Opinions Are Abstractions in Our Minds | Awaken From Self-Talk

so this is a retreat you've been taken out of your usual surroundings and put here for some of you who have come from more more distant places this is a very exotic environment tropical with wonderfully exotic birds and animals and kangaroos and australian gigantic lizards and all kinds of wonderful things and trees that if you're not familiar with this part of the world that you've never seen before so all this is wonderful and helpful it can be a helpful thing to be in unusual surroundings because it's easier to be more present in unusual surroundings that's the advantage of traveling and that's why as i've written somewhere many people feel more alive when they travel and when they're at home their surroundings are so familiar that they lose presence completely they don't see things anymore they go from where they live to their office or wherever it is done it so many times they don't see it anymore and you would be surprised even at home your usual surroundings you might have a painting on your walls and haven't looked at in the past three years might be very beautiful or your garden or the plants in there so this is the familiarity can lead to a kind of semi sleep-like state and when you're traveling you go oh and you the good thing is you might not even have a name for all the new things you see at home you know what everything is called but here you see things you might see a weird animal the mind stops because you can't name it and that's a wonderful thing or you see it trees that you haven't seen before and you go ah or you might say to your friend look at that and you might notice in the moment of looking at that you're not naming it in your mind because you don't know what it's called so there's a moment a few seconds of just being present being the presence rather than the naming person and so let's hope you're here we're here for a few days let's hope that by the last day this place will not have become so familiar to you that you're not looking anymore so it helps to be wide awake to your sense perceptions because that is one way of coming into the present moment which is why we are here because there is more to the present moment than we realize most of the time there's more to it it's the access point to the deeper dimension within yourself so as a general same underlying theme for our retreat i recommend surprisingly that you practice being in the present moment so we have this helpful thing that you are in unusual surroundings unless you live just a few miles from here then it may be a harder job or you might even live next door however although you've been taken out of your usual surroundings you have carried with you something else and of course that's your mind that travels with you wherever you go that is perhaps the meaning of the book that somebody wrote i believe the title is wherever you go there you are so wherever you go you carry your mind and the conditioning of your mind with you so that is the challenge here on our retreat to transcend the conditioning of your mind the habitual way of interpreting the habitual way of reacting to things habitual mind patterns if a mind pattern in you is that you frequently and very quickly become discontent with where you are if that's a pattern in you then that pattern will arise here also if your mind pattern is one that loves complaining and finding fault with things then it's very likely that very quickly this mind pattern will appear here also despite the fact that you're in these wonderful unusual surroundings the first thing you might complain about is the dinosaurs and the mind says i'd rather see a big buddha or something like that or the mind says we've come here on a spiritual retreat isn't that supposed to be a buddha somewhere so you get surprising things things that your expectations are not met in various ways and that is a challenge to the mind to the conditioned mind because the conditioned mind wants its expectations met and if they are not met it gets uneasy restless irritated angry starts talking about what's wrong either silently in your mind or to others and if others can agree with you then it's even better or you can go on the internet and then you get 1 000 people agreeing with you so you always find those in some of you maybe one or two of you that have that complaint pattern i'm not saying if there's something really wrong you shouldn't do something to rectify it so if if something is leaking in your room say no i'm not going to say anything because i'm not supposed to complain no of course you go to reception say there's something there that needs to be rectified it's not a complaint it's just information complaint means there is an emotion behind it and the emotion says this should not be happening then it becomes a complaint or it's your fault then it becomes a complaint if it's simply presenting information it's not a complaint it's just a fact and then the question is is can anything be done about it if yes good or they say with nothing we can do do you go on insisting that this is very bad and create suffering for yourself or do you simply then accept this is what is and there is no situation ever including a retreat in a wonderful almost perfect place except for the dinosaurs for some of you almost perfect place as far as the natural environment is concerned it's you can't imagine anything more the profusion of of meditation and aliveness that surrounds you you cannot imagine anything more wonderful and yet it's not perfect and not just because of the dinosaurs there will be other things too that are not perfect you cannot find a place where you go everything is just so perfect it doesn't exist if it did exist you would become incredibly unbearably bored with saying this so perfect what i'm going to do now but of course you're lucky there is no such place so there's always something that goes wrong and that's a wonderful thing you can not only anywhere as you might know in life i believe i'm not the only person who can say that since i was born life has been challenging ever since then and very rarely do you get a little bit of moment of freedom from challenges ah and then suddenly something drops behind you or falls on your head metaphorically speaking so something you can practice here is to have an expectation that things should should be in a certain way and nothing should go wrong and that reality external reality should conform to exactly the expectations of the conditioned mind that creates ultimately unhappiness because a lot of the time reality does not conform to the expectations of your mind in some ways it does in other ways it doesn't and not only in a retreat but also a daily life as you might have noticed one damn thing after another one damn thing after another and then the mindset i can't take anymore of course that's just another thought completely untrue you can take anything if you drop the thought and say this is what is so you practice here letting go of the expectations of your mind and live in alignment with what is internal alignment with what is rather than demanding that something should be otherwise the exception is