Notice Silence!

Inner stillness is consciousness without thought....that becomes the foundation for your home...what you are rooted in...the background to everything that happens. (Eckhart Tolle...maybe not exactly word for word)

Most of us are mentally lost in the dimension of "what happens".  This being lost is a considered a normal state.  We are lost because all we can see is what is going on around us...what events, people, circumstances are coming in to our lives or we are complaining about what is not happening that should be happening..  We see nothing else. That becomes our "life".

Eckhart Tolle in Talk to Your Thoughts, reminds us that there is a dimension beneath this one we are lost in and when we become conscious of that dimension we are free. This dimension is the dimension of silence.

That conscious awareness begins with "noticing."  Notice your thoughts and notice the words you speak to others and yourself.  Notice when your mind starts to get noisy, just as you would notice external noise.

Just by noticing we are becoming present.  We notice noise in the foreground and then we notice the silence in the background. We notice there is a space between thoughts and beneath thoughts...that is where we want to be.

We are present when we slip into the gap between thoughts if only for an instant.  By noticing our mental noise we are  starting to dip into awareness.  then when we notice the silence between the thoughts or words we are in the gap where there is no thought.  Thought can not notice the absence of itself because it is noise. You can't notice silence when you are thinking.  For that moment, at least (of noticing silence) , you are present.

Noticing that there is silence between the words and underneath the words is a clear sign that presence is arising.  Eckhart Tolle

You can notice what your mind is doing because no matter how unconscious you may be, you still have access to a deeper part of you that is awareness.  It is this awareness that notices presence.

We do not need to be lost in thought no matter how urgent our mind tells us those thoughts are.  We can become aware of those sweet moments where there is no thought.

Even if we are carrying around a heavy story of trauma like many of us are...we do not have to get lost in that mental story.  Whatever happened to us...was something that just happened.  It is not us.  We are the awareness that notices how we are using story to build a stronger "me". We are not, nor do we need the story or a stronger me.  What we need is awareness of the still, silent  presence that is us.  We find that whenever we notice silence.

So keep noticing.

All is well

Eckhart Tolle(2017 )Talk to Your Thoughts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yrRHaE_7d4