«This book uses words that, when read, will raise thoughts in your mind. But not repetitive, loud, narcissistic thoughts that demand attention ... The thoughts in this book do not say "look at me, " but "look beyond me." As they have emerged from the stillness, they have power: the power to take you to the same stillness from which they emerged. That stillness is also inner peace, and that stillness and that peace are the essence of your Being. It is stillness that will save and transform the world.
From the Introduction
The essence of Eckhart Tolle's message is easy to understand: when we connect with the inner stillness we go beyond our busy minds and emotions, to discover great depths of lasting peace, joy and serenity. With his first book, The Power of Now, his message has reached millions of people around the world. Now, in this long-awaited new book, Tolle offers us the essence of his teaching in simple and brief sentences that anyone can easily understand.
Silence speaks is organized in ten chapters, which include topics such as "Beyond the thinking mind" or "Suffering and the end of suffering." Each chapter is a mosaic of concise and complete phrases in themselves, but profoundly transformative when read as a whole.
Eckhart Tolle understands the spiritual needs of our age. Based on the essence of spiritual traditions, he expresses these in a surprisingly new way. The result is this book - paradoxically as old as contemporary - full of powerful and timely messages. Silence speaks can achieve an awakening in all readers willing to give words an opportunity to work their magical stillness.
INTRODUCTION
A true spiritual teacher has nothing to teach in the conventional sense of the word; It has nothing to give or add to you, whether it is new information, beliefs or rules of conduct. Its only function is to help you get rid of what separates you from the truth of who you are and what you know at the bottom of your being. The spiritual teacher is there to discover you and reveal to you that dimension of inner depth that is also peace.
If you address a spiritual teacher - or approach this book - looking for ideas, theories, stimulating beliefs or intellectual discussions, then you will be disappointed. In other words, if you are looking for mental food, you will not find it and you will lose the essence of the teaching, the essence of this book, which is not in the words, but within yourself. It is convenient to remember this and feel it as you read. Words are not more than signals. That which they point to is not in the realm of thought, but in an internal dimension that is deeper and infinitely more vast than thought. One of the characteristics of that dimension is a vibrant peace of life, so that whenever you feel that inner peace arise as you read, the book will be fulfilling its mission and performing its teaching function : He is reminding you of who you are and indicating the way back home.
This is not a book to read it from one run, from beginning to end, and leave it. Live with it, open it frequently and, most importantly, close it regularly; that is, spend more time holding it in your hands than reading it. Many readers will feel the natural desire to stop reading after each paragraph, to pause, reflect, calm down, it is always more useful and more important to stop reading Keep reading. Let the book do its job, wake you up and take you out of the old furrows of conditioned and repetitive thinking.
It can be considered that this book, by the way in which it is written, revives in our time the style in which the most remote spiritual teachings were conceived: the sutras of ancient India. Sutras are vigorous indicators of truth in the form of aphorisms or short sentences, with little conceptual elaboration. The Vedas and the Upanishads are the first sacred teachings recorded in sutras, as with the words of the Buddha. The sayings and parables of Jesus, taken from their narrative context, can also be considered as sutras, just like the profound teachings contained in the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese book of the wisdom. The advantage of the sutra style lies in its brevity. It does not involve the thinking mind more than necessary. What the sutra does not say, even though it is pointed out, is more important than what it says. The sutra style used in this book is most evident in Chapter 1 (`` Silence and Stillness ''), which contains the shortest paragraphs. This first chapter contains the essence of the entire book, being able to be everything that some readers need. The other chapters are there for those who need some more indicators.
Like the ancient sutras, the texts contained in this book are sacred, and have emerged from a state of consciousness that we can call stillness. However, unlike the ancient sutras, they do not belong to any religion or spiritual tradition, being immediately accessible to all mankind. In these writings a feeling of urgency is present. The transformation of human consciousness is no longer a luxury, so to speak, available to a few isolated individuals, but an urgent need for humanity to not destroy itself. Currently, both the dysfunction of the old consciousness and the emergence of a new one are accelerating. Paradoxically, things are going better and worse at the same time, although the worsening is more apparent because it produces a lot of "noise."
This book, of course, uses words that when read will make thoughts arise in your mind. But it's not about ordinary thoughts: repetitive, loud, narcissistic, that demand attention. Like true spiritual teachers, like the ancient sutras, the thoughts in this book do not say "look at me, " but "look beyond me." As thoughts have emerged from stillness, they have power: the power to take you to the same stillness from which they emerged. That stillness is also inner peace; and that stillness and that peace are the essence of your Being. It is the inner stillness that will save and transform the world.