conveying information so that something can be changed if it can be changed that's understood or doing it yourself clean it up do this do that that's fine but other than that see if here make it your spiritual practice to live in alignment with the is-ness of the present moment and honor the present moment and bring a kind of appreciation to the present moment appreciate while you're here appreciate whatever the present moment presents to you another word for it is you welcome the present moment and that's not this is actually a relatively easy place to do that it's not nothing is perfect we know that but this is a you're in a protected setting and it's relatively easy here to welcome the present moment it might be easier here than to be at a crowded airport and the flights have been cancelled or to be stuck anywhere or to be in the hospital then things big things small things happen wherever you go welcoming the present moment is the practice that gives you access to the spiritual dimension to that which is beyond the person in yourself it seems too simple almost but let that be your practice here you may remember i mentioned it once or twice before there was a zen teacher and a disciple came to him and said i'm going away now on a journey for several years and since i haven't made it i've been in this monastery for five years and i still haven't got it can you give me some practice for my journey and the zen master said okay here's your spiritual practice for your journey come back in five years and let me know how how it went wherever you are whatever situation you find yourself in whoever you are with whatever happens say thanks for everything i have no complaint whatsoever is that it one imagine spiritual practice some complicated meditation method that takes years to master but no he said make it your spiritual practice to say thanks for everything i have no complaint whatsoever no matter what happens so if you miss whether you catch the bus or you miss the bus you catch the bus say thanks for everything i have no complaint whatsoever you miss the bus thanks for everything i have no complaint whatsoever you're in a in a lovely hotel room in a warm bed so thanks for everything i have no complaint whatsoever or you're out in the cold with nowhere to sleep oh then it not only gets more challenging to say that but if you say it and you mean it saying it is just words but if you say it and mean it when instead of being in a luxury hotel you find yourself penniless in the street if you then say it and meaning it that will take you much deeper than being in a luxury hotel bed and saying thanks for everything i have no complaint whatsoever that's relatively easy or you might say the pillow is not quite the way i want it but it is it's relatively easy to say but say it waits when you're out in the out in the cold and you can't forget a hotel because you don't have the money or whatever there are no hotels nowhere to sleep cold wet thanks for everything thanks thanks that's a sarcastic thank you thanks god it's just what i needed that's not the thanks that's not it it's if you say thanks which means a total acceptance of this moment not a total acceptance of the okay i might as well accept it for the rest of tonight i'm going to be out in the cold you don't know maybe a minute from now something will happen and you'll find somewhere or somebody will offer you a place to sleep it's just this moment thanks for everything release thanks for this moment so and thanks really here means a complete acceptance of this moment and if you accept a moment that seems difficult to accept that takes you much deeper than accepting a moment that's easy to accept if you have a nice meal you have a here you're drinking a cocktail and then you've ordered the starter which is whatever let's say oysters harper but if some people love them some don't but but it's that's a general thing that people think oh that's a okay and they can thanks for these oysters thanks for everything i have no complaint whatsoever thanks for everything and then you go home and suddenly you feel sick in your stomach [Music] so when you were eating the oysters you thanks for everything i have no complaint right but what about now because you ate too many oysters so it's bringing your inner self into alignment with the present moment a very powerful spiritual practice why is it so powerful especially when it's when the situation is challenging and you still say it and you mean it because everything that sustains the person the exclusively personal sense of self in that act of complete surrender to what is the personal sense of self gives way to a deeper transcendent sense of self which the buddhists call no self a deeper consciousness certainly shines through so really it's a kind of denying your form identity it doesn't mean you don't have it anymore but you are no longer at trapped exclusively in your form identity the form identity is strengthened the more you can be in opposition to what is the stronger your form identity me the person the me the more you are in opposition to what is the stronger the the me becomes your form identity and if you can have enemies lots of enemies it loves that gets even stronger they all against me or us make if it's a collective ego the collective ego loves its enemies can't actually survive without them every collector even needs the others well not us this is us and that's the others so that's the wonderful thing that the person the exclusively personal sense of self becomes weakened subsides and another something else emerges when you are no longer habitually what is something emerges that is deeper than the personal sense of self the transcendent dimension presence whatever we want to call it some people call it your higher self or you could call it your deeper self words doesn't matter but something emerges that is from beyond the person and that is a place of great power and aliveness and possibility and that is where you are connected with a vastness and with everybody else too so it's when you feel when you when that transcendent dimension arises you feel a greater sense of connectedness no longer the separation with not only with nature but also with other humans you no longer feel the otherness of the other it's just yourself in another disguise that's really becomes your experience whoever you meet there's yourself into another disguise isn't that a wonderful way of being with other humans that essentially you can sense not only your connectedness but you can also sense your inherent oneness with others you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

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Keywords: how to handle opinion, awaken from an overthinking mind, dealing with opinion, how to stop overthinking, how to deal with criticism, awaken from self talk, stop caring what people think, abstraction of the mind, handling opinions, place of stillness, mind chatter, self talk, mind talk, mind abstraction, stressed out, eckhart tolle youtube, eckhart tolle 2020, anxiety, mindfulness, overthinking, awareness, eckhart tolle

Id: uzA2YyRs8XA

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020