Eckhart Tolle

Tape 5 

(Continuation...)

So, and in the middle of it you can know what it happening.  You're shouting at somebody or you're shouting in your head at yourself.  Or you're shouting at somebody in your head.  What you're going to say to them.  And suddenly you know it, "Oh, There it is."  And that's freedom, the arising of the witnessing presence. 

Scott Kiloby

July 27th

The whole story

Non-dual realization is often considered to be the recognition of emptiness (also called pure awareness, space, formlessness or nothingness).  That emptiness is your true nature in the deepest sense.  The recognition of it is vital to realization.

However, emptiness isn't thevwhole story.  Emptiness can easily turn into a denial of form.  It's a trap.  As necessary as the recognition of emptiness is, emptiness is moving as, and not independent of, every thought, emotion, experience, and state.  This is when the emptiness is seen as totally full.  This is when form and formlessness collapse, when the boundary between them is seen as purely conceptual, and all that is left is life living itself simply, naturally, and compassionately through you.  This is when enlightenment is not about escaping.  It's about seeing that your true nature is "not of this world" which paradoxically allows you to be totally "in this world" in a new way.

Emptiness is the essence of all form. The experience of "nothing arising" is merely a passing, temporary state.  Realization is not about fixating in the idea of emptiness, absence, or "no self" or about maintaining a space free of the happenings of everyday life. 

Non-duality is everyday life.  This book is an invitation first to the recognition of emptiness as the source and then to the seeing that this source is appearing as everything. This is life, vitally full, alive, loving, and free.

Michael Brown

PART V: QUESTIONS ASKED AFTER COMPLETING THE PRESENCE PROCESS

1. A friend is struggling with their life experience, how do we  persuade them to do The Presence Process?

We don't.

Unless someone says, "Please help me", all our attempts are interference. If we pick someone up and carry them out of sympathy and concern, when the time comes for us to put them down, and this moment always comes, their feet land in the exact spot from where we picked them up. It is natural to comfort someone in distress, which is one of the reasons why we are together in this world, but when the time comes to take the actions necessary to move out of our uncomfortable experience, our own footprints must blaze the trail. No one can carry us. None are excluded from this arrangement.

Chapter 84

Your Goal Is Your Guru

Q:  We are told that total surrender to the Guru is enough, that the Guru will do the rest.

M:  Of course, when there is total surrender, complete relinquishment of all concern with one's past, present and future, with one's physical and spiritual security and standing, a new life dawns, full of love and beauty; then the Guru is not important, for the disciple has broken the shell of self-defense.  Complete self-surrender by itself is liberation.