as such, yet they offer glimpses of a deeper consciousness.
These brief spiritual flashes, like moments of peace in nature or with a child, help people feel that life is still worth living.
Those heavily burdened by mental noise cannot appreciate these moments of spiritual spaciousness, as their thoughts veil the underlying consciousness.
The mind’s incessant labeling prevents genuine perception of life, beauty, and connection to the deeper spiritual dimension.
Spontaneous moments of spiritual awareness can arise naturally, often unnoticed, but they are vital for sustaining a sense of meaning in life.
Awakening to the spiritual dimension involves moving beyond the ups and downs of life and realizing the deeper consciousness beneath mental activity.
Transcripts
(bell dings)
- And for many, the beginning of spiritual awakening
is to realize that there is this stream
of continuous commentary in their minds
and that is to think, oh, that's interesting.
That's a thought, of course,
but before the thought that's interesting,
the recognition, it's a voice in the head.
And the recognition is not the voice in the head,
although you might say it after the recognition.
But in the moment of recognizing
there's a voice in the head, that's not a thought.
The recognition of thought is not a thought.
The recognition of thought
comes through awareness or presence.
And awareness or presence is the higher consciousness,
the arising new consciousness.
Wow, so that is really the meaning of spiritual awakening.
By the way, in this first half of our gathering
I will be talking more about it.
In the second half,
we will do more experiential.
But even while I talk about it here,
I would hope that if it works for you,
there's already also an experiential realization
of what it is I'm talking about.
So there's the voice in the head
and people say things like, I think.
They don't think
because thinking is not a voluntary action for them.
So it's a delusion to even say I think.
You don't think,
you are being thought by thought.
You are created by thought,
that energy field.
It's amazing.
So the master said, "How can I teach you zen?"
And he say first, empty your cup.
Now that's a huge demand.
If I'm full of clutter, mental clutter,
how am I going to empty my cup?
I would immediately be enlightened
if I could empty my cup.
But the teaching points to something.
It points to the word empty
and that's interesting,
that is an important word in Buddhism
and I don't think it's a good translation.
Who first came up with it, I don't know.
In the 19th century,
the Europeans started to translate ancient text
from Sanskrit
and one person came up with the translation
probably of the Sanskrit term sunyata
and translated it as emptiness.
That doesn't sound so nice.
It sounds like something missing
or something like that.
So I have an alternative translation
for the Buddhist term emptiness.
So that empty is an important word.
So remember, the zen master said,
"How can I teach you zen
unless you first empty your cup?"
Empty.
Emptiness, my alternative translation for that
is spaciousness.
Spaciousness is a dimension of consciousness in you.
And that is what we could call
the spiritual dimension of consciousness,
the deeper or the higher consciousness,
just words, doesn't matter.
And that is in every human, it's there.
Many don't know that it's there
because the clutter is so dense
that they have no realization of the underlying spaciousness
and that is why I say in millions of humans
that is still a dormant faculty so to speak.
So the most important realization in your life
much more important than what you have achieved
on the level of the world,
whether your life in worldly terms
is regarded as a huge success
or a dismal failure
or for most of you probably something in between.
That's normal.
Sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed
and then you move from gaining, losing,
high, low, up and down.
That's the identity for most.
So the clutter of your mind is there
but there are moments in your life
when you become aware of something spacious
underneath it.
But you may not call it that.
You may not call it anything.
It may arise, for example, in,
oh, I forgot,
in many humans
who may never have heard of anything spiritual,
they're out there,
they don't know that the little bit of that is in them,
but they don't know it,
little glances come occasionally into their lives
of that dimension.
It's not enough to actually say
that the spiritual dimension
has awakened in them,
but little flashes come up now and then into their lives.
And that is enough,
those little flashes from that dimension
come into their lives
and that is enough to keep many people sane.
And those flashes can come when they're,
you might think when you go out into nature
and you see something extraordinarily beautiful
like a sunset,
for a moment you go, ah,
or the vastness of the ocean or the sky
or the elements,
the wind, the storm,
and for a moment you go ah,
and it's a moment of intense aliveness and you feel,
and then you may remember that moment a little later
and that was such a beautiful moment.
Why was it?
Yes, maybe what you perceived was beautiful
but you felt something in that moment.
You felt a heightened sense of aliveness
and a deep peace and connectedness
with being so to speak.
Why?
Because that moment of sense perception
of something vast or beautiful
freed you for a moment
from the incessant stream of thinking.
So the incessant stream of thinking,
let's say you see this vast,
this incredible sunset or whatever
and for a moment, you give it your complete attention
and for a moment you're not thinking about yourself,
your problems,
your problematic life history
or your even more problematic future.
Actually, you're not thinking about anything.
For a moment, the stream of thinking subsides
and it goes chew, ah.
And that is without knowing it,
you have a little flash has come up from that dimension.
And then the next moment,
it may come a few days later again
when you look into the eyes of a baby one year old,
maybe just in the street or in a cafe
and the baby looks at you
and the baby's one year old
and the eyes are like the baby's.
(audience laughing)
And you know instinctively
that the baby's not thinking about you
because thinking hasn't started yet.
The words have not accumulated yet.
The thoughts haven't started yet.
And yet there's a consciousness there
and you can see very clearly
there's an intense consciousness
that's looking through those eyes at you
without judging you in any way.
And in that moment for just a few seconds,
you feel so good
and you think aw.
Why do you feel so good?
Because at that moment,
the baby liberated you from your stream of thinking
and again, a little bit of spaciousness
opened up inside you.
So for those few seconds
when you looked into the eyes of the baby,
you were not thinking
and the baby wasn't thinking.
So through the baby,
you are able to be in that dimension
and it felt so good.
Spontaneously they can arise.
They're not recognized by people as ultimately spiritual
but they are.
And so many people,
there are millions of people
who experience those things briefly,
but that's enough to give you a sense still
of life is worth living.
And then there are others
who are so burdened by their minds,
they cannot even communicate with a baby.
They cannot even perceive the beauty of nature anymore
because their mind is so noisy that they never,
there's a total veil.
So they don't look at the baby like,
they look at the baby, oh that's a nice baby.
They don't really see the baby.
Immediately it's labeled.
(water streaming)
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