I changed the title of this Treasure Trove three times before it felt right.
First try: “Awakened Consciousness”
Nope , too vague.
Second try: “The Awakening of Consciousness - Turning an Elusive Concept into an Attainable Reality”
Nope, too loaded.
Third try: “Awakening Is The Realization of Presence”.
Yes, just right.
Thank-you Eckhart Tolle…so simple and True!
Over fourteen weeks ago we gathered at St. Stephen’s Church and I shared a passage entitled “You are Needed”. And I began with this quote from Pamela Wilson:
“You are required right now. There is an amazing shift in consciousness occurring, and you are needed. Consciousness is silently inviting you into your bigness”
We went on to discuss consciousness and even attempted to define it - which we discovered is not really possible.
“ Consciousness, the traditional word for which is spirit, cannot be known in the normal sense of the word, and seeking it is futile.
Although you cannot know consciousness, you can become conscious of it as yourself. You can sense it directly in any situation, no matter where you are. You can sense it here and now as your very Presence. It is the underlying I Am, the underlying background to every experience, thought, feeling.
Consciousness is the luminous space in which the world arises and subsides. That space is the life that I Am. It is timeless and eternal. Consciousness can also be called:
God
Spirit
Eternal
Source
Formlessness
Space
Stillness
Silence
The Unmanifested
- Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now”
So, though we can never really know consciousness, we can experience our union with it.
We enter into this union every time we experience sacred silence. As Friar Richard Rohr says: “Silence has a life of its own. It is not just that which is around words and underneath images and events. It is a being in itself to which we can relate and become intimately familiar. When we connect with silence as a living, primordial presence, we can then see all other things—and experience them deeply—inside that container. Silence is not just an absence, but a primal presence.”
Now, with only two weeks left in our session, it’s time to bring it all together!
We have talked extensively about presence, the ego, the pain-body, and the practice of Tonglen. We have practiced techniques for welcoming painful emotions, for embracing uncertainty and for viewing everything with a beginners mind. Last week we shared our collective desire to see the emergence of a new or, at least a different earth, and we reflected on Eckhart Tolle’s notion that a new earth is the physical manifestation of a new heaven, which is not a location, but is the emergence of a transformed or awakened state of human consciousness.
And through the sifting of all this rich and informative pointers you you have repeatedly heard me say (and I have heard you say). “Hmmm…it all seems to come down to Presence, doesn’t it?”
So you can only imagine how elated I was when I read Eckhart Tolle’s word’s :
“Awakening is the Realization of Presence”
“The foundation for a new earth is a new heaven - the awakened consciousness. The earth - external reality - is only its outer reflection. The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free. Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free.
That realization is the awakening. Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence.
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
The key to awakening, and thereby ending suffering, is to to unite with Consciousness (or God, Spirit, the Eternal, Source, Formlessness, Space, Stillness, Silence…feel free to substitute with the word you feel the most resonance with). Only then can we dis-identify from our limited sense of “I” and our destructive ego.
And the only way to experience this union is to listen to the silence, that is, to become fully present.
We intuitively feel this union when we are in nature. Nature teaches us how to find our way home, to listen to the silence and remember our union with it.
“Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “Stillness Speaks”
… and so at the risk of sounding unoriginal, the focus of this week’s teachings are simple and profound.
Awakening is the Realization of Presence
Embodiment is the flowing of Presence into all that we do.
On Grace…
“To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent on things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Our Closing Meditation:
I have searched
I have strived
I have surrendered
I have cried.
Seeking answers to my questions
Seeking freedom from my pain
Looking everywhere
Out There
Always looking
Out There
The search is over,
I have found IT.
And wouldn’t you know?
IT was HERE all the time.
How ever did I miss it?
- Patti Wardlaw