Seeds of Insight 020 - The Greatest Teacher
Dear You,
Today’s Seed is in honour of all the teachers and teachings, formal and informal - our parents, older siblings, partners and friends; random people who cross our paths; kind people and unkind ones; those who confirm us as well as those who doubt us. For they have served and continue to serve a greater purpose towards our learning about what we are not and waking up to what we really are. Sometimes, we have ears to hear the precious lessors, and sometimes we are not ready yet, but the time eventually comes.
As I was preparing to teach an Introduction to Mindfulness class, I found an old book that I read long time ago - “The Power of Now” by Eckhard Tolle. That’s a simple way in for beginners, I thought.
A friend’s mum first gave it to me in my mid 20s. I remember reading it and not really understanding what it said, but I felt joy arising as I went through the pages. Then I read it once more in my early 30s during a period of depression. Again, I didn’t really understand what it was pointing to, but I felt peace amidst turmoil.
As I opened the pages on Saturday, I realised how many layers there is to it. How elegant and beautifully expressed…How patient for all of us taking our time to hear what it has to say. Fortunately, when someone speaks of the Truth, we may not hear it with our ears, but something in us still recognises it. It is to that Inner Teacher that I bow most deeply today.
“So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energising the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.
When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream - a gap of ‘no mind’. At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
[...]
As you go more deeply into this realm of no mind, you realise the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it.”
With Love,
Iri
Upcoming
Yoga classes this week
Soulful Thursdays @ Studio Soma, Stoke Newington. 7pm, Thursday
Mindfulness
Special offer: free 1:1 mindfulness sessions as part of a case study. Interested? Get in touch.
Seeds of Insight is a weekly Sunday newsletter with no news. It’s your dose of words for the soul. To receive them by email, sign up here.