CHAPTER ONE
SILENCE AND QUIETUDE
When you lose contact with inner stillness, you lose contact with yourself. When you lose contact with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.
Your innermost sense of yourself, your sense of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. That is the I Am that is deeper than the name and form.
Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The internal space or consciousness in which the words on this page are perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world.
You are that conscience, disguised as a person.
The equivalent of external noise is internal noise. The equivalent of external silence is inner stillness.
When you want there to be silence around you, listen to it. This means that you simply have to realize it. Pay attention. Listening to silence awakens the dimension of stillness within you, because only stillness allows you to be aware of silence.
Notice that at the moment of realizing the silence that surrounds you, you are not thinking. You are aware, but you do not think. When you realize the silence, that state of serene internal alert occurs immediately.
You're present. You have left thousands of years of human collective conditioning.
Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your conscience rest in them. What stillness they manifest, how deeply rooted they are in Being! Let nature teach you stillness.
When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you quiet yourself. You connect with him at a very deep level. You feel attached to anything you perceive in and through stillness. Feeling your unity of yourself with all things is true love.
Silence helps, but it is not necessary to find stillness. Although there is noise, you can tune into the underlying stillness, the space in which the noise arises. That is the inner space of pure consciousness, consciousness itself.
You can realize that consciousness is the background of all your sensory perceptions, of all your mental activity. Being aware of consciousness, inner stillness arises. Any annoying noise can be as useful as silence. How? Leaving your internal resistance to noise and allowing it to be as it is; that acceptance also takes you to the realm of inner peace that is stillness.
When you deeply accept this moment as it is - take the form it takes - you are serene, you are at peace.
Pay attention to the pause: the pause between two thoughts, the brief and silent space between the words of a conversation, between the notes of a piano or a flute, or the short break between inspiration and expiration.
When you pay attention to those pauses, the consciousness of "something" simply becomes consciousness. The pure awareness report dimension arises from within you and replaces the identification with the form.
True intelligence acts silently. It is in the stillness where we find creativity and the solution to problems.
Is stillness just the absence of noise and content? Do not; It is intelligence itself: the underlying consciousness from which every form is born. And how could that be separated from who you are?
From there came the way you think you are, and that is what sustains it.
It is the essence of all galaxies and grass blades; of all flowers, trees, birds, and all other forms.
Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But it is not really a thing, nor is it from this world.
When you look at a tree or a human being from the stillness, who is watching? Something deeper than the person. Consciousness is looking at its creation.
In the Bible it is said that God created the world and saw that it was good. That is what you see when you look without thought, from the stillness.
Do you need more knowledge? Do you think that more information, or faster computers, or more scientific and intellectual analysis will save the world? Isn't wisdom what humanity most needs right now?
But what is wisdom? Where is it located? Wisdom comes when one is able to quiet down. Just look, just listen. Nothing else is needed. Calming, watching and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence that nests within you. Let the stillness direct your words and your actions.
CHAPTER TWO
BEYOND THE THINKING MIND
The human condition: lost in thought.
Most people spend their lives imprisoned in the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow and personalized sense of identity, manufactured by the mind and conditioned by the past.
In you, as in every human being, there is a dimension of consciousness much deeper than thought. It is the very essence of your being. We can call it presence, alert, unconditioned conscience. In the ancient teachings, it is the inner Christ, or your Buddha nature.
Finding that dimension frees you, and frees the world from the suffering that you cause to yourself and others when you only know the "little self" manufactured by the mind, which is the one who directs your life. Love, joy, creative expansion and lasting inner peace can only enter your life through that dimension of unconditioned consciousness.
If you can recognize, even occasionally, that the thoughts that go through your mind are simple thoughts, if you can witness your reactive mental and emotional habits when they occur, then that dimension is already emerging in you as consciousness in the one that thoughts and emotions occur: the timeless internal space where the contents of your life unfold. The stream of thoughts has enormous inertia that can easily drag you. Every thought is meant to be of great importance. He wants to get all your attention. Here is a spiritual exercise that you can practice: don't take your thoughts too seriously.
How easily people get trapped in their conceptual prisons.
The human mind, in its desire to know, understand and control, confuses its opinions and points of view with the truth. He says: that's the way it is. You have to be broader than thinking to realize that your way of interpreting "your life, " or the life or behavior of another person, whatever way you judge a situation, is nothing more than a point of view, a from the many possible perspectives. It is nothing but a chain of thoughts. But reality is a unified totality where all things are intertwined, where nothing exists in and of itself. Thought fragments reality, cuts it into pieces and conceptual fragments.
The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but also very limiting when it completely takes over your life, when you do not realize that it is only a small aspect of the condemnation that you are.
Wisdom is not a product of thought. Knowing deeply, which is wisdom, arises in the simple act of paying full attention to someone or something. The attention is the primary intelligence, the consciousness itself. It dissolves the barriers created by conceptual thinking, which allows us to recognize that nothing exists in and of itself. It unites the perceiver with what is perceived in a unified field of consciousness. Wisdom heals separation. When you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what it is. You do not want to be where you are. Here now.
Dogmas - religious, political, scientific - arise from the mistaken belief that thought can contain and enclose reality or truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cell because it gives them a sense of security, a false sense of "I know."
Nothing has caused humanity more suffering than its dogmas. It is true that each dogma collapses sooner or later, because its falsehood ends up being revealed by reality; however, unless the basic error is seen as it is, the dogma will be replaced by others.
What is the basic error? The identification with the thought.
Spiritual awakening is the awakening of the dream of thought.
The realm of consciousness is much more vast than thought can understand. When you stop believing everything you think, you leave the thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.
The mind exists in a state of "never having enough, " so it always ambitions more. When you identify with the mind, you get bored and easily restless. Boredom means that the mind is hungry for new stimuli, for more food for thought, and that its hunger is not being satisfied.
When you are bored, you can satisfy "mental hunger" by reading a magazine, making a phone call, putting on the TV, surfing the Internet, going shopping or - and this is quite common - by transferring the mental feeling of lack and the need to always want something else, satisfying them briefly by eating more food.
Or you can feel bored and restless, and observe the feeling of being bored and restless. As you become aware of these sensations, some space and stillness around them will begin to emerge. At first there will only be a little, but, as the sensation of internal space grows, boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and meaning. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not.
You discover that being "a boring person" is not your essential identity. Boredom is simply an internal movement of conditioned energy. Nor are you an angry, sad or fearful person. Boredom, anger, sadness or fear are not "yours", they are not personal. They are states of the human mind. They come and go.
Nothing that comes and goes is you.
"I'm bored"; Who knows this?
«I am angry, sad, frightened»; who knows?
You are the knowledge, not the known state.
Prejudices of all kinds imply that you feel identified with the thinking mind. To mean that you no longer see the other human being, but only your own concept of that human being. Reducing the richness of life of another human being to a concept is itself a form of violence. Thought that is not rooted in self-consciousness serves itself and is dysfunctional. Wisdom free of wisdom is extremely dangerous and destructive. It constitutes the usual state of most of humanity. The expansion of thought through scientific and technological means, although not intrinsically good or bad, has become so destructive, because very often the mental process from which it arises does not sink its roots in consciousness.
The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. It is currently our most urgent task. This does not mean stop thinking, but stop identifying completely with thought, stop being possessed by thought.
Feel the energy of your inner body. Mental noise calms and ceases immediately. Feel it in your hands, in your feet, in your abdomen, in your chest. Feel the life you are, the life that animates the body.
Then the body becomes a door, so to speak, made a deeper sense of life that underlies fluctuating emotions and thinking.
There is a wealth of life in you that you can feel with your whole Being, not just with your head. In that presence you don't need to think about, every cell is alive. However, in that state, thought can be activated if it is needed for some practical purpose. The mind can continue to operate, and it operates perfectly when the greater intelligence that you are uses it and expresses itself through it. Perhaps it has gone unnoticed to you that those brief periods in which "you are conscious without thought" already occur naturally and spontaneously in your life. You can be doing some manual activity, or walking around the room, or waiting at the airline desk, and being so completely present that the background mental noise dissipates and is replaced by the conscious presence. You can also be looking at the sky or listening to someone without any internal comment. Your perceptions become crystal clear, they are not clouded by thought.
For the mind, all this is not significant, because it has "more important" things to think about. Besides, it's not memorable, and that's why it's gone unnoticed.
The truth is that it is the most significant thing that can happen to you. It is the beginning of a change from thought to conscious presence.
Feel comfortable in the state of "not knowing." This state takes you beyond the mind, because the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. He is afraid of not knowing. Therefore, when you can feel comfortable in not knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind. From that state a deeper knowledge arises that is non-conceptual.
Artistic creation, sport, dance, teaching, therapy; Mastery in any discipline implies that the thinking mind either no longer participates, or has remained in a discreet background. A power and intelligence greater than you, although in essence they are one with you, they take over. There is no longer a decision-making process; fair action arises spontaneously, and "you" are not doing it. The mastery of life is the opposite of control. You align with the greater consciousness. She acts, talks and does the work. A moment of danger can cause the temporary cessation of the flow of thoughts, allowing you to taste what it means to be present, alert, aware.
