This Still CAN and DOES Happen!

    This powerful true story was told by Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab American poet, editor, songwriter, & novelist, born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. Her story was posted (more than once) by Joel & Michelle Levey (WisdomAtWork.com), a well-known American Buddhist couple of Jewish heritage. 
    Enjoy:

Gate A-4
by Naomi Shihab Nye

    "Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement: 'If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.'

    Well -- one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

    An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. 'Help,' said the flight service person. 'Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.'

    I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. 'Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?' The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, 'No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let's call him.'

    We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her -- Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

    She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag -- and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

    To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

    And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend--by now we were holding hands--had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

    And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped -- seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

    This can still happen anywhere.  Not everything is lost."

 

     A decade or so ago, a young woman in one of my (then in-person) mindfulness classes shared a true story about her young daughter. 
    Once when the little girl was very upset, she had told her to be a big girl, behave etc. The little girl admonished her that that didn't help at all. "When I'm upset, I need you to hug me, tell me you love me, and bring me my teddy bear." So, the next time her daughter became upset, Mom did exactly as asked, and both of them were quickly soothed & happy.

 

    “In love it often feels as if we’re glimpsing the hidden architecture of the world …” 
Pico Iyer. “Aflame. Learning from Silence.” Riverhead Books, 2025.

    In the above quote, the author might be comfortable exchanging ‘architecture’ with ‘force,' 'energy' or 'lifeblood’. 
    And 'love' is not only romantic, but perhaps even more applicable in the love one feels for everyone & everything, like heat radiating out of one's chest. Loving Kindness Meditation is a superb practice to help gradually melt the protective shield around one's heart. http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/12/deeper-dimensions-of-acceptance.html .
    Gradually, our heart & mind become less-and-less dominated by fear, and more-and-more guided by unconditional love. 

 

"The Divine is not high above us. 
It is in heaven, it is in earth,
it is inside of each of us.”
Morihei Ueshiba Sensei, 
"The Art of Peace"

 

"Active Hope" - Joanna Macy

I Am

         Within 18 months, even after major life changing events such as a major accident causing permanent disability or winning millions in a lottery, people tend to return to their individual baseline level of happiness. This is referred to as hedonic treadmill or adaptation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill The topic is further complicated when we consider locus of control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control and openness to experience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience

    These Western psychological concepts likely overlap somewhat with one's level of spiritual maturity. I have no idea if & how spiritual maturity could be assessed, except perhaps by someone with an exceptionally high level themself and has integrated this as completely as possible into their day-to-day life ie consistently 'walks the talk.'

    NOW as individuals, as a human race, and perhaps as the entire cosmos, we are ALL in the process of evolving spiritually and integrating this higher state of being into our day-to-day, moment-by-moment behavior. We are ALL starting to experience peace, unconditional love & joy that is independent of external conditions. 

    “By shifting our attention from the fluctuating nature of experiences ("I am this" or "I am that") to the simple, ever-present sense of "I am", we recognize the foundational being-ness that underlies them. As this recognition deepens, being-ness imbues all experiences, revealing a ground of peace that transcends understanding.” Amoda Maa

    Let us continuously remember who we truly are, our true nature, our authentic Self.

Amoda Maa "Recognizing the 'I Am' That is Always Present"

Unconditional Love

     Most of us underestimate how DESPERATELY we NEED acceptance, approval, respect - ok LOVE - throughout life. As soon as we're born we cry out for attention, "Look at me! I'm alive & I NEED to belong to & be cared for by this family / tribe!" But conditioning very quickly teaches us to change our cry to, "Look, I am USEFUL to this family / tribe!" This is a shift from rightly seeing ourselves as worthy of unconditional love simply because we're alive to begging for scraps of attention.
    Sadly some, unable to attract even such 'conditional love,' will then pour their energies into attracting negative attention. Being alone, ignored does not seem to be a viable option. 

