(bell chimes) - So what in your life
as you pursue a goal, another way of putting off
approaching it is to ask yourself if you are not really enjoying
while you pursue the goal, whatever it is in your life, if you're not really enjoying the doing because you are so focused on becoming and achieving and arriving
at this future point, that the enjoyment of the doing is so greatly diminished
or disappears completely because all you want to do is arrive, but you're not there yet. That's the nature of
stress, how stress arises. Stress means there is a continuous focus on the next moment. So you are drawn away, and this is a, produced by the human
mind through thinking, you are drawn away internally from the present moment
into a non-existent, because the future never
exists, except as a thought, you are drawn into this so-called future which is a never never land, because it can never arrive. You can never reach the future because the moment it
becomes reality in your life, it's the present moment. So by having this mindset, an excessive focus on becoming or arriving or achieving, you lose completely the being dimension, and then your life is
completely out of balance, even if you achieve in the eyes of the world fame or wealth or worldly success. And yet you are frustrated
and unhappy human being, perhaps pretending that you
are happy, (crowd laughs) but you're not. And then you have to take drugs or alcohol or go from one relationship to another or compulsively pursue the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, accumulate more of this endlessly. And so it's, that's not a mastery of life. Even if you have your private jet does not mean you have
achieved mastery of life. In fact, you may be
completely deluded. (laughs). Not necessarily. You could have a private jet and have achieved the mastery,
wouldn't that be great? (laughs with crowd) So that is as, our purpose here is to have that balance, and here the emphasis of course on of this teaching is on finding the being dimension, awareness of being, which is why I talk so much
about the present moment. Because this is always, the moment your attention goes fully into the present moment, you have withdrawn attention
from becoming and doing, and you are, that what arises
is the being dimension. (mimics whoosh) So, and that is associated also with a sometimes brief but vitally important
cessation of thinking. In that moment, when you
become completely aware of the present moment, and it starts with sense perception, you're suddenly aware
of your surroundings. You may also suddenly be aware of the inner energy field
that you feel you're alive. In this present moment there
is aliveness all around you, and you can perceive
it through your senses. You hear, you feel, you see, you smell. But there's also an aliveness, an inherent aliveness, in your body. So you become aware simultaneously
in the present moment of a sense of aliveness
within and without. So in addition to what
you see with your senses, there is an underlying field of aliveness that you can be aware of
in the present moment. And that's the being
dimension or presence. And that's who you are in essence, but that's not only
who you are in essence. That is the essence of everything. So when you realize that for yourself, it's not the person who
has that realization. The universe has that realization. The universe, which for a moment, because your life is a
moment on a cosmic scale, your life here as a person has a very short duration. It goes. (mimics whooshes) (crowd laughs) Well, was that it? Yeah. (crowd laughs) Then the element of continuous frustration and discontent and the feeling there's
something not right here, or the feeling there's something
vital missing in my life, but always looking to the next thing to find that vital thing
that's missing in my life. I have to find it. If you don't realize it's already here, so you, there's something, I don't feel, I don't feel complete. There's still something
lacking, a sense of lack. Something is missing. I don't know what it is. Or you might even not verbally say that, there's just a feeling
that something is missing or something's not right. Of course not, because your life is completely out of balance, but you're, I'm not, nothing personal. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking in general
terms. (crowd laughs) (laughs) If your life were
completely out of balance you wouldn't be here. Or if you had accidentally
stumbled upon this place, you would soon leave. (crowd laughs) So the being dimension is accessed obviously
in the present moment, and the doing of course requires time. You cannot do anything without some dimension of time. Make a cup of tea. You need some time to make a cup of tea. Learn to become this or that. You need time to become a doctor or to become a musician or to become a dancer or to become whatever you need. Time. That's the time, temporal dimension. And yet although you need time, the paradox is that you're never really, not really, that you never actually experience time
or the passing of time, except in your head as a thought, as a anticipation of the next moment or a memory of the last or
other moments from the past. That's how you experience time. But there never is a direct experience. Time you can never experience directly because whenever you ask
yourself, where's time, all you ever get is the present moment. So on one level of your life, time seems vital all to do things. Now on another side of that coin of time, what, on one hand time seems
useful because you can, on the level, surface level of reality, you can do things in time and become from being an ignorant person to become a very knowledgeable
person in time. (laughs) It takes time to acquire
knowledge on that level. And yet, that's a good aspect of time, but then there's something
else aspect of time, which you discover when you compare a photo of yourself
taken at the age of 20, let's say you are now
40 or 50 or whatever, and you discover, oh,
that's me 20 years ago, and then you look in the mirror, or 30 years ago. What happened to me? (crowd laughs) Time. Who did this to me time? Time. Oh my God. And if you're young and
beautiful or strong and healthy, then you can still know that eventually time is going to erode your good looks. (crowd laughs) Now, this is not tragic, unless you're very much identified, you've derived your sense of identity from your physical body, which might look good right now, but won't in time. In time will, and then, of course, what ultimately time, of course, what time does, it kills you. (laughs with crowd) So fast it enables you to
do things and to become, but then at the same time you begin to wilt like a flower. It does, so time does
that to a flower, too, much more quickly than a
human, but very similar. It does it to a fruit, a piece of fruit. If you want to observe
the passing of time, all you can do is to observe the effect that time has on things, but you cannot observe time
because it's never there. It's a paradox. One could go into this, make it into a huge philosophical
thing, which I won't do. It's enough for you to see in your personal, your
immediate experience, time is not something that you can ever experience directly. It only leaves behind evidence it's been there. (laughs) A dead body, for example, or an apple that three, two
weeks ago was very fresh and now it's all wrinkled and has gone. And two weeks before it was, the apple looked and tasted. It's the same as young humans. They still can be very
radiant and then gradually. (crowd laughs) Now an interesting thing
happens for those humans who are not totally identified with that level of form but who have access to being dimension. As they grow older, the being dimension, as the physical vehicle gets
gradually eroded by time, the physical, sorry, the being dimension is actually able to shine through more. As the body weakens and gets old, there is a light, the
light of consciousness, that can shine through. And then you find certain old people who as the body weakens, the light increases of consciousness and the ego is completely gone, and there's just a
beautiful presence left. That's the, at the latest, as you grow old, that's
still your last opportunity, but if you've missed it for
the first 75 years of your life because you were too concerned
with doing all the time and acquiring and becoming, whether, I don't know whether
you can still find it. I think, if you fall ill
or something like that happens to you, yes, you can. It's preferable not to wait
until you're close to death to look for the being dimension, because you might not find it anymore because you're so absorbed
in the doing and in time, you won't even look for it. You had no interest whatsoever throughout your life in any of this. It's a bit late. That's fine. The universe is abundant and patient, and every life has a purpose. We'll talk about that some other time. Time, you see. (crowd laughs) You can't get away from it. (crowd laughs) (inspiring music) 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. (inspiring music) (waterfall rushes)
