As we consciously experience - even briefly - un-caused joy, freedom, profound peace, silence & stillness, we start to recognize the validity of our intuitions about, and start sensing & resting in our unconditioned, essence identity - "our original face, before our parents were born." Then we become able to take our form identity (name, age, occupation etc) and associated regrets, fears, anxieties and other neuroses much more lightly.
Those who have experienced this SHIFT describe it as "the greatest thing to happen to you in this lifetime." Below is Eckhart Tolle's wise guidance to help you experience this shift for yourself :
“Just enjoy the flow - the comings and goings, gain & loss, hot & cold.* So these are all forms that arise in your experience, and you experience yourself as a form. You experience yourself as a physical form and as a person. The larger part of who you are, is of course, not visible. Only the physical body is visible. And as you know, there’s more to you than meets the eye – all your inner space, thoughts, feelings, emotions. And even the way in which you experience your body is an inner phenomenon. But even that inner self is still form on that level, consisting of mental activity – thoughts, emotions & perceptions. And that also is subject to, of course, impermanence. The physical body changes. With some people it’s very noticeable. With some people you might have noticed it if you look at a photo of when they were 20 years old, and then look at a photo when they were 40, or you look at a photo when they were 30, and then a photo when they were 50 or 60. Sometimes they are hardly recognizable. The entire shape of their face has changed, not to mention the rest of the body. So all is subject to the fleetingness of things. Form, whether they are inner forms or outer forms, thought forms, sense perceptions, or physical objects - which can only be experienced as sense perceptions, so all external phenomena are really inner phenomena. So you a self, the person who you are for a little while, are subject to change, and eventually also, sooner or later it disappears. One day you’re here, the next day you’re gone.
*((The Buddha taught that pleasure & pain, gain & loss, praise & blame, fame & disrepute {the “eight worldly winds”} are constantly arising and passing away, beyond our control. We suffer when we cling to pleasure, gain, praise, & fame and expect them to be always present.))
Is there anything beyond that? That’s the question that has been asked by spiritual seekers for thousands of years. And of course there is. But just believing that there is a transcendent realm that is not subject to time & decay, well believing in that as an article of faith might serve as a little crutch in your life. It can give you a comforting thought, similar to the thought of ‘there is a God.’ It’s a comforting thought but it does not really help you experience the reality of it. It’s still just a belief, and of course as a belief, you might be wrong.
In ‘The Power of Now’ I used the term ‘form identity’ and ‘essence identity,’ referring to the human being. So you know a lot about your form identity, which changes, and is not going to last. Even if it lasts – if an aspect of your form identity lasts beyond your physical existence, that will also be subject to change as a form, because no forms are permanent. So if there is life after death, you’re not going to be Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so – your personal identity, for the rest of eternity. Of course, all forms are subject to metamorphosis, change & transformation. So who you experience to be on the level of your form identity is temporary. Even if it’s continuous for a while beyond the physical form, that is also temporary. And then it shifts, changes, and dissolves. But as physicists tell us, energy itself remains. It changes form.
There’s an essence to life that is formless, and that can be known, not as an object in your experience, but as the very subject of all experience. And that is who you are in your essence. And who you are in your essence is identical with what the universe is in its essence.
And it is the realization of your essence identity that frees you from unhealthy, compulsive, obsessive attachment to your form identity, and all the things that make up the forms in your life, the objects around you, and so on.
If you don’t know who you are on the essence level, then there is a clinging to the world of form that is unhealthy. And by that I mean it creates suffering. Because if you cling to something, that by its very nature is fleeting, and deep down you know that, there’s suffering even while you still have it, not only when it finally dissolves, decays or leaves you. Even while you still have whatever you are clinging to, there’s already that anxiety and that nervousness in the background.
Form identity, essence identity. Essence identity is not something that arises in your experience because it is the foundation of all experience. I sometimes call it ‘inner space.’ It is known not in a subject-object relationship, but it knows – let’s put it like that – you know it as yourself when the mind subsides for a moment, thought activity ceases, like now, and all that’s left is a sense of presence. It has no content. From the point of view of form or form identity, it is nothing. And yet, undoubtably, there is a presence there, a knowingness – an awareness, not of something – just awareness without the ‘of.’