    "Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all."
    Kristin Neff PhD TedX talk: "The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtZBUSplr4

    But self-compassion can only actually take place by undergoing a fundamental identity shift, from the conditioned small needy lonely self, longing for, & 'looking for love in all the wrong places' (“the story of me”) to who we really, truly are, which is the unconditioned, transpersonal Self (Buddha-nature, “Christ within”, etc) - the very source of unconditional love. This is a massive unburdening AND what any transformative maturation ultimately depends on.

    "According to the saints and mystics, love is the very fabric of what we are; we are fashioned out of its warmth & openness. ... love is the central force that holds our whole life together and allows it to function."
    John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006. 

    Ultimately, the source & central theme of life is Intelligent Unconditional Loving Energy: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=unconditional

    "O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek ... to be loved, as to love ..." Portion of Prayer of St Francis 

Namaste 

Love and Presence

    In this follow-up to last week's introduction to Presence, Eckhart Tolle discusses the critical role of Presence in our relationships:

    “What is the connection between love and Presence? That’s an interesting question. Of course, first of all, we need to look at love and what that is. Love is usually interpreted as being an emotion. And in a conventional sense, love is when you feel a strong attachment to a person, for example another human being that you fall in love with. And that is a very strong emotion, a clinging emotion. There’s nothing wrong with it.
    But when you look at it more closely, you will find, and you may already have discovered that in your own life how quickly that emotion, that love, can actually turn into its opposite, and suddenly turn into hate. In relationships, how quickly the honeymoon, one, two, four years later, there’s the most intense hatred between the same human beings, who had not long before professed eternal love and thought this person is definitely the person who is going to make me happy. So there’s an emotional thing that’s called love that usually does not last that long and can easily turn into its opposite. 

    There’s also something deeper in human beings. There’s something deeper than an emotion, a certain state of being. And that deeper thing, where you recognize something in the other that is not separate from who you are, something that deeply connects you to the other, that is something different.
    How can you love another human being in a way that is deeper than the transient emotion of love? The only way that the deeper state of love can arise, is by being in that state of consciousness that we call Presence. When you are Present with another human being, then you’re not trapped in the judgments of your mind. You’re not imposing labels on that person. You’re able to look at a person in that space of clear Presence when look at a person, and at the same time feel or sense the Presence that you are, which ultimately is the Presence of Consciousness. And at that moment, you look deeply into that person, and you can sense the same Consciousness that gives you life, in the other person. Regardless of the personality of that person which is the conditioning, regardless of the conditioning of their minds, you can sense something in them, that is One with who you are. So you’re only able to do that when you are Present.

    When you are not Present, you’re identified with your mind, and then all you have are concepts about the other person, or emotions, emotional needs and so on, projected onto the other person. 

     Ultimately, true love, beyond emotion, is the recognition of yourself in the other. So ultimately, you recognize the other, essentially as yourself. Not the personality, but the essence of the other as your Self.
    Somebody already talked about that 2,000 years ago, but it was misunderstood. When you are Present, you love the other as yourself. It does not mean you love the other person as much as yourself. It means you love the other person because you recognize the essence of who you are, in the other. Then you love your neighbor as yourself, to quote from what Jesus said. So that does not require you, necessarily, to be in a so-called relationship with that person. You can encounter a person casually in a restaurant, in an elevator, or buying something. And there can be a moment where you connect with another human being and you sense that essential space of Presence between you. You can sense that this Consciousness that is you, is ultimately also the Consciousness that is the essence of the other person, no matter what their personality manifests at that moment. And that’s a deeply satisfying thing actually to feel the Oneness with the other. So whether or not you are in a relationship with that person, doesn’t really matter. Actually it means that you could have that love emanating from you whenever there is an encounter with another human being. And that is true love. 

    Now when you have a relationship with another person, then it is likely that the emotional love is also present. So in addition to that deeper love, which is the recognition of the other as yourself, you will also have the emotional attachment. But as you start living with the person, you notice that the emotional attachment continues to be there, but is not as important as before. The deeper recognition of the other as yourself, really becomes the foundation for your relationship. And that is spiritual.
    So in any relationship, if the relationship is to last & be satisfying, then you need to actually become Present in that relationship. This means get out of the judgments of your mind and the conditioning of your mind, become Present in the relationship. Becoming Present with the other person for example, is being able to interact and look at the other human being, without any kind of mental labeling, just in this clear space of Presence of Awareness. Then this true love arises. And that means the spiritual dimension becomes the foundation for that relationship where you transcend. Something arises that transcends both your personalities.
    The personalities still operate. There may occasionally still be disagreements and so on, on the purely human level, but something else is present in the relationship that transcends all that. And that can only arise through being Present. So Presence is actually a prerequisite for a deep relationship and a deeply satisfying relationship with another human being.
    And until that happens, relationships are very frustrating. And as you might have noticed, for many people, one of their main sources of suffering are their relationships. The very thing that they look to for fulfillment and happiness, so often turns into their main source of suffering. And that is sad. It doesn’t have to be like that. But for it not to be like that, you need to learn to be Present.”
    Eckhart Tolle Video #2 – Love and Presence https://teachings.eckharttolle.com/love-and-presence-power-of-presence-2021/

"To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen 

Love + Presence = Intimacy, Oneness, Co-creation

As we learn to fully inhabit the just now, the just this, over & over again,
until it becomes effortless, we begin to sense that
all of this is somehow just emanating out of us.
Millisecond by millisecond, thrillingly, lovingly,
we are dreaming everything into being.
Our universe appearing & disappearing -
'refreshing' - every fraction of a second,
is the subtle tingly sensation, Ezra Bayda's 'anxious quiver of being,'
we feel throughout our body
whenever we simply relax & stop to notice.
Recognizing this central creative role is
vibrantly energizing & empowering.

We recognize how fleeting life is (anicca), how up & down it is (dukkha), and
how radically our body of flesh (anatta) differs from our authentic Self.

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
Love tells me I am everything.
And between the two my life flows.”
Nisargadatta Maharaj

   The ancient traditional greeting, "Namaste" encapsulates much of the above : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Namaste

 Namaste

Meaning

    Yesterday, during what for me was a pressure-cooker, stressful situation, I experienced a mysterious, wonderful surprise. For mothers, especially grandmothers, this would have been 'no sweat,' but at least some men would empathize with my predicament. I was left to look after my 3 grandchildren: a 19-month old wanting a snack in her high-chair; a 4-year old who wanted to watch 'Paw Patrol' on his iPad (for which I had forgotten the password), BUT who needed an impressive poop in his pants cleaned up; AND I had to walk both of them in a stroller to pick up a 9-year old on a play-date near-by - all within 30 minutes. My initial panic melted into a miraculous 'namaste' connection & wondrous collaboration with the two little ones, resulting in both of them being cared for lovingly, smoothly, effortlessly.
    The joyful connection we shared was a peak spiritual experience for me, and it happened not during a silent meditation retreat, but during what started out as a 'real shit-show.' This direct experience was transformational, affirming the truth of many mystics' sayings, perhaps the most relevant one being, 'Only have no preferences.' 

    We automatically judge everyone (ourselves included) & everything as good or bad. But what if everyone & everything is exactly what we need not just to accept, but something FAR MORE RADICAL, to love & nurture like our beloved grandchildren? Our entire life could be miraculously transformed. It takes a while to de-armor & liberate our heart-mind, BUT THAT is ENTIRELY the meaning of our life!

    Below, David Steindl-Rast, a wise 97-year-young Catholic monk and Zen master, has spent a lifetime skillfully putting experiences like mine above into words: 

    “Whenever Mystery or the Great Mystery is mentioned ... remember that this does not refer to something vague or mystifying, but to something we encounter at every turn, with a minimum of mindfulness. Mystery is a power that affects us and everything there is, yet we cannot grasp it intellectually. We can, however, understand it to the extent to which we interact with it from our heart.

