You can know Being only when the mind is still.

Is Being the same as God? The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. People who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that words, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about.

Neither God nor Being nor any other words can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points.

Incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. It is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity—the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter—beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace—arise from beyond the mind.

Excerpted from The Power of Now © Eckhart Tolle

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