The true Self is the stillness within – the Absolute - the underlying awareness that is open to everything and everyone. Any thoughts that arise cannot touch this; it cannot be harmed or changed. Seeing through the illusion of your Self by gradually dropping your attachment to thoughts will expose all your desires, fears and anxieties as irrelevant background noise, causing ripples through an otherwise still and silent void and the difficulties of the human condition will begin to fall away.
No one can show you the truth. The truth is not yours to embrace or mine to offer. I have found that it is truth that embraces all. The wave does not manifest the ocean – the ocean manifests the wave, and as both wave and ocean are one body, so too are all apparent forms but one truth.
This Truth has many names, Lao Tzu called it ‘the Tao’, Buddha called it ‘Emptiness’, Jesus called it ‘The Kingdom of God’ and said it is within you, and many contemporary spiritual masters call it ‘Pure Conscious Awareness’ or ‘Divine Presence’ or simply ‘Consciousness’.
Of course, these are all just words and as such can only point to the truth – the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. The animating force flowing through us is impossible to define, this pure conscious awareness is impossible to know because it lies outside conceptual understanding, not only pointing beyond the material world but also giving rise to the material world. It is the eternal subject and we are the objects perceived in its light.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats. (Eckhart Tolle)
