How to free oneself from the constantly babbling thinking mind? How to refrain from drifting off into the stream of plans, projects, regrets, complaints, and defensive rationalization? How to achieve stillness, emptiness, awareness? Non-judgment with wide open senses? I find it so hard i feel like i'm at the foot of a sky-high mountain whose summit is in the clouds and which i'm supposed to climb.
A little help comes from a picture i discovered many years ago in a German introductory book to Buddhism by Verena Reichle. It's actually quite similar to the ocean-wave-kind of image: it shows the egos as the tips of triangles rising out of nothingness; where the triangles meet begins the collective unconscious, which merges into the universal Self. The path to freedom is downwards, away from the individual, separate me and into the unthinking stillness. So as i walk to my workplace in the morning, i try to train myself to slowly sink into the pure background stillness within me while at the same time taking in as many sense perceptions as possible. It usually works for a few minutes, and then a thought or label or judgment comes creeping in and the mind takes over again ... .

(Illustration from: Verena Reichle, Die Grundgedanken des Buddhismus, Frankfurt 1994)

At the moment it's definitely very hard to keep this exercise going on a daily basis. But i'll keep trying.
How can i teach awakening? By awakening myself, of course. By remaining calm when things happen around me which are different from what i expect them to be. By not expecting things to be a certain way at all. By just noticing them.
It's so easy to state this and so darn hard to put into practice (for me, that is).
Do not judge! Do not judge! Do not judge! Do not judge!
Be yourself, become yourself, be true, be transparent, become the flute for the breath of Awareness and let it play the tune of Stillness.

(Illustration: 'Integral Man' by Daroy Lin)

Last night at dusk, as i took out the green waste, i stopped on my way back because the air was so gentle and fresh. As i looked up, i noticed something truly beautiful: a long row of white clouds slowly crossing the darkening sky like a herd of giant grazing sheep or a school of silent whales following each other in serene imperturbability. I sat down on the bench beside the front door and watched the scene for a while, becoming incredibly calm  and emptying myself  of past and future. I felt totally connected to those water vapour beings above my home, travelling along in the vastness of our common world. They were in me and i was in them. It was a magical moment, and when i stood up again i felt peaceful and refreshed. A simple but precious experience ... .

Today i discovered a simple way of staying present and preventing thoughts from filling up a state of still awareness: While walking home i not just looked at, listened to, smelled and felt my surroundings, but i started to continuously verbalise my sense perceptions, as if describing them to a remote telepathic friend. "Now i look at a green field with a few yellow flowers ... now i listen to a large plane passing in the distance ... now i feel a cool breeze coming from the left ... now i look at the pavement composed of red-brown rectangular stones ..." Although this method comes close to the 'labelling' discouraged by Eckhart Tolle, it helps me to remain focussed and creates a wall of present-related words which keep out poisonous thoughts about past and future. I hope that in due course this verbalisation will be replaced by emptiness, i.e. a vacuum of pure awareness fulfilling the same function without labelling.

(picture: 'Cosmic Leaf' by Diana Calvario)

Never mind the date. I find it amazing how being present lightens things up. Recently i have tried it several times: when i realize that i'm brooding too much, that i burden myself with reflections on past and future events, i focus on the present, on my uninterpreted sense perceptions, and i immediately feel relieved and free. It's true, the thing mostly responsible for my bad mood, my weakness, and my negative aura is my own mind. It's like a self-pitying, never-stopping soul-clogging living flow of slime.

A summary of the evolution and present deficiency of human consciousness as described by cultural philosopher Jean Gebser (1905-1973):

During archaic consciousness man is totally embedded in the world, is identical with it and perceives himself only in actively relating to a multitude of other elements. It is a time characterized by the emphatic absence of dualistic opposition, an era of microcosmic and macrocosmic harmony.

In the course of magic consciousness man gradually grows away from his complete entanglement with the world; he begins to face the world in its sleep-like outlines. ... The more man released himself from the whole, becoming “conscious” of himself, the more he began to be an individual, a unity not yet able to recognize the world as a whole, but only the details ... which reach his still sleep-like consciousness and in turn stand for the whole.

Mythical consciousness leads to awareness of the soul, the inner reality of man, a process which in myths is expressed as a reflection in water, as a voyage across the sea, as a discovery of self. An explicit knowledge of self emerges, but remains embedded in the cosmic forces which complete and balance it. The individuated point of the magic structure is expanded into an encompassing ring ... whose movement leads from one phase of the moon to another, ... from birth to death, spring to winter; from the tides of the earth to the tides of the body which blossom forth, bear fruit, and attain completion ... . In this the cosmos itself forms a circle. ... For mythical man the movement of his own soul became visible in the reflection of dream and myth, and in this way he became aware of the actual movement of the world, a previously egoless world of total merging.

Mental consciousness brings about the unfoldment of perspectival, directed thinking and thus the objectifying and measuring of the world from which man now breaks loose, keeping his distance and representing the world as his own opposite. Man steps out of the sheltering, two-dimensional circle and its confines into three-dimensional space. Here he no longer exists within polar complementarity; here he is in confrontation with an alien world — a dualism ... . Here we can no longer speak of unity, correspondence, or complementarity, not to mention integrality.  This situation is the prerequisite for conquering and exploiting the world, for measuring and analyzing it, for splitting it up and categorizing it as environment (Um-welt), Old and New World, First, Second, Third, Fourth World, etc.

After observing and measuring the world from mental distance, man is led back into her womb through integral consciousness; at present he deliberately and responsibly re-integrates into the cosmic unity which he gradually left - actually, had to leave - in the course of his consciousness evolution and individuation. As opposed to magic consciousness, however, the current integrative process will weave him into the world along with the knowledge of himself and his relationship to his surroundings which he has gained in the meantime. We are dealing with the bringing about of an integrum, i.e., the re-establishment of the inviolate and pristine state of origin by incorporating the wealth of all subsequent achievement.

(Italics refer to quotes from Gebser's work The Ever-Present Origin; speculative illustrations by Daroy Lin)