Space and time are an illusion

Tolle’s “The Power of Now”

I don’t know if you’re getting anything out of this series of commentaries on Eckhart Tolle’s book.  It seems bit of navel gazing in retrospect, but I started it, and me being me, I’m gonna finish it.  Bear with me.  These are the kind of topics I like to let roam around off leash in my mind when I’m out on a trail run.

Feel free to use these as topics in your next group run – you will be very popular.

“How about that game last night, Chris?”

“Never mind the game, have you ever considered the importance of nothingness?!”

Ahhh… Shall we forge on then?

In previous articles we looked at this concept of only being able to access the infinite or god or your true being when you are truly in the now.  And how being able to access that now makes most of the nasty bits of worry and depression go away because they live in the past or the future.

There is truth to this.  If you find yourself being overwhelmed in some situation sit back and “watch the watcher” or “watch the thinker” to get a third-party view of your emotions.  Why are you felling that?  It takes the sting out emotions and can break a downward spiraling pattern.

Good stuff.

Let’s look a little deeper at why being in the now allows you to access this power and what it means to achieve peace in your present moment by getting into a no-mind state.

What is this non-being?  How do you set aside all that is and focus on nothing?

What is nothing?  That’s a bit of a head scratcher.  If you look at most meditation and meditation-based practices the goal is to clear your mind.  To have no thought.  Why?  Because when you achieve this having no thoughts you gain access.  You shut off your thinking mind and in that quiet space is a portal to something bigger, more elemental, more universal.

Nothing is a portal.

This, coincidental is the hardest part of a meditation practice for most people.  They get the fact that they are supposed to clear their minds of thinking thoughts, but they can’t.  I get it.  I can’t either. My head is full of screaming weasels most of the time.  Unless you are very good at this practice you only get occasional quiet spots and glimpses of the no-mind.

How do you think about nothing?  Well, that’s the whole point, once you start thinking about it, it becomes something and you’re stuck in an endless loop.  You can’t know nothing.  You can only see it in the relief of things that are.  All the somethings in your world only exist to show in relief the nothing.

It is our minds that try to apply a rational definition to the nothing.  Think of it as a room.  What really defines a room?  Is it the walls?  The furniture? No it is the empty space, the nothing.  Our minds will constantly try to define the nothing in terms of something.

You only open this portal when you can become aware of the space – don’t think about it – feel it – meditation is paying attention to the ‘nothing’, the empty space between those thoughts.

Why do you want to do that?

Because, according to Eckhart, becoming aware of the nothing will cause a shift in you – you will become aware of the ‘no-mind’ – this opens a portal to your ‘being’.

Brace yourself…big thought about to drop.

This nothing, is not just the removal of all things.  It is the removal of space and time.

Whoa! Hold on there.  Removal of space and time?  Yup, he says there are two attributes of God and they are infinity and eternity.  Which is cool because both eternity and infinity are concepts that we cannot directly see, but somehow manage understand.

In the same way we come to understand that the removal of space and time leaves us in the now and the no-mind.

I quote:

“Space is the still, infinitely deep realm of the no-mind… The inner equivalent of time is presence, awareness of the eternal ‘now’.”

Eternity is all time or endless time.  Infinity is all space or endless space.  We can access both infinity and eternity within ourselves by focusing on the no-mind or the nothing.  These will lead to an awareness of the infinity and eternity of our ‘being’.

On a slightly macabre note, he also says that death as a portal.  When we die we access the no-mind.

I think I’ll stick with meditation.

Chew on that during your next long run.  Or maybe use it as an excuse for being a no-mind at times.  That’s a good thing.  You’re accessing a portal that leads to eternity, infinity and your true being.

And your running buddies are going to start hiding from you.