    In everyday speech, we tend to use the words ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ interchangeably. Such careless speaking can lead us to muddled thinking and, in turn, to unfocused doing. Therefore, a more precise use of the terms is important for our orientation.
    Purpose relates to work; meaning, to play. We work in order to achieve a purpose, but playing is meaningful, without aiming at any purpose beyond itself. As soon as work achieves its purpose, it comes to an end; to continue would be meaningless. But play can go on and on; it is meaningful in itself.
    To achieve a well-balanced life, we need to balance purpose and meaning. But we will not reach this goal by jumping back and forth from working to playing. We need to integrate the two – to do our work, whatever it may be, with a playful attitude. Any work that you can perform with full presence and with the intention of serving others will be meaningful and, in this sense, playful and worth doing for its own sake. If, considering all this, we ask for the meaning of life, we find a highly surprising answer: a meaningful life must be a playful life. Hinduism speaks of lila – the Great Mystery playing in us and through us. We have called it the Great Dance.

    Lila is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘play.’ In Hinduism, ‘lila’ refers to the idea that we can ultimately recognize, in all that happens, the Great Mystery at play – the Great Sacred Dance of the universe. Not only for Hindus but for all of us, this image is worth pondering. The meaning of our life, we may discover, is learning to stay in step with the cosmic dance.

    T.S. Eliot speaks of the Now as ‘the still point of the turning world.’ That Now is the moment when the dancer is ‘still and still moving,’ perfectly in step with the cosmic rhythm.

    What ‘this whole show is all about’ – the central Mystery of the Great Dance – is Love.”
    David Steindl-Rast. “You Are Here. Keywords for Life Explorers.” Orbis, 2023. A Meaningful Book!

    A wonderful overview of the above pivotal topic can be found in Chapter 1, "Spirituality as Common Sense" p21-30 in: David Steindl-Rast. “Common Sense Spirituality. The Essential Wisdom of David Steindl-Rast.” Crossroad, 2008.

David Wall via Getty Images

Recipient to Provider

     At first, we're afraid & feel alone in a seemingly hostile world. Newborn babies probably feel this way, but to highly varying degrees, visceral fear & estrangement can weigh heavily for a lifetime. To prevent this, it's absolutely essential for us to be nurtured in safety & unconditional love at the very least in the first few years of life : http://www.johnlovas.com/2021/10/whats-this-all-about.html . We desperately need to have that primal fear, insecurity & isolation loved & hugged out of us! At least one caregiver needs to be dependably safe, holding us, and loving us unconditionally.

    “Not knowing we are loved & lovable makes the heart grow cold. And all the tragedy of human life follows from there."
    John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006. EXCEPTIONAL!

    Gradually, we all need to evolve into becoming dependable sources of nurturing, safety & unconditional love. Without a nurturing recipient phase, the provider phase is at best very challenging, or drastically worse - "and all the tragedy of human life follows from there."

    Some of us mature, grow up, evolve into who we're meant to be - adults who are spiritually fit to welcome babies and the growing numbers of severely traumatized children & adults into the world. Inter-generational trauma is the natural result of spiritually unfit parents.
    I strongly suspect that none of us had philosopher kings & queens, saints or mystics as parents. And no matter how hard we tried to be model parents, probably none of us were always instantly there to pick up our crying babies, comforting them back to sleep. That's the baby's first taste of the frightening fact that external circumstances are NOT completely controllable. 

    The older we get, even the control we did have over our physical life in our prime, progressively starts 'slip-sliding away.' We have 2 choices, age unsuccessfully - OR - successfully.

    “The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-axe. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way.” James Hillman

 

    "Aging is inevitable; becoming wiser with age is not. Researchers, theorists, and clinicians have noted that older adults approach their lives in one of two ways: Either they draw on their strengths & live life to the fullest, or they magnify their weaknesses & restrict their lives to succumb to life's inevitable end.
Rigidity is a tendency to resist change, while flexibility is the ability to adapt to change. The conscious aging theory espouses late life as a period of deeper meaning & personal growth.
    As long as one remains engaged late in life, personality continues to develop. One's sense of self changes as one negotiates the conflicts proposed at each stage (of psychological development). The conflict assigned to 'old age' is that of integrity versus despair." Giblin JC. J Psychosoc Nurs Ment Health Serv 2011; 49(3): 23-6.