To use an analogy, let’s say you are a ray of light. And usually, the light shines on things. It shines on something, and you know it, because the light shines on something. If the light doesn’t shine on something, you can’t see it. In order to see light, there needs to be a reflection. So let’s say you are the light. And suddenly you realize your essential nature as light, and not what you thought before; you took yourself to be whatever the light reflects. So it’s a shift in the direction of your attention one could say; instead of going continuously either outward to a sensory experience, or to thought experience – involved in one thought or another – and your attention is drawn into that, and it has a hypnotic quality. Most people are completely hypnotized by their thoughts – ‘in the grip’ of their thoughts, and their attention follows thoughts wherever thoughts go.
And then suddenly, there’s a reversal of attention, like now, this is why we’re here. Then you become aware of yourself, but not as a form. As the very consciousness without which, there would be no experience of any form. And it has no features. That’s why the Buddha sometimes called it ‘Emptiness.’ In other Buddhist traditions, ‘Buddha nature’* is another term. And that of course is essence identity. That is your Buddha nature, or Christ consciousness, whatever you want to call it.
*((Buddha nature refers to the understanding that the natural and true state of the mind, which is pure, undefiled by afflictions, is inherently present in every sentient being, and is eternal and unchanging. It will shine forth … when the nature of mind is recognized for what it is.))
So the greatest realization, the greatest thing to happen to you in this lifetime is the realization that there is this transcendent dimension in the background of your life. And you have it there, at first as glimpses, then sometimes that realization stays for a while. I sometimes describe it as a stillness in the background while your life unfolds in the foreground. And you become aware of more spaces arising in between thoughts, more stillness arising, more presence, more peace.
And then you realize that, essentially, who you are is not what happens in your mind or what happens externally – these do not define who you are in your essence. Losing your job, or getting the great job, or the house or whatever it is, whether you get it, or you lose it - all this is the constant shifting of forms. If you look to that for your real sense of identity, then you’re going to find a lot of trouble in your life. You will be troubled continuously.
But if you realize yourself as that alive stillness, spaciousness, then you can enjoy the world of form. And if you can’t enjoy it – sometimes perhaps you can’t – you can at least tolerate it with a sense of peacefulness in the background, knowing that it’s not going to last. You can accept whatever is right now. It may change in the next moment, or in a year, or in 10 years, but in the meantime, this is what is. Or you can take action to change it. But even then, in the meantime, it is. At some point the situation changes. Either the change is brought about by your action, or it just comes. It’s in the nature of things. But in the meantime, you lived in alignment with the ‘is-ness’ of the present moment.
If you make THIS your spiritual practice - becoming one with the ‘is-ness’ of this moment - then the transcendent dimension, your essence identity, reveals itself as a peace in the background.
So it’s the acceptance of whatever form arises in the present moment. Forms change, a succession of forms arise, and it’s all in the now. And you let go of dysfunctional mind patterns like, ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’ But it is. Of course you can change it. But the change that comes from a state of peace, which is power. So the real powerful change also resides in knowing yourself as the essence that is deeper than whatever arises. And when you accept whatever arises, then that spaciousness opens up inside of you. That is your essence identity. And as that spaciousness or your essence identity opens up, more intelligence becomes accessible to you – let’s say, the you that is the form identity – your conditioned mind, that form, that personal you - more intelligence flows into that form. And whatever that form does, becomes more effective, and is ‘right action,’* to use a Buddhist term. And you don’t take action when it’s futile, when you see it’s pointless.
*((Right Action according to the Buddha includes: 1) do not harm others 2) do not cheat, steal or be dishonest and 3) avoid sexual misconduct and to help others to live a life of similar values.))
Also, as that spacious essence identity opens up, creativity arises, which means your thinking becomes more interesting, more original. You occasionally or quite often have an interesting idea or a way of looking at things, or some insight, or the realization of what it is that you want to do. And it’s no longer the you that is the form identity that is totally ignorant of essence. There is a deeper flow from the depths of who you are, and any action you take reflects that depth – it’s no longer egoic. So if the impulse then comes as some insight out of the stillness, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do. I want to create this organization.’ When it comes from the deeper level, it’s no longer self-serving, it’s not in order to enhance your sense of who are in the eyes of others or your own eyes. Then it will be something that serves the greater good, that is connected with the totality.
So where is your essence identity? It’s here and now. As you become aware of your essential beingness, presence, as thinking subsides and awareness remains, that’s who you are. And suddenly, you are liberated from what otherwise would be an obnoxious person. Because anybody who does not realize their essential identity creates some form of unhappiness for themselves and others, because their sense of who they are is ultimately delusional. And a deluded person creates circumstances, an environment, and a reality that reflects that delusion.
