“In normal everyday usage, “I” embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego,” writes Eckhart Tolle in his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. “This illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only into the reality of space and time but also into human nature, referred to as “an optical illusion of consciousness.”

When we start our meditation practice, for many of us it’s astonishing to realize that we live with a constant inner dialogue. It’s not that we didn’t notice it before, but that we were unaware of it being there as a separate entity, the ego. This is what Eckhart Tolle calls being spiritually unconscious. Majority of people, when told there is a voice in their head that never stops talking, say, “What voice?” or deny it altogether. They do not recognize that is the voice, is the thinker, is the unobserved mind speaking through them at that very moment. So what does it mean to be awake for the first time? It’s a brief moment we become disidentified from our thoughts and experience a shift in identity from being the content of the mind to being the awareness behind it. It happens in various ways and comes in a number of forms to different people. What follows is an account of Eckhart Tolle’s own experience presented here as an audio and text excerpt. Please enjoy:

THE VOICE IN THE HEAD
by Eckhart Tolle

That first glimpse of awareness came to me when I was a first-year student at the University of London. I would take the tube (subway) twice a week to go to the university library, usually around nine o’clock in the morning, toward the end of the rush hour. One time a woman in her early thirties sat opposite me. I had seen her before a few times on that train. One could not help but notice her. Although the train was full, the seats on either side of her were unoccupied, the reason being, no doubt, that she appeared to be quite insane. She looked extremely tense and talked to herself incessantly in a loud and angry voice.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she was totally unaware, it seemed, of other people or her surroundings. Her head was facing downward and slightly to the left, as if she were addressing someone sitting in the empty seat next to her. Although I don’t remember the precise content, her monologue went something like this: “And then she said to me … so I said to her you are a liar how dare you accuse me of … when you are the one who has always taken advantage of me I trusted you and you betrayed my trust….” There was the angry tone in her voice of someone who has been wronged, who needs to defend her position lest she become annihilated.

As the train approached Tottenham Court Road Station, she stood up and walked toward the door with still no break in the stream of words coming out of her mouth. That was my stop too, so I got off behind her. … My curiosity aroused, I decided to follow her as long as she was walking in the same general direction I had to go in. … Soon we were within sight of the imposing structure of Senate House, a 1930s high-rise, the university’s central administrative building and library. I was shocked. Was it possible that we were going to the same place? Yes, that’s where she was heading. Was she a teacher, a student, an office worker, a librarian? Maybe she was some psychologist’s research project. I never knew the answer. …

I was still thinking about her when I was in the men’s room prior to entering the library. As I was washing my hands, I thought: I hope I don’t end up like her. The man next to me looked briefly in my direction, and I suddenly was shocked when I realized that I hadn’t just thought those words, but mumbled them aloud. “Oh my God, I’m already like her,” I thought. Wasn’t my mind as incessantly active as hers? There were only minor differences between us. The predominant underlying emotion behind her thinking seemed to be anger. In my case, it was mostly anxiety. She thought out loud. I thought — mostly — in my head. If she was mad, then everyone was mad, including myself. There were differences in degree only.

Complement this particular portion of A New Earth, a must-read for any spiritual seeker, with Eckhart Tolle on the true self rooted in being, three mental habits that make us unhappy, what boredom can teach about us who we are and who are not, and three powerful ways to overcome challenges in life.

“The simplest definition of poetry is that it is what poets write,” pointed out Mortimer Adler in his book about the most important life skill that our schools absolutely fail to teach us. “That seems obvious enough, and yet there are those who would dispute the definition.”

Among those who oppose such simplicity, Adler notes, are people who are convinced that poetry is something more inexplicable and hard to define. It is, they say, a “spontaneous overflowing of the personality” which is not strictly limited to the written word but can also be expressed as a physical action, musical sound, or just a feeling. And I, personally, agree that there is something beautiful to such a description. Indeed, one can’t deny that the poet goes deep down inside to reach the mythical “well of creation” from which poems spring into this world.

On the flip side, however, such an approach makes most people believe that they can’t read or comprehend modern poetry. They think it is often obscure and demands too much “work” on their part. While it is true that a good poem can be re-read and thought about for the rest of one’s life, it also doesn’t have to be complicated. We can analyze the poem word by word, study the life of the poet, the historical context, philosophical influences, or we can just read the poem while enjoying the flow of words and the sentiment that it arouses inside of us. This is exactly what Bill Murray does in the video below when — as a thank-you to the people who built Poets House — he reads “I Dwell in Possibility” included in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Please enjoy:

I DWELL IN POSSIBILITY
by Emily Dickinson

I dwell in Possibility —
A fairer House than Prose —
More numerous of Windows —
Superior — for Doors —

Of Chambers as the Cedars —
Impregnable of Eye —
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky —

Of Visitors — the fairest —
For Occupation — This —
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise —

Complement “I Dwell in Possibility,” an indispensable part of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, with the growing collection of deeply stirring poetry readings that include Pablo Neruda’s “I Like for You to Be Still,” Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard,” Gregory Orr’s “This is What Was Bequeathed Us,” and Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man,” and then watch another video about why Bill Murray gets up to recite poetry every year: