Dealing With Conflicting Thoughts | Q&A Eckhart Tolle

um okay so i always have this desire to know which i know may not be very correct all the time like based on what you have been saying but still i always feel comfortable if i know what's going to happen especially about important things in my life and whenever there is a situation that says work or like an emotional relationship one one side of my mind is like this is not gonna work out blah blah and the other side is yes it's gonna work out no yes no and all day long seriously i'm doing something and in my mind they're going to let you off no they're not going to lay her off no they're going to let her off no no it seriously comes to a point of losing my mind sometimes but sometimes i know it so strongly so i can calm myself down so i just wanted to ask you how can i know what's the right answer what's the voice of intuition like how do i know the voice of intuition instead of this fighting okay okay well i believe many people recognize your question it's a pattern in the human mind and perhaps in you it's stronger than in some who knows but it's in in many people's minds so it's of course the the answer is in and this is your challenge is not trying to figure out which of these voices is the right one that's not it it's to discover within yourself that space that is not the voice that space of awareness so that can only you can only practice that while it happens there's that voice and then there's the other voice and who is aware of these voices you don't need to answer that question i'm just putting it out don't answer it because there's no answer there's only a direct realization of it within yourself there's no external answer because if you give an answer that's another voice so this is the question that you should not answer in words so i'm asking again who is it in you who or what there's something in you that is aware of these different conflicting voices there is an awareness otherwise you wouldn't know that there is a voice now the voice is a these are thought formations these are energy free every thought is an energy field and each thought formation wants to draw your attention suck it up into itself come here the other one says no come here these are like little this may sound a little spooky but it's not spooky uh what you can regard a thought almost as an as an entity not not a physical entity but as an as an energetic entity and that lives there it has a it has a life span and some thoughts persist for a long time and certain thought patterns are also entities that can shift take on one form and then another form and another form so you have every thought is a little entity or energy field it wants to it wants your identification with it it wants to draw your all your attention in because the more tension get drawn in the more it grows it wants to grow it wants to like everything wants to it once doesn't want to disappear so it's for you to know when this happens who am i you are are you this voice or that voice no you are aware of the voice all these voices and that is the place where you go so that from that place of aware presence the voices are no longer disturbing you you recognize them as only a voice this is not important whether you go this way or that way or whether something is going to work out or something is not going to work out you don't know that your responsibility is to be present which means to disidentify from the voices and the for my first recommendation is when these conflicting voices come trying to figure out whether something is going to work out or not work out you don't know and the voice doesn't know it's just pretending to know one voice pretends to know that it's not going to work out the other one pretends to know that it is going to work out they don't know so once you know that they don't know they do then you you don't play so much importance in these voices they're just like people around you let's imagine that each voice is a person one person stands on your left and tells you something the other person stands on your right and tells you something but they they just ignorant they don't they just try to come up with something so if these people were around you would say go away i don't i don't need to listen to this all i need is to embrace the only thing i ever have in my life which is this moment i need to honor and give my fullest attention to this moment and if i honor and give my fullest attention to this moment rather than to this voice that does that and the other voice that says that then i can be sure that things are going to work out now one way or another so if there's a new relationship that you go into it's of course it's going to work out either you'll stay together and you'll be happy for a while or you won't but but but even if you don't you have learned something you have learned that certain patterns don't work or certain humans that come into your life may not everything is a lesson in that sense there's no failure everything works because everything is something you grow in consciousness and to figure out for example what what people ask of what am i supposed to do in life i still don't know what is my real life mission what am i supposed to do so and sometimes they become paralyzed because there's so many possibilities and i just can't make up my mind which one which way am i going to go this way or that way and then you sit there for a long time i could go that way and then the mind brings up more thoughts but if i go that way then those things may happen no i better try it that way but if you just become present then rather than looking for an answer through the movement of thought there's never any real answer that you arrive at through the movement of thought you have to become present first then at some point a thought may come that has a different energy feel to it a thought that you feel yes that's is then it's no longer thought this maybe maybe not there's a certain realization that comes it may finally take the form of a thought when i was in living in europe in england one morning i woke up and i felt some reason i have to leave didn't know why but the thought was so strong and it never went away there wasn't another thought that said no maybe i should stay that thought came out of presence so the question is what really matters here is realizing that you are not this voice or that voice you are something deeper you are the awareness of the presence and the awareness of the presence recognizes the voice as just a voice in the head doesn't believe it's absolutely right and sees it's relatively unimportant who am i is a vital question and ask yourself that and that will drive you deeper who am i you are the presence but you can only realize that for yourself one recommendation i have when these voices start up again consciously choose not to go not to follow that voice or their voice but place your attention into the inner energy field of your body that frees you from the the otherwise crazy self-talk in the head it's crazy that self-talk it's nothing personal it's a human thing almost everybody has