- When you hold things down, often after a while, an explosion happens. (attendees laughing)
It's like a boiling kettle, can't hold it for that long. And then, you have some
kind of rationalization in your mind why... You'll do it anyway. The mind will give you a reason. (bright music) Certain actions take place. You do things you know they're not the optimal things to do, but you can't help it. It's something acts through you. There seems to be some power there that makes you do things, but you know are not right or not good for you, and
yet you can't stop it. That seems to be the case. And that, of course, is often the case with people who are... With you, it might be many
different areas of your life, but this is also the case with addictions, for example, people who are
addicted to a certain substance or who are addicted to
eating too much or drinking. There's something that overpowers them in you that seems to obscure the awareness or the awareness is pushed to the side. And this thing, this powerful
thing does it anyway. (laughs) (Eckhart clears throat) And again, my answer is
a little bit similar to what I say
(attendee coughs) to the first questioner tonight. The power of presence needs to grow in you, so that it is strong enough not to... It's not willpower, because willpower is not the best way of dealing with these things, but it's what I'm talking about could sometimes be
confused with willpower. But willpower includes the application of a force to hold something down. Let's say, if your addiction is to indulge in intoxicating
beverages, in other words, booze is the British word,
(attendees laughing) then... And you can feel it. It comes on, there it comes. You know the bottles are
there, there they are. And you feel you have to go there and you have to reach out and you have to pour yourself a drink. Now, when you are not aware at all, you don't even know what you're doing. You're so unconscious that you're already holding
the drink and you're drinking. Then you at that point, you
even know that you're drinking. The same with food. I've spoken to people who've
had addictions to food. They often say they wake up when they've already eaten
in the middle of the night. They've already unconsciously
gone to the fridge, taken out the chocolate cake, and then they're already halfway through the chocolate cake
when suddenly, what am I doing? (attendees laughing) So, awareness comes in
at a very late point. Willpower would be to hold an urge down. Let's say, they have the pool or even what the example you gave, you want to turn on the TV and you know it's not right, because I'm not here for that. And he actually told us not to do it. (everybody laughing) But I can't help it. I have to go. I can't... Now, willpower, you would say, I'm going to hold this down. I'm not going to do it. And I can feel the urge,
but you're holding it down. (attendees laughing) When you hold things down, often after a while, an explosion happens. (attendees laughing)
It's like a boiling cattle, can't hold it for that long. And then, you have some kind of rationalization in your mind why... You'll do it anyway. The mind will give you a reason. I spoke to a man who was addicted to food and his body was very unhealthy, because extremely dangerously overweight. Unfortunately, he's passed
away, but he was wonderful man. And he talked to me. And often,
(attendee coughing) before he goes to indulge
in excessive eating, his mind would say something
like, you've had a rough day. You really deserve a treat. It explains why it's a right thing. I'm not going to do it for much longer, but just today, I really need a treat. Life hasn't been treating me, but it's the only pleasure I have. What shall I do? It's all I have. There's no other pleasure in my life. Okay. Go to the fridge. You listen... I attempted to be able to show him that
this thought is a deception and I had a little bit of success, but unfortunately, it
was too late to save him. Well, he's no longer in the body, but that's okay. The essence of... He probably reincarnates now into the opposite, perhaps, in
order to learn a lesson. Again, what I said to
your first questioner to practice presence power when you're not particularly
tempted by anything and you just in your room, there's more particular temptation. Go into the body. Feel the inner body. Be aware, be present. When you sense perception, I recommend you that
practice, sense perception. Feel the presence pervading every cell in your body, the inner body awareness.
