“Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behaviour. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.” By Eckhart Tolle
If you are uncomfortable with the use of the word or visual images that come to your mind with the use of “beneath”, then you can either remind yourself, he is talking about the core-YOU, the root-YOU. Or, you can replace it with “above”, because many other authors define what he’s talking about as your higher-self. Tolle, in The New Earth, teaches that we are separate from our thoughts and must become the observer of them, so as to not become tied down by them. He and others suggest that we must remember that thoughts are always in the past or an expression of fear and want about the future. They are not NOW. However, they serve the very important purpose of guiding us back to the NOW. Be aware of your thoughts, but don’t identify yourself by them. You are neither your past, nor your future. You are only you, right NOW. Yesterday, you had different perspectives (thoughts on stuff), and tomorrow, you will have different perspectives (thoughts on stuff), because experience changes everyday. Unless, of course you are in suspense animation or dead, but I have no proof on that.