And many people, even if they have never come into contact with any spiritual teaching, have some limited access to their essence identity, without even knowing it. But they experience it as an occasional peace, or joy, or aliveness, or happiness without a cause. And then if you look at the scale of unhappiness, the fewer glimpses you have of the underlying essence of who you are, the more unhappy you get. And not only unhappy, some people also become violent perpetrators. So these are extreme forms of the same delusion. And then they believe that by killing certain people, they will have enhanced their own self, in whatever way they express it.
But glimpses are not enough. We are here because a new shift is happening – a shift of consciousness. And the nature of that shift is that the person’s essence identity or the transcendent dimension arises more fully than before, so that it replaces or dissolves the delusion. And that’s why we sometimes call it ‘waking up’ and ‘spiritual awakening’ not as a one-off high that you then have to think about – ‘Oh, five years ago I had this great high for two days, or an hour, or a week.’ That’s fine if you had it, that’s fine. It’s arising, and then you can invite it into your life.
Instead of trying to remember it, invite it back into your life right now by: aligning yourself with the present moment, accepting what is, becoming friendly with what is - your surroundings, the people who happen to be around you. You stop complaining in your mind or out loud, and the spaciousness opens up. And then, you know who you are, no longer through any kind of mind activity, not through any thought that tells you something about who you are. You know who you are through the direct realization of presence. No longer through any kind of judgment in your mind, good or bad; any kind of comparison, which is otherwise, if you are trapped in your form identity, you have to compare yourself to others. And then you have to figure out who you are in relation to those – better than, not as good as – ‘My body is better than his, not as good as.’ My money, my position, my body, my looks, the way I dress, my family background, whatever, my country. All these things have a certain temporary reality, in the same way that a dream has a temporary reality. And that’s fine. You can acknowledge that.
But it is a wonderful liberation to realize who you are without any thought that says something about yourself. It’s only there that actually you can realize your essence identity, because there is no thinking in it – there’s only awareness - you are that. That’s liberation.
You don’t depend on the ups & downs of whatever happens in your life to tell you who you are. Isn’t that liberating? Or whether you ride on a bus or in a Rolls-Royce, doesn’t make any difference anymore to who you are. Or if you’re in a Rolls-Royce today, and suddenly next week you lose it all and you’re on a bus, do you become unhappy on the bus? Or if you’re on the bicycle are you unhappy because other people are in their big cars? Either you say, ‘I’m not as good as they are’ or you tell yourself another story in your mind that gives you an identity that says, ‘I’m so superior to these people in their big cars, because I’m too spiritual, I don’t need these big cars. Or, ‘They’re all evil. They’re all polluting the planet. And I’m the one who is not evil.’ Whatever story you tell yourself in your mind to give you an identity. And it usually involves comparison and involves putting others down and/or elevating yourself in some way above others, even if it’s in your misery. If you can’t be better than others, you can be more miserable. Oh, that’s great. And somebody then complains about how they have aches and pains in their body, you can say, ‘You have aches and pains? I’ve had aches and pains far worse than yours.’ That can give you an identity too. It’s all pseudo identity. It all consists of something you tell yourself in your head. And people come up with the most absurd stories in their head. And sometimes they do the most absurd things to strengthen that absurd story. Sometimes they become violent to strengthen that absurd story they’re telling themselves in their head. And sometimes, millions of people do it together - they have a collective story. It’s mad.
Who you are is beyond any story. And part of this waking up process – ‘process’ means it’s not continuous. You wake up, you go back into sleep, so to speak, you wake up … And gradually, the wakefulness arises more. And then it’s there and becomes the very foundation of your life. It always has been – consciousness has always been the very foundation of your life, but you didn’t know it. If you don’t know it, it's almost as if you didn’t have it.
That’s why I use the somewhat limited analogy of having $100 million in a secret bank account in Switzerland, but you don’t know it, so you sit there and beg, ‘Can you spare a dime?’ You don’t know the wealth, the richness, ‘the fullness of life’ as Jesus called it.
This is the fullness of life – it is life itself, the realization of life prior to life becoming life forms. You are life, which is synonymous with consciousness.”
Eckhart Tolle, from the online course: "The Eckhart Tolle School of Awakening 2024" eckharttolle.com
“Having never left the house,
you are looking for the way home.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
