Eckhart Tolle Unveils The Power of NOW: Living in the Moment to Transform Your Life

talking about past and future and excessive emphasis on past and future in your life if there's nothing wrong with having a certain intention of what you want to achieve take steps towards it it's part of living here in this Dimension you can't just say I'm never going to plan anything anymore just take life as it comes well some people try to do that but they're not that happy either after a while then your life will get very diffused to have an intention to have to make a plan perfectly fine either short-term plan like I'm going to meet you tomorrow at four o'clock how would you ever meet anybody if we didn't have time and future in a practical level of course it's needed the question is whether future takes over your mind being able to use it for practical purposes is of course great but I call that clock time is fine but psychological time is When Future takes over your mind and your entire soul patterns are geared only towards future and you treat the present moment as either just a means to end because it enables you to get to the next one you're always reaching out so to speak internally to the next yet never quite here always looking for some fulfillment there but you can never embrace the fullness of now or you make them now into even an enemy hey it's Evan Carmichael and I make these videos because the thing that saved me as an entrepreneur was watching the stories of other successful entrepreneurs and I learned from their advice I learned from their motivation and honestly I have no idea where I would be if I didn't have those videos to inspire me I still need them for myself today too and I hope that they can inspire you as well so today let's get some incredible motivation from the one and only Eckhart Tolle enjoy some people are always unhappy you perhaps we all know some one or two people like that three who are wherever they are they are they're complaining it's never quite right wherever they are or whoever they are with after a little while they're very uncomfortable again and it should be somewhere else you know the bumper sticker that you see in some cars in the various versions of it says I'd rather be golfing and then another one says I'd rather be fishing I'd rather be this I'd rather be there when I visited the the spiritual teacher ramdas who lives in Hawaii he has a bumper sticker on ramdas was the person who in the 70s wrote the book be here now that and anyway he has a bumper stick on his car that says I'd rather be here now so and and then you realize you can actually you can still pursue whatever an intention where you want to get to a plan I call it it's a bit like a journey your life is it is a journey you're going you know you want to go from here to there whether you're going to get there we don't know maybe on the way you'll Branch out to somewhere else but at least you have a certain direction it's good to have some direction in your life but while you are traveling if the the your destination takes up most of your attention and you're continuously focusing on there you miss all the journey really you can't enjoy the journey anymore and most of your life is the journey the arriving is relatively rare the wedding and a few more graduation but so so those moments are not the fine view between so the rest is the journey and if you can't enjoy the journey which means the step you're taking at this moment is really the most important thing yes of course you know you're going that way but this step is still to be enjoyed because that's ultimately your whole life consists of the step you're taking at this moment there is never anything else for many years before I wrote The Power of Now and it became successful I was basically a failure in the eyes of the world so he's already almost 50. and what has he achieved my mom said you have thrown away your life you had so many possibilities in your life you walked out of graduate school in Cambridge why did you walk out of there you uh my mom said when many other people said this person has failed in life he has no job he has no insurance policies nothing no pension plan just almost nothing in the bank failure and then a few years later people bought the path now and became a bestseller oh a big success okay if I had derived my identity at that time from what the world was telling me or my mind would have told me if I've been listening to my mind I would have been very unhappy and I didn't so I was fine because my identity wasn't derived from that anymore and fortunately even when in the eyes of the world I suddenly became a success I don't want to derive my identity from that it's it's a cheap substitute for who I really am so I'm not I don't see I don't derive but the satisfaction it comes is the satisfaction that the work that's happening the teaching that's happening is transforming people's lives that's very satisfying but I don't get any personal satisfaction though because it's not I don't feel it as this separate me produced it it's not that difficult really to step out of the stream of thinking to um one way of course is meditation it's the traditional approach is you have certain periods of time once or twice a day when you sit down close your eyes and instead of involuntarily being drawn into the continuous stream of thinking you usually in with meditation you have a technique or method you focus your attention on one thing which could be a mantra that you preach it could be your breathing it's a very ancient meditation it could be the inner feeling in your body the sense of aliveness that pervades pervades your body in other words you take attention away from thinking and that's already a great realization that you are able you ever actually have a choice of directing attention you don't have to go to you don't have to go with your attention all the time where the habitual thought patterns want you to go the habitual thought it runs want your attention every time every thought says I met like give me your attention follow me they go this way and another negative thought and another one and another one compassion for yourself of course is as important as compassion for others when you uh often I get asked questions like people who did something that they now realize realize was deeply wrong in the past sometimes people ask questions about they brought up their children in a way that they now realize was not very conscious and so that they may have caused suffering to their children or other people find they have caused suffering to loved ones and they now realize that what they did was wrong and again I say this is an example where you need to be compassionate with yourself because no human being can act beyond their level of Consciousness so that was your level of conscience at the time and you could not go beyond that and again here to make demands upon yourself up to a point it might be a good thing to to if you as long as you enjoy it it's a wonderful thing when the enjoyment of what you're doing is lost then you have to be careful because there you have to come to a stop and say okay there's there's something here that's not right because I'm no longer enjoying what I'm doing also to make sure you're at your action after watching this video I designed a special free worksheet just for this video the worksