- By recognizing that there
is, let's say, irritation, anger or anxiety in you,
(relaxing music) you are no longer completely
identified with it. (text chiming) Whenever you are impatient,
trying to get somewhere, waiting for something impatiently, what's the next thing I have to do? And now I have to do that. And you're pulled in all kinds
of directions, what's now? Oh, now I have to do
that and that and that. And there's always the pull to the, what's the next thing, I call that sometimes you
lose yourself in doing. Doing is necessary,
obviously you need to do, but to lose yourself in continuous doing is a serious dysfunction, but it's so normal that
nobody realizes it. So if you lose yourself in the doing, there's always another and
this is how stress arises. But stress is in the gap
between now and later, the projected then, now and then, in that gap arises, the stress arises. So the mental projection towards future creates the stresses
between where I'm here, but I want to be there and for many humans, that
is their predominant state. They're always, they're here, but they really want to be there, either there in space
or time, it's amazing! And even you awakening beings may still sometimes or often
find yourself in that state where you'd suddenly
realize that the whole day you've been stressed about
this, that, and that. The world makes so many
demands upon you need to deal with this and this and this, amplified by the gadgets that we now use, which is an amplification of
the dysfunction through this. And you lose yourself in the doing, you become completely
uncentered and basically lost. It happens even to children already at an early age these days and many children are suffering from attention deficit disorder and so on, which means their mind is
being pulled always away from the present moment. So lost in doing, lost in doing, really comes back to lost in thinking. Thinking underlies doing. So you're lost in your
thoughts about the world and then you engage in all kinds of activities
propelled by thoughts, that now I need to do this,
now I need to do that. So the basic condition still
for most humans on the planet, so fundamentally, yes,
they are lost in doing, they lose themselves into, but basically it means they
are lost in their mind, in the movement of thought, what now? You identify, they identify
with every thought that arises and many thoughts are
about future or the past, not that many thoughts are
about the present moment and if they are about the present moment, then it is an interpretation
of the present moment that is completely determined and colored by your past conditioning. So very interesting to observe in oneself this tendency to deny, devalue, disregard, reduce the present moment
to a means to an end. It's always a means to an end, but it's not recognized
for what it is in itself. And often it is more
than a means to an end, for many humans, this is a very dysfunctional way of being, for many humans, the present moment is actually
regarded unconsciously as an obstacle that
they need to get beyond. (Eckhart grunting)
(audience laughing) There's continuous underlying unease. (audience laughing) And what's the next thing
that's going to go wrong? I know it's going to happen. Lost, lost in the mind, lost in thought. There was an Indian teacher who described the
essential human condition as lost in thought and of
course that's how it is. This is then this movement of thought, gives you your sense of identity. The unease, the uneasy narrative, the problematic narrative
of me and my life, I have to think about this when I wake up in the middle of the night and I carry this heavy burden
of my problematic life. For many humans, their identity
is unconsciously regarded as a problem to be solved. I am a problem, I'm looking for a solution to this problem that I am. And of course then you go to a therapist, now, if the therapist is good, he might be able to take
you beyond that, depends, if he or she's not good, then
you get more deeply entrenched and 15 years later you are
still undergoing psychoanalysis and find ever deeper layers
of complexity in your past and there's no end to it. So the present moment is devalue, not regarded either as a means
to an end or an obstacle. That is, for many humans,
that is a predominant state of mental emotional state. And as I said, the identity
is derived from that, so the error lies in
identification with thought. Now the question arises, who or what is it that
identifies with thought? If I am not the story that I
tell myself about who I am, if I am not ultimately that, then who or what am I? And what is it in me that
identifies with the story? What is it that creates
this sense of identity that exists mostly in a state of unease or very often discontent, because it cannot acknowledge
the present moment? That is the ego by the way, that's what we call it,
the egoic sense of self. There's a very simple spiritual practice to get you to the realization of who or what it is that identifies, I suggest at this moment observe yourself internally right now to see if there's any
lingering emotion in you, perhaps from earlier today or an hour ago or yesterday or the past two
years or the past ten years. Is there any? And can you feel, for example, is there irritation somewhere? Is there some kind of anxiety? Is there kind of heaviness,