The Truth is much more omniabarcante that the mind can ever understand. No thought can enclose and contain the Truth. In the best case, you can indicate it. For example you can say: "All things are intrinsically one." That is an indication, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deeply within yourself the truth towards which they point.
CHAPTER THREE
THE SEPARATE ME
The mind seeks food incessantly, and not just for thought; He is looking for food for his identity, for his sense of self. This is how the ego (the separated self) comes into existence and continuously recreates itself.
When you think or talk about yourself, when you say yo, you usually refer to yo and my story . This is the yo of what you like and what you dislike, of your fears and desires, the yo that you are never satisfied for a long time. It is a sense of who you are created by the mind, conditioned by the past and trying to find its realization in the future.
Can you see that this yo is temporary, that a temporary formation, like a wave that runs along the surface of the water?
Who sees that this is so? Who is aware that your physical and psychological forms are temporary? I am. This is the deep yo that has nothing to do with the past and the future.
What will remain of all the fears and desires associated with your problematic existential situation that consume most of your attention every day? A script several centimeters long on the date of your birth and the date of your death inscribed on your lipid.
For the ego, this is a depressing thought. For you it is liberating.
When each thought absorbs your attention completely it means that you identify with the voice that sounds in your head. Then thoughts are invested with a sense of me. This is the ego, the yo created by the mind. This self-made mind feels incomplete and precarious. That is why fear and desire are their predominant emotions and motivating forces.
When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and that never stops talking, you are coming out of the unconscious identification with the current of thoughts.
When you notice that voice, you realize that you are not the voice the thinker, but who is aware of it.
Freedom lies in knowing yourself as the consciousness behind the voice.
The ego is always looking. Seek to add something more of this or that to complete.
This explains his compulsive concern for the future.
When you realize that you are living "for the next moment", you have already left the mental pattern of the ego, which gives rise to the possibility of choosing to pay full attention to this moment.
Paying your full attention to this moment, an intelligence far greater than the intelligence of the egotic mind enters your life.
When you live through the ego, you always reduce the present moment to a means to an end. You live for the future, and when you achieve your goals, they don't satisfy you, or at least not for long.
When you pay more attention to what you do than to the future result you want to achieve with it you break the old conditioning of the ego.
So your doing is not only much more effective, but infinitely more cheerful and satisfying.
Almost every ego contains some element of what we might call "victim identity." The image of victims that some people have of themselves is so strong that it becomes the core of their ego. Resentment and grievances are an essential part of your sense of self.
Although your grievances are completely "justified, " you have built a victim identity that looks a lot like a prison whose bars are made in mental ways. Look at what you are doing to yourself or, rather, what your mind is doing to you. Feel your emotional attachment to your victim story and realize the compulsive tendency to think or talk about it. Stay present as a witness to your internal state. You do not have to do anything. With consciousness come transformation and freedom.
The favorite mental habits of the ego, the ones that strengthen it, are the complaint and the reactivity. A good part of the emotional-mental activity of many people consists in complaining or reacting against this or that. This causes others, or the situation, to be "wrong, " while you "are right." Being right you feel superior, and feeling superior strengthens your sense of self. In reality you are only strengthening the illusion of the ego.
Can you observe these habits within yourself and recognize your whining inner voice for what it is? The sense of the ego characteristic of the ego needs conflict because its separate identity is strengthened by fighting against this or that, and by demonstrating that this is "me" and that is not "me."
It is common for tribes, nations and religions to strengthen their sense of collective identity by having enemies. Who would be the "believer" without the "infidel"?
In your dealings with other people, can you detect slight feelings of superiority or inferiority towards them? What you are seeing is the ego, which lives off the comparison.
Envy is a derivative of the ego, which feels diminished when something good happens to another person, or when someone has more, knows more or can do more than you. The identity of the ego depends on the comparison and always wants more. It grabs anything. If all else fails, you can strengthen your fictional sense of self by feeling more mistreated by life or sicker than other people.
What are the stories, the fictions from which you derive your sense of self?
The need to oppose, resist and exclude is incorporated into the structure of the ego itself, as this allows it to maintain the sense of separation on which its survival depends. So "I" go against the "other", "we" against "them." The ego needs to be in conflict with someone or something. That explains why you are looking for peace, joy and love, but you cannot tolerate them for a long time. You say you want happiness, but you are addicted to your unhappiness.
Ultimately, unhappiness does not arise from the circumstances of your life, but from the conditioning of your mind.
Do you harbor feelings of guilt about something you did - or did you stop doing - in the past?
The truth is that you acted according to your level of consciousness, or rather of unconsciousness, of that time. If you had been more alert, if you had been more aware, you would have acted differently.
Guilt is another attempt by the ego to create an identity, a sense of self. The ego does not care that the sense of self is positive or negative. What you did or stopped doing was a manifestation of unconsciousness, of human unconsciousness. The ego, however, personalizes it and says: "I did that, " and thus you create a mental image of yourself as a "bad" person.
Throughout history, human beings have committed countless acts of aggression, cruelty and violence towards their peers, and continue to carry them out. Are they all condemnable? Are they all guilty? Or are these acts expressions of unconsciousness, of an evolutionary stage that we are now leaving behind?
Jesus' words: "Forgive them because they do not know what they are doing" are also applicable to you.
Yes, in order to free you, you set egotistical goals that empower you or make you feel important, even if you get them, you will not feel satisfied.
Set yourself goals, but knowing that reaching them does not matter. When something arises from presence, it means that this moment is not a means to an end: the action is satisfactory by itself at every moment. You no longer reduce the Now to a means to an end, which is what delegate consciousness does.
"When the self disappears, problems disappear, " said the Buddhist teacher when asked to explain the deep meaning of Buddhism.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NOW
When you look superficially, it seems that the present moment is one among many, many moments. Every day of your life seems to be composed of thousands of moments when different things happen. But, if you look deeper, isn't there always a single moment? Is not life always "this moment"?
This moment - the Now - is the only thing you can never escape, the only constant factor in your life. Whatever happens, no matter how much your life changes, there is one sure thing: it is always Now.
And since it is not possible to escape from Now, why not welcome him and make friends with him?
When you become friends with the present moment, you feel at home wherever you are. If you don't feel comfortable in the Now, you will feel uncomfortable wherever you go.
The present moment is as it is. Always. Can you let it be?
The division of life in the past, present and future is the work of the mind and, ultimately, is illusory. Past and future are thought-forms, mental abstractions. The past can only be remembered now. What you remember is an event that took place in the Now, and you remember Now. The future, when it arrives, is a Now. So the only thing that is real, the only thing that comes into existence is the Now. Maintaining attention in the Now does not imply denying the needs of your life. It is about recognizing what is fundamental. That allows you to manage the secondary with great ease. It's not about saying, "I don't take care of things anymore because there is only Now." No. Start by finding what is most important and make Now your friend, not your enemy. Recognize it, honor it. Cuando el Ahora es el fundamento y el núcleo principal de tu vida, ésta se des-pliega con facilidad.
Recoger la vajilla, diseñar una estrategia empresarial, planear un viaje… ¿Qué es más importante, el acto en sí o el resultado que quieres conseguir con ese acto? ¿Este momento o algún momento futuro?
¿Tratas este momento como si fuera un obstáculo por superar? ¿Sientes que lo más importante es llegar a algún momento futuro?
Casi todas las personas viven así la mayor parte del tiempo. Como el futuro nunca llega, excepto como presente, es un estilo de vida disfuncional. Genera una continua corriente subterránea de tensión alteración y descontento. No hace honor a la vida que es Ahora y nunca deja de ser Ahora.
Siente la vida dentro de tu cuerpo. Eso te ancla en el Ahora.
No te responsabilizas definitivamente de la vida hasta que te responsabilizas de este momento, del Ahora. Esto se debe a que en el Ahora es en el único lugar donde se halla la vida.
Responsabilizarse de este momento significa no oponerse internamente a la «cualidad» del Ahora, no discutir con lo que es. Significa estar alineado con la vida.
El Ahora es como es porque no puede ser de otra manera. Ahora los físicos confirman lo que los budistas han sabido siempre: no hay cosas ni sucesos aislados. Por debajo de las apariencias superficiales, todas las cosas están interconectadas, son parte de la totalidad del cosmos que ha producido la forma que toma este momento.
Cuando dices «sí» a lo que es, te alineas con el poder y la inteligencia de la Vida misma. Sólo entonces puedes convertirte en un agente del cambio positivo en el mundo.
Una práctica espiritual simple pero radical es aceptar lo que surja en el Ahora, dentro y fuera.
Cuando tu atención te traslada al Ahora, estás alerta. Es como si despertases de un sueño: el sueño del pensamiento, el sueño del pasado y del futuro. Hay claridad, simplicidad. No queda sitio para fabricarse problemas. Simplemente este momento es como es.
En cuanto entras con tu atención en el Ahora, te das cuenta de que la vida es sagrada. Cuando estás presente, hay una sacralidad en todo lo que percibes. Cuanto más vivas en el Ahora, más sentirás la simple pero profunda alegría de Ser, y la santidad de toda vida. La mayoría de la gente confunde el Ahora con lo que ocurre en el Ahora, pero son dos cosas distintas. El Ahora es más profundo que lo que ocurre en él. Es el espacio en el que ocurren las cosas.
Por tanto, no confundas el contenido de este momento con el Ahora. El Ahora es más profundo que cualquier contenido que surja en él.
Cuando entras en el Ahora, sales del contenido de tu mente. La corriente incesante de pensamientos se apacigua. Los pensamientos dejan de absorber toda tu atención, ya no te ocupan completamente. Surgen pausas entre pensamientos, espacio, quietud. Empiezas a darte cuenta de que eres mucho más profundo y vasto que tus pensamientos.
Pensamientos, emociones, percepciones sensoriales y experiencias constituyen el contenido de tu vida. «Mí vida» es de lo que derivas tu sentido del yo; «mi vida» son los contenidos, o al menos eso crees.
Pasas por alto continuamente el hecho más evidente: tu sentido más interno Yo Soy no tiene nada que ver con lo que ocurre en tu vida, nada que ver con los contenidos. Este sentido del Yo Soy es uno con el Ahora. Siempre permanece igual. En la infancia en la vejez, en la salud o en la enfermedad, en el éxito y el fracaso, el Yo Soy —el espacio del Ahora- permanece inmutable al nivel más profundo. Habitualmente se confunde con el contenido, y por eso sólo experimentas el Yo Soy o el Ahora levemente, indirectamente, a través de los contenidos de tu vida. En otras palabras: tu sentido de Ser queda oscurecido por las circunstancias, por la corriente de pensamientos y por todas las cosas de este mundo. El Ahora queda oscurecido por el tiempo.
Y así olvidas que estás enraizado en el Ser, en tu realidad divina, y te pierdes en el mundo. Confusión, ira, depresión, violencia y conflicto afloran cuando los seres humanos olvidan quiénes son.
Sin embargo, qué fácil es recordar la verdad y volver a casa: Yo no soy mis pensamientos, emociones, percepciones sensorias y experiencias. Yo no soy el contenido de mí vida. Yo soy Vida. Yo soy el espacio en el que ocurren todas las cosas. Yo soy conciencia. Yo soy el Ahora. I am.
CAPITULO CINCO
TU VERDADERO SER
El Ahora es inseparable de quien eres en el nivel más profundo.
Hay muchas cosas importantes en tu vida, pero sólo una importa absolutamente.
Importa que tengas éxito o fracases a los ojos del mundo. Importa si tienes o no tienes salud, si has recibido o no una buena educación. Importa si eres rico o pobre; ciertamente, establece una diferencia en tu vida. Sí, todas estas cosas tienen importancia, una importancia relativa, pero no tienen una importancia absoluta.
Hay algo más importante que cualquiera de estas cosas: encontrar tu ser esencial más allá de esa entidad efímera, del efímero yo personal.
No encontrarás la paz reordenando las circunstancias de tu vida, sino dándote cuenta de quién eres al nivel más profundo.
La reencarnación no te ayudará si en la próxima encarnación sigues sin saber quién eres.
Todas las desgracias del planeta surgen del sentido personalizado del «yo» o del «nosotros», que recubre la esencia de tu ser. Cuando no eres consciente de la esencia interna, siempre acabas sintiéndote desgraciado. It's that easy. Cuando no sabes quién eres, te fabricas mentalmente un yo que sustituye tu hermoso ser divino, y te apegas a ese yo temeroso y necesitado. Entonces la protección y potenciación de ese falso sentido del yo se convierte en tu principal fuerza motivadora.
Muchas expresiones usadas habitualmente, ya veces la propia estructura del lenguaje, revelan que las personas no saben quiénes son. Por ejemplo, dices: «Él ha perdido su vida», o hablas de «mi vida», como si la vida fuera algo que pudieras poseer o perder. Lo cierto es que no tienes una vida; eres una vida. La Vida Una, la conciencia que interpenetra todo el universo y toma forma temporalmente para experimentarse como piedra o como hoja de hierba, como un animal, una persona, una estrella o una galaxia.
¿Puedes sentir en lo profundo de ti que ya sabes eso? ¿Puedes sentir que ya eres Eso?
Necesitas tiempo para la mayoría de las cosas de la vida: para adquirir nuevas aptitudes, para construir una casa, para especializarte en alguna disciplina, para prepararte una taza de té… Sin embargo, el tiempo es inútil para la cosa más esencial de la vida, para la única cosa que importa; la autorrealización, que significa saber quién eres más allá del yo superficial; más allá de tu nombre, de tu forma física tu historia personal, de tus historias.
No puedes encontrarte a ti mismo en el pasado o en el futuro. El único lugar donde puedes encontrarte es en el Ahora.
