“Okay, students,” the Zen Master said. “Today I have another quiz for you. What is the closest thing to you at this time?”

“This desk,” said Tonga.

“This pen,” said Baton.

“The ring I am wearing,” said Leela.

“No, none of you are correct,” responded the Master.

“Hmmm,” said Leela. “Could it be our hands and feet?”

“Very good, Leela,” said the Master. “You are getting close.”

“Master, there is nothing closer to us than our hands and feet,” said Bizah.

“Oh?” questioned the Master. “Close your eyes and sit in stillness now.”

Five, ten, then fifteen minutes passed.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

When you find you are aware of your world, but your mind is free of thought, you begin to appreciate each and every aspect of your everyday environment.

We’re not just talking about appreciating nature with all its wonders. We’re talking about what has been called the “whole shebang.”

Everything that’s part of your environment comes alive—the table you sit at, the chair you sit on, the pen you write with.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Little children are capable of great stillness. Though we think of them as noisy and highly active, all of this boisterousness springs from a backdrop of stillness.

Pretty soon, though, as children grow they no longer take time to just sit, ponder, and be. They learn to be anxious in the way adults are. That’s when troublesome behavior tends to arise.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

There are individuals who can be extremely difficult to get along with. It’s as if they live to be awkward, find fault, or pick a fight.

How do you handle someone who is so difficult that it’s taxing just to be in their presence?

It really doesn’t matter that the individual is hard to get along with, as long as we don’t take up a position of resistance to them.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

There are individuals who can be extremely difficult to get along with. It’s as if they live to be awkward, find fault, or pick a fight.

How do you handle someone who is so difficult that it’s taxing just to be in their presence?

It really doesn’t matter that the individual is hard to get along with, as long as we don’t take up a position of resistance to them.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

You’re in a conversation with someone, when someone else walks up and begins talking to them.

Suddenly this secondary conversation takes center stage and it’s as if what you were talking about had no relevance.

The new individual on the scene may even walk away with the person you were talking with, as if you never existed.

Since situations like this occur regularly in many people’s lives, there are two aspects worth considering.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Do you ever think of yourself as sacred?

A lot of people seem to think of themselves as fairly pathetic. They may cover this up with ego, projecting a positive image of themselves, but underneath they feel insecure and inadequate.

And that's just the problem: human beings have a tendency to think of themselves. It’s a trait that seems unique to our species, not replicated in the animal world.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

So many people say that they have difficulty maintaining a state of presence throughout their day.

People find that they go in and out of presence—often more out than in. They wonder how they can enter into a continuous state of stillness.

Eckhart Tolle writes in Stillness Speaks:

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Sometimes when individuals have engaged in Michael Brown’s The Presence Process, they are surprised to discover that although their awareness of what’s actually going on inside them has increased greatly, they are still experiencing emotional ups and down.

The Presence Process alerts us to how emotionally reactive we are and shows us the source of this reactivity, but it doesn’t automatically end all reactivity.

Daily Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

They joke that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness. But actually, talking to ourselves is something pretty much everyone does until they become aware that they are having a conversation in their head.

A news report out of Yorkshire, northern England, spotlights the Lion Inn, a pub and restaurant that offers accommodation high on the North Yorkshire Moors where seven people were snowed in for the past eight days.