    “Spirituality for me means ‘aliveness.’ It comes from the Latin word spiritus, which means 'life' or “life breath.” So, spirituality is our full aliveness — particularly the aliveness to that mystery with which we are confronted in life. As human beings, we are confronted with mystery — that which we cannot grasp. We cannot get it into our grip. But, we can understand it by letting it grasp us.
    That is the longing: to find opportunity to let yourself be gripped & grasped by this great mystery. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a great medieval mystic, says, 'Concepts give us knowledge. What we can grasp gives us knowledge. What grasps us gives us wisdom.'
    Every human being longs for that wisdom — longs to be touched by that mystery. A good example is music. We can’t grasp music. Nobody can grasp music. But, we can understand music. How do we understand music? When it grasps us — when it does something to us. Then we understand. That is a big, pretty accurate image for what it means to be to be in touch with what I call mystery.”
    David Steindl-Rast: Grateful Living in the ‘Double Realm’ – Tami Simon interview
https://www.resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/david-steindl-rast-grateful-living-in-the-double-realm/

 

    The ancient Asian greeting, "Namaste" (the Divine in me, recognizes & honors the Divine in you) intended or said while bowing with palm of hands held together, is beautifully expanded upon:

    “I honor the place in you
     where the entire Universe resides.
     I honor the place
     of love, of light, of truth, of peace.
     I honor the place within you where
     if you are in that place in you,
     and I am in that place in me,
     there is only one of us”         Ram Dass, on the meaning of Namaste

    "What I ultimately encounter in any You, I can also encounter in any tree: Mystery. This happens, as Buber says, ‘through decision & grace.’ Both are necessary: I must decide to open my heart wide for this experience and receive it as a gift. ‘All is grace,’ said St. Augustine, all is Life’s gift. And Life is the story of our adventurous encounters with that ‘Secret,’ of which, so far, we only know from Robert Frost that it ‘sits in the middle & knows,’ while ‘we dance in a ring & suppose.’
    Draw out the line of any relationship into infinity and it will lead to that ‘Secret’ – the Mystery, which we encounter in & through all that exists.

    Even the most jaded hearts “are longing – whether or not they are aware of it – to be liberated from their love of power by the power of love.

    But how can we have reverence for human dignity unless we stand in awe before the Mystery? Human dignity is rooted in Mystery.”
    David Steindl-Rast. “You Are Here. Keywords for Life Explorers.” Orbis, 2023. DEEP & POWERFUL

 

Smiling Nova Scotia, late March 2024

 

Waking up to Being Alive

    Bold title! IF one is more inclined toward the academic / knowledge than deep understanding / direct experience, then one's meditation practice may never start or will tend to gradually diminish! Along with that, the richness of one's life may peak at "ordinary unhappiness."
    This is true EVEN IF one's past includes a long track record of serious meditation practice, including many longish silent meditation retreats, many years of teaching meditation, and great earnestness in seeking ultimate Truth!
    All this is to emphasize the PIVOTAL, PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE of REGULAR WISE MEDITATION PRACTICE. You CANNOT replace PRACTICE with anything else - any amount of reading, thinking, conversation, teaching or writing, any more than you can replace actually skiing by reading, thinking, talking, teaching or writing about it!

    Below is the full transcript of Eckhart Tolle's SUPERB MEDITATION GUIDANCE - savor it slowly & please PRACTICE this rare gift : 

    “Meditation is really all about becoming still, without going to sleep. It’s not so much about becoming still, but being still. Becoming would imply that you have to go somewhere or do something. Being is already here & now.

    And in a sane life, a conscious life, a harmonious life, there needs to be a balance between becoming and being.
    Becoming is doing things, getting things done and so on in this world, dealing with things, creating things, achieving things. And being is about awareness of the present moment, which after all is all you ever have. Whatever you achieve through becoming in the future eventually turns into the present moment.