Los buscadores espirituales buscan la autorrealización o la iluminación en el futuro. Ser un buscador implica necesitar un futuro. Si lo crees así, entonces esto se vuelve verdad para ti: necesitarás tiempo para que llegues a darte cuenta de que no necesitas tiempo para ser quien eres.
Cuando miras un árbol, eres consciente del árbol. Cuando tienes un pensamiento o sentimiento, eres consciente de ese pensamiento o sentimiento. Cuando tienes una experiencia placentera o dolorosa, eres consciente de esa experiencia.
Estas declaraciones parecen ciertas y evidentes; sin embargo, si las examinas de cerca descubrirás que, sutilmente, su propia estructura contiene una ilusión fundamental, una ilusión inevitable cuando se usa el lenguaje. Pensamiento y lenguaje crean una aparente dualidad y una persona separada donde no la hay. Lo cierto es: tú no eres alguien que es consciente del árbol, del pensamiento, del sentimiento o de la experiencia. Tú eres la conciencia en la que -y por la que- esas cosas aparecen.
Mientras vives tu vida, ¿puedes ser consciente de ti mismo como la conciencia en la que se despliega todo el contenido de tu vida?
Dices: «Yo quiero conocerme a mí mismo.» Tú eres el «yo». Tú eres el Conocimiento. Tú eres la conciencia por la que todo es conocido. Y eso no puede conocerse a sí mismo; eso es sí mismo.
No hay nada que saber más allá de esto, y sin embargo todo conocimiento surge de ello. El «yo» no puede convertirse en un objeto de conocimiento, de conciencia.
De modo que no puedes convertirte en un objeto para ti mismo. Por eso mismo ha surgido la ilusión de la identidad egótica, porque mentalmente has hecho de ti mismo un objeto. «Eso soy yo», dices. Y empiezas a tener una relación contigo mismo, y te cuentas tu historia a ti mismo ya los demás.
Conociéndote como la conciencia en la que ocurre la existencia fenoménica, te liberas de la dependencia de los fenómenos, te liberas de la búsqueda del yo en situaciones, lugares y estados. En otras palabras: lo que ocurre o deja de ocurrir ya no es tan importante. Las situaciones pierden su gravedad, su seriedad. Un ánimo juguetón entra en tu vida. Reconoces que este mundo es una danza cósmica, la danza de la forma, ni más ni menos.
Cuando sabes verdaderamente quién eres, vives en una vibrante y permanente sensación de paz. Puedes llamarla alegría, porque la alegría es eso: una paz vibrante de vida. Es la alegría de conocerte a ti mismo como la esencia de vida antes de tomar forma. Eso es la alegría de Ser, de ser quien realmente eres.
Así como el agua puede ser sólida, líquida o gaseosa, la conciencia puede estar «congelada» y tomar la forma, de la materia física; puede ser «líquida», tomando la forma de la mente y del pensamiento, o puede ser informe, como la conciencia pura.
La conciencia pura es la Vida antes de manifestarse, y esa Vida mira al mundo de la forma a través de «tus» ojos, porque esa conciencia es quien tú eres. Cuando te conoces como Eso, te reconoces en todas las cosas. Es un estado de completa claridad de percepción. Ya no eres más una entidad con un gravoso pasado, convertida en una pantalla de conceptos que interpreta cada experiencia.
Cuando percibes sin interpretaci n, puedes sentir qu es lo que se percibe. Lo m ximo que podemos expresar con el lenguaje es que existe un campo de quietud consciente en el que ocurre la percepci n.
A trav s de ti, la conciencia informe se hace consciente de s misma. Las vidas de la mayor a de la gente est n dirigidas por el deseo y el miedo.
El deseo es la necesidad de a adirte algo para poder ser t mismo m s plenamente. Todo miedo es el miedo de perder algo y, por tanto, de sentirte reducido y de ser menos de lo que eres.
Estos dos movimientos oscurecen el hecho de que el Ser no puede ser dado ni quitado. El Ser ya est en ti en toda su plenitud, Ahora.
EL SILENCIO HABLA
Eckhart Tolle
Parte 2-2
CAPITULO SEIS
ACEPTACION Y RENDICION
Cuando puedas, echa una mirada a tu interior para ver si est s creando conflicto inconscientemente entre lo interno y lo externo, entre las circunstancias externas del momento d nde est s, con qui ny lo que est s haciendo y tus pensamientos y sentimientos. Can you feel how painful it is to internally oppose what it is?
When you recognize this fact, you also realize that you are now free to renounce this useful conflict, the internal state of war.
If you verbalized your reality of the moment, how many times a day would you have to tell yourself: I don't want to be where I am? C mo te sientes cuando no quieres estar donde est s: en el embotellamiento, en tu puesto de trabajo, en la sala de espera del aeropuerto con la gente que te acompa a?