(attendee coughing) And so, that there is enough presence for when this impulse comes. You use it as... Don't say go away or something like that, because it won't go away. It'll do it anyway. The impact comes whatever it may be. And you observe, you realize
it's not a good thing that it wants you to do. And if there's enough awareness, use it as every time an
impulse of that kind comes, this is your special spiritual practice. So, instead of wanting to get rid of it, welcome when an impulse of that kind comes and see that this is
the spiritual practice specially designed for you. Of course it is. And so, how do you transform
this into spiritual practice? First, you realize this is an
opportunity for practicing. And the first thing you could do is you practice delaying obeying the impulse, not obeying it immediately, but delaying it. And you observe then. Let's say when you wanted to go to the TV and turn the thing on,
you feel the impulse, or say, okay, oh, here's
my next spiritual practice. I'm now going to delay the turning on of this show on TV for three minutes. And during those three minutes, you observe the impulse
in you, you observe. It's an energy form and you observe it. Oh, there you are. There you are. Hmm. And you feel it. It's like a little gremlin or something. (attendees laughing) (Eckhart speaking in gibberish) (everybody laughing) (attendee coughing) And so, this time gap can be
a very useful first practice that you introduce a time
gap before you give in. You're not saying, I'm
not going to give in. No, you say three minutes. During those three minutes,
I'm going to observe you. And you shine the light of consciousness, the light of awareness on this impulse, which is an energy form. And it can be an energy form that is in you as a kind of emotion. It can also dangerously invade your mind and make you... The explanation I gave just now with this friend of mine. The thought comes into your head that explains why you should
give in to this impulse. That can happen easily. And there too, you need
to be present enough, sufficiently aware so
that you do not believe in every thought, especially
those kinds of thoughts. You don't believe in every thought that comes into your head. Oh, you observe the thought, because the thought is part of it. And even to the thought,
you say, oh, there you are. There's the thought and there's the feeling
behind the thought. And you set aside three minutes. During those three minutes, you observe that isn't that interesting? Wonderful spiritual practice. While you observe, you
grow in consciousness. You apply consciousness to it. Only three minutes, three minutes. And then, after the three
minutes, see how you feel. It may have dissolved,
but probably not yet. It's still there. And then, you can see, can I do another two or three minutes? Am I strong enough for that? Is my awareness strong enough? And yes, it is. Don't believe you might... No, stop this nonsense. Do it anyway. (everybody laughing) And then, you achieve
five or six minutes of... And then, what happens after that? We don't know. It is possible that the impulse has receded, gone back to a dormant state and you're suddenly,
you don't have to do it. It's also possible that
the impulse is still there and you cannot, after five minutes, there's not enough awareness left and you have to go and do it. But at least, the five-minute interval, the time gap was very important. And anything like that happens, you always introduce a time
gap for your spiritual practice during which you do not hold it down, but you observe it. So, you don't push it down,
you observe, oh, there you are. So, if it's a gremlin, you don't say, (grunts) hold you down.
(attendees laughing) (Eckhart grunts) No, there's a gremlin, you look at it. There it is. Oh.
(attendees laughing) Now, the interesting thing, when you apply awareness to something, you shine the light of
consciousness on it. The possibility of
transformation is also there. It arises as you shine the
light of consciousness on it. This is the famous example from fairy stories, and so on. The frog, you don't kill the frog or
you or do something with it. You kiss the frog. - [Attendee] Yeah.
(attendees laughing) - And the moment you kiss the frog, it turns into the prince. And so, the frog stands from... This is like mythology. There's some wisdom embedded
in these fairy stores which by the way, many them were not created
by the people who wrote them. They were already orally transmitted over long periods of time. So, they are mythologies that
often contain a lot of wisdom and there's certainly a lot
of wisdom in kissing the frog which then turns into something beautiful. So, there's something ugly, but you give it an acceptance and laugh. You look at it and then
transformation happens. So, that is the spiritual practice. And after a while, you
will find that initially, perhaps after the time
gap, you still do it. But then, gradually, this
time gap gets longer. And then, you may observe that the energy behind the impulse weakens and it subsides until next time. But gradually, it weakens. And all these self-sabotage mechanisms then begin to gradually disappear if you apply the awareness to it. Observe them, there it is. So, think of the frog. These are all the frogs
and whatever they are, gremlins, frogs, that live
in you as energy fields. And the energies are trapped there. They're not in themselves
bad, they're trapped like the pain body is an energy that is emotional energy that's strapped. When the pain body dissolves, it's transformed into presence. It's like a fire you put a log into a fire or it's consumed and
transmuted perhaps is the word. It's transmuted into presence. And there, here we have again the famous example in Middle Ages, certain philosophers were
very interested in alchemy. Alchemy was supposed to be the
transformation of base metal into gold through a chemical
process of transformation. But the true meaning behind alchemy was the transformation
of human consciousness. They have many images and so on. They could not speak and
write about this openly, because they would've been executed by the church at the time. So, they had to hide all these symbols as if it were to do the transformation of base metal into gold, of
something that is first of all, a not very desirable
into something wonderful. And that's the alchemical
process of transmutation which really is something
in the human psyche. There's an entire long
treaty written by Carl Jung, the psychologist, on alchemy, which countless illustrations and just fascinating things, but it's the transformation of something undesirable initially into awareness of, into consciousness. And this is... So, you are lucky to have that tailor-designed spiritual
practice for you. (attendees laughing) (waterfalls burbles)