a certain heavy mood, a despondent mood perhaps? Is it lingering there? Is there anger, anger, big thing, some residue of anger from
what happened earlier? Is that in you? And then normally humans
would say, "I am angry." Or they would say, "I
am anxious, I'm fearful, I am in a bad mood." Now there's already a
delusion, the moment you say, "I am angry," or, "I am anxious." That indicates already
that you have identified with the emotion of anger
or the emotion of sadness or the emotion of fear. You have identified, you
equate I with what arises in your field of consciousness. So you say, "I'm angry." It would be more correct to say, "There is anger in me right now." Now, it may sound a trivial
difference between saying, I am angry and there's anger in me, but there's a significant difference which goes beyond mere syntax, how you put words together, 'cause when you say I am, you equate I with whatever
condition is there in you. this applies to emotion and
it also applies to thought, because anger is often, it's
not just the anger as emotion, the anger also exists as angry thoughts and then they reinforce each
other as a vicious circle. When you are trapped
in irritation or anger, the emotion feeds the thought and the thought feeds more
energy to the emotion, it's a vicious circle and you
don't want to get out of it. You might notice when you
observe an angry person or despondent person or an anxious person, they don't really want
to be free of the anger. If you suggested to an angry
person, "You can be free." You will not get a pleasant answer. (audience laughing) And you've seen angry people, they are in the grip
of anger or irritation, they cannot help it, then they shout at you and
then they leave the room and a minute later the door opens, they come back, because
they sort of something else to insult you with.
(audience laughing) They are in the grip of it. There is complete identification with thought and emotion. They are lost in thought,
they are lost in emotion, but who or what is it that is lost? if I'm not the thoughts and the emotion, who or what am I? I just asked you to just
have a look inside yourself and see what it is, if there's
anything there that's jarring and doesn't feel good, but it's there and I'm not saying try
to get rid of it, no, acknowledge the present moment, the present moment is what is, externally or internally, that's what is. But there's a huge difference now, you've already, by recognizing that there is let's say, irritation, anger or anxiety in you, an additional element
or dimension has come in and that dimension we could call awareness or we could call it presence. And the moment awareness comes in, you are no longer completely
identified with it. One could say, I sometimes describe it as, let's say there's the anger and as your awareness
of the anger comes in, there's a little bit of space around it, that's the awareness. The awareness knows that there's anger. The anger may still be there, it may not immediately disappear, but the awareness knows it's there or whatever else it may be, the arising of awareness
is spiritual awakening. The disidentification that
happens when awareness arises, that is the spiritual awakening or the arising of the transcendent
dimension of consciousness. Transcendent because it
transcends who or what you are as a person, yes, you are still a person, you have your personality,
you have your memories, that hasn't changed. You still have a narrative in your mind, what you call it, your life, but it's no longer, there
begins to be a shift, a shift from identifying
with that which arises either on the level of thinking or on the level of the emotion to identifying with or being the observing conscious presence. That is the awakening out
of identification with form, thought forms, emotional forms. So this is where, when
you realize thought, thoughts that go through your mind, in the unconscious state, the
thought has you in its grip, you don't think in the unconscious state. Thinking happens to you
and you can't help it, the thinking mind does what it wants to do and you don't even know
that there's anything other than the movement of thought in you, because you are so in the grip of it that there's nothing beyond that. So every thought that arises
becomes the truth for you, it has you in its grasp. One way of putting it, you say you believe in every thought that that comes into your
head, no matter how crazy, suddenly, that's how it is. And then if you look on the internet where people communicate with each other on social media and so on, you can easily see how a person's opinion becomes their identity. Now, an opinion is no more
than a form of thought, a movement of thought, a
certain mental position. Opinion turns into identity and then, because opinion
has turned into identity, anybody who has a different opinion becomes threatening to you, because it's your identity,
your sense of self, it's a fiction, but this
person becomes your enemy! (all laughing) So when thought becomes identity, then anybody who questions the thought that you had identified with is the enemy and that's a deeply unconscious thing for human beings to be trapped
in, a very unconscious state and it wreaks havoc on the planet because it also happens collectively. Identities, there's a
collective identity too in groups of people,
nations, tribes, religions or movements within religions and so on. So to free yourself from that, that is spiritual awakening.
