Stillness and Presence

Here's some of my favourite extracts from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks: 

Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world. You are that awareness disguised as a person. 

When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning. True intelligence operates silently. 

Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found. Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world. 

There is an aliveness in you that you can feel with your entire Being, not just in the head. Every cell is alive in that presence in which you don't need to think. Yet in that state, it is there. The mind can still operate, and it operates beautifully when the greater intelligence that you are uses it and expresses itself through it. 

Become at ease with the state of 'not knowing'. This takes you beyond mind because the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. It is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be at ease with not knowing, you have already gone beyond mind. A deeper knowledge that is non-conceptual then arises out of that state.