Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

A lot of people seem to want to escape any really deep involvement in the material reality of the world.

They want to be what they describe as more “spiritual.”

But to be truly spiritual is to be profoundly, deeply involved in this material realm.

If we think of spirituality as something other than life as we are living it, we have what’s known as a dualistic viewpoint.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

The ability to truly listen to another person arises out of stillness.

Unless we are inwardly still, we simply have too much going on in our thoughts and emotions to allow the other to enter into our world.

Real listening isn’t first and foremost about paying attention to the words someone uses.

When we talk about discovering who we are, it’s crucial to add that in speaking of finding and being our true self, we're not talking the language of pop culture.

Expressions such as “true self,” "be yourself,” and “be who you are” have nothing in common with the code words of the “me” generation—you know, “I gotta be me.”

To be true to ourselves is an act of self-affirmation. This is not only very different from selfishness, it’s the opposite of selfishness.

Our is an era when to be polarized is the "in" thing, with nation after nation split just about down the middle on issue after issue.

You may be experiencing the discomfort brought about by this polarization in the lunch room where you work, at family gatherings, or even in social or religious groups to which you belong.

People who aren't present resonate with being polarized because it's a way for them to feel they actually exist.

If you don't know your true self, then what do you base your identity on?

There is a YouTube clip on Dr. Mercola’s website this week that will just make you smile. It’s quite simple: person after person, all ages and types, says “I love you.”

What’s so wonderful about this uplifting YouTube piece is that it points to something at the heart of all humans—the longing to love and be loved.

There is something that all of us seek, and that's to be fully actualized.

Look closely enough and you'll see that this is behind everything we do. It's the underlying driving force of life itself.

We are talking about our essential being coming into its own, whereby we can actually be who we are in our heart of hearts.

As we go about our daily tasks, we may not be aware that what we truly long for is the full realization of who we intrinsically are. For most humans this is something that's in the background, unnoticed.

In the movie Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert is portrayed as someone who has a tendency to distance herself from real intimacy in a romantic relationship because she’s afraid she will dive in so deeply that she all but disappears.

It’s a tendency many of us have in common with her.

Why do we want intimacy so badly, yet back away from it when it becomes available—especially if it gets intense?

A United States Federal judge has overturned the state of California’s ban on same-sex marriages, a ban that was voter approved in 2008.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared, “For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves.”

Have you ever really plunged into emptiness? I’m talking about the emptiness that so many of us feel within ourselves.

Of course, most of us run from feeling this emptiness by keeping ourselves busy, staying on the move, playing the radio or some other source of sound, talking incessantly, reading and in countless other ways avoiding ever really taking the plunge.

We don’t want to plunge into the emptiness within because whenever we even get a whiff of it, it feels bottomless.

When we come into the world, we know nothing of ourselves as individuals. Equally, we know nothing of others as individuals.

We just are, with no concept of ourselves or others as separate people.

At this stage, there’s just awareness, with a complete absence of thought and the concepts that will later develop.

We have emerged out of an ocean of oneness.