Sin duda es cierto que lo mejor que se puede hacer en ciertos lugares es salir de ellos, ya veces eso es lo m s apropiado. No obstante, en muchos casos, no tienes la opci n de irte. En esas situaciones, el no quiero estar aqu, adem s de in til, es disfuncional. Te hace infeliz y hace infelices a los dem s.
It has been said: wherever you arrive, there you are. In other words: you are here. Always. ¿Es tan duro de aceptar?
Do you really need to mentally label each sensory perception and experience? Do you need to have that reactive relationship of taste or disgust with life, which leads you to be constantly in conflict with people and situations? Or is it just a deeply rooted mental habit that you can break? Without doing anything in particular; simply, letting this moment be as it is.
El «no» habitual y reactivo fortalece el ego. El «sí» lo debilita. Tu identidad en la forma, el ego, no puede sobrevivir a la rendición.
"I have many things to do." Yes, but what is the quality of your work? Driving going to work, talking with clients, working on the computer, running errands, attending to the innumerable things that constitute your life ... To what extent are you total in what you do? ¿Es tu acción una rendición o una re-sistencia? This is what determines the success you get in life, not the amount of effort you put in. The effort implies stress, tension, the need to reach a certain point in the future or to achieve some result.
Can you get to detect inside you the slightest shadow of not wanting to be doing what you are doing? That is a denial of life, and therefore you cannot achieve a truly successful result.
Si has sido capaz de detectar esa negación en ti ¿puedes también dejarlo y ser total en lo que haces?
«Hacer una cosa cada vez»; This is how a Zen master defined the essence of Zen.
Doing one thing at a time means being total in what you do, paying full attention. That is rendered action, powerful action.
Your acceptance of what is takes you to a deeper level, where both your inner state and your sense of self no longer depend on the mind judging them "good" or "bad."
When you say "yes" to life as it is, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel within yourself a deeply peaceful space.
Superficially you can continue to feel happy when it is sunny and less happy when it rains; You can feel happy if you earn a million euros and unhappy if you lose all your possessions. Sin embargo, la felicidad y la infelicidad ya no calan tan hondo. They are waves on the surface of your Being. The background peace within you remains unchanging in whatever external conditions.
The "yes to what it is" reveals a dimension of depth in you that depends neither on the external conditions nor on the internal condition of the constantly fluctuating thoughts and emotions.
La rendición se vuelve mucho más fácil cuando te das cuenta de la naturaleza efímera de todas las experiencias, y de que el mundo no puede darte nada de valor duradero. Then you still meet people, you still have experiences and participate in activities, but without the desires and fears of the ego. That is, you no longer demand that a situation, person, place or event satisfy you or make you happy. You let your nature be temporary and imperfect.
Y el milagro es que, cuando dejas de exigirle lo imposible, cada situación, persona, lugar o suceso se vuelve no sólo satisfactorio, sino también más armo-nioso, más pacífico.
Cuando aceptas este momento completamente, cuando ya no discutes con lo que es, el pensamiento compulsivo mengua y es remplazado por una quietud alerta. You are fully aware, and yet the mind does not label any at this time. Este estado de no-resistencia interna te abre a la conciencia incondicionada, que es infinitamente mayor que la mente humana. Then this vast intelligence can express itself through you and help you, both from within and from outside. Therefore, when you give up internal resistance, you often discover that circumstances change for the better.
Am I saying: «Enjoy this moment. Be happy"? Do not.
Permite que se exprese este momento tal como es. That's enough.
Surrendering is surrendering to this moment, not to a story through which you interpret this moment and then try to resign yourself to it.
For example, you may be crippled and may no longer be able to walk. Your state is what it is.
Tal vez tu mente esté creando una historia que diga: «A esto se ha reducido mi vida. I have finished in a wheelchair. Life has treated me harshly, unfairly. I do not deserve this."
Can you accept that this moment is as it is and not confuse it with the story that the mind has created around it?
Surrender comes when you stop asking; «¿Por qué me está pasando esto a mí?»
Incluso en las situaciones aparentemente más inaceptables y dolorosas se esconde un bien mayor, y cada desastre lleva en su seno la semilla de la gracia.
Throughout history, there have always been women and men who, when faced with great losses, illness, imprisonment or imminent death, accepted the seemingly unacceptable, and thus found "the peace that surpasses all understanding."
La aceptación de lo inaceptable es la mayor fuente de gracia en este mundo.
There are situations in which all answers and explanations fail. Life stops making sense. Or someone who is in a hurry comes to ask for help, and you don't know what to say or what to do.