it but it's crazy especially when there's no aware presence underneath it or you don't know it there is but you haven't discovered it so when you get beginning of conf when confusion arises in your mind go realize there's no answer there place attention into the have you been able to do that something placing attention into the inner energy field of the body yeah that's why sometimes i know for sure like you said but then especially recently this argument started yes i don't know why yes now so it's it's very and the thing is but i don't know i have to give this up but i have this desire to know also which is a bit annoying yes very good i thank you very honest many humans have that also yes it is annoying but you have to be on the one hand of course [Music] on one level you want to know that's understandable and there is a place for that but there is another dimension where you need to become comfortable with not knowing that's the being dimension then in the doing dimension yes sometimes you need to figure things out especially on the practical level of life on the practical level of life you think you can't figure out on that level what is my destiny who am i those things you cannot figure out on that level where you figure things out mentally there you have to go into a place of not knowing that's the being dimension so don't move only in the dimension of trying to figure things out about your life about situations you're in about other people there is a place for figuring things out but a more important place is to embrace the state of not knowing which of course implies the state of not thinking where they're simply an aware presence and there's a deeper knowing there that has nothing to do with working anything out mentally that's the place of wisdom so you need to be able to operate on the human level which is the level of figuring things out mentally you of course there are situations when you need that at work etc but you also need to have access to the deeper dimension that's the most vital thing in a human life to have found that i dimension within and that is not does not operate through figuring anything out mentally it's actually the opposite of that it's relinquishing thought and that's almost frightening to the human self that relies on thought that has built up an identity based on thought it's sometimes frightening and it doesn't want to let you go there because it believes if you're not constantly trying to work out what your life is all about and figure things out mentally it believes that your life is going to collapse if you don't even in the night you wake up in the middle of the night and have to worry about your problems and there's an underlying assumption if i don't worry about my problems i'm not taking responsibility for my life and things are going to collapse around me of course the opposite is true so you are creating a lot of unnecessary turmoil in your life and a lot of unnecessary unhappiness because 90 of human unhappiness arises not because of situations around them [Music] but because of what your mind is saying about situations in your life so the unhappiness is caused by certain stories in your mind not the situation that was already discovered 2000 years ago by certain philosophers in ancient greece it's not and so a lot of unnecessary suffering arises there through the human mind the two dimensions of life you inhabit the human as i said before somewhere you are a human being i like that expression in english in a way we the english language does not have a word that inc that includes men and women well you can you can use human as a noun but the english language we in the past you would always read about man and you were supposed to mentally include women in that but it doesn't sound right the destiny of man well what about the destiny of woman in the past it was supposed to include women but we don't do that anymore so we have a human being and i love that because that shows the two dimensions to who you are the human dimension which is the mental the working out the physical form and the being dimension which is the formless the stillness the presence the two come together so your challenge is to take your attention away from the mind don't try to figure out not even trying to figure out how you can get rid of the voices there's more voices suggesting how to get rid of the voices so just easy step but it needs a minimum of awareness when the voices start up again that you don't want that you haven't you have to have a minimum of awareness so that you're not immediately totally drawn into the thoughts the voices and then they realize it's pointless i don't want it and obviously it is especially if it happens in the middle of the night what can i possibly what point could possibly be in worrying about anything in the middle of the night so you don't want it you don't need it it's actually even harmful so i'm getting out of there you say i'm out of here and you place attention into the start with the hands feel the energy in your hands and immediately you're taking attention away from thinking and that is oh the hands feel alive do the arms my arms feel alive too and you don't even need to comment on that you just feel it and then the rest of the body there is a field of aliveness that's actually so much more pleasant than thinking and that's where you go and then becomes an anchor for not thinking and that is the whole body is participating in the arising of the state of awareness and one could almost say one could say every cell is becoming conscious it's participating in the process of becoming conscious you can feel the aliveness in every cell of the body so you not you don't just become conscious with your your head the presence the state of presence involves the entire body become conscious and it's beautiful and you're out of the head quickly easily you just need to be aware that the thoughts will try after a minute or two or three thoughts will try to one thought will try and again try to tell you this is very important and you should think about this so you need to be recognize that and say okay i let you go you don't fight it you can't don't fight a thought go away i don't want you that's another thought so no you just they're like clouds that drift past but you are the sky and this is the sky the inner space you're the sky and the clouds aren't fine let them pass you don't have to go with every cloud that goes there and the more you follow the clouds the bigger the cloud gets and then another one no no come here oh get out of your mind in other words that's my answer thank you this mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive to be free you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

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Keywords: eckhart tolle, enlightenment, eckhart tolle youtube, eckhart tolle 2020, eckhart tolle meditation, eckhart tolle anxiety, conflicting thoughts, inner peace, presence, power of now, mental health, eckhart tolle thought, egoic mind, eckhart tolle ego

Id: QpBOcw5WQPg

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020