    So as I speak to you, the meditation, if we even want to call it that, it’s perhaps best to forget about the word, as I speak, be aware of the silence or the stillness between the words. Being aware means just notice that it’s there. It’s very simple.
    So you notice that in addition to the words, there’s another dimension that is easily overlooked, and that’s the dimension of stillness, which we could also call space or spaciousness. So when you notice that there are two, so to speak, two dimensions here, the dimension of words which you hear and which then become thoughts in your head, and the dimension of no-thing, spaciousness.
    And so you just notice, that’s all that’s required, that there is that dimension also present. So you notice it in between words, and even behind the words, so to speak.
    Now when you notice it, what happens inside you? What does it mean to notice the stillness, to be aware of the stillness? (Sense / feel it, without words.)

    It means you have become still inside. It means you’re conscious, but at this moment, you’re not thinking, but you’re alert, present, completely here, but not thinking. So that’s the realization of the dimension of depths within you. 

    And without that realization, your entire life is a surface phenomenon. You run around on the surface of being, never satisfied for long, frustrated, almost aways feeling there’s something important missing in your life. And of course, there is. But you can’t find it on the surface of your life – the horizontal dimension, looking here & there. You have to, not become still, but realize that that dimension of stillness is already in you. And another word to describe it is to say it’s this alert presence that you can sense right now.

    And you may find the mind wanting to come in, from time to time, and say something about it, or even deny it, or say, ‘I don’t understand it,’ or say, ‘What’s the point? I have other problems to worry about. I’ll become still when I have solved all the other problems.’ 

    But why most people experience life as a succession of problems, and ultimately a frustrating experience, is because they haven’t discovered that dimension – the most vital thing or no-thing to discover within yourself. That stillness is also power. It's the Source, not only of yourself, it is the Source of life. And nothing creative can ever come into your life if you’re not connected with that.

    Whenever you feel joy - for moments perhaps - in your daily life, or a moment of loving interaction with another human being or an animal, or when you suddenly see beauty somewhere and you go, ‘Oh!’, now without you necessarily being aware of it, there has arisen a moment of stillness in you, if only three seconds, or perhaps a bit more. And it’s only there that the joy of life arises, or the ability to really connect with another human being.

    Without it, without the stillness, you have only your conceptual mind – thinking, thinking, thinking – and you relate to the world through the conceptual mind – judging, thinking, judging, interpreting continuously, the inner self-talk, the monologue, which may become a dialogue in your head. ‘You’re no good!’ says one voice. The other one says, ‘But I’m trying, I’m trying,’ whatever the voice in your head is doing. And then you try to relate to another human being through that. And before long, concepts come in, judgments come in. So there’s always a sense of insufficiency, of lack, of not enough. There’s always conflict arising when the dimension of stillness is not operating in your life at all, or only very briefly. Yes, it’s good if you can occasionally experience joy and a sense of aliveness and see beauty and a loving feeling towards another human being, not egoic (transactional) love, but goodwill flowing out (spontaneously) towards another human being (ie unconditional love). Yes, it’s wonderful, but if it’s only for brief moments, then yes, at least that keeps you going. But it could be much deeper. It could operate in your life continuously, so that you never lose touch with it.

    But the first step is realizing that it’s there always. It’s already here.
    In the little book, ‘Stillness Speaks’ I wrote, ‘You are never more truly yourself than when you are still.’
    And you might think that’s a strange statement. Most people when they talk about ‘myself,’ talk about their personal history, and their personal problems, and their life situation. When they talk about ‘myself,’ that’s what they refer to. They refer to my relationships, my work situation, my financial situation, my home situation, my health, me and my life. And of course, all that is the case. But, is that who you really are?”
    "Awakening to Stillness: Eckhart Tolle's Path to Conscious Living - Guided Meditation" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjMeG6K9Fdw

    Another excellent way of feeling or sensing into, directly experiencing true Self beyond our worn-out words (narrative-self - "the story of me, myself & I," hurt child, small separate self, personal self, noisy ego, etc) is Helen Hamilton's 30-minute guided Self-Inquiry exercise: https://www.helenhamilton.org/uploads/4/0/0/9/4009977/an_introduction_to_self-inquiry.mp3 

 

 "Awakening to Stillness: Eckhart Tolle's Path to Conscious Living - Guided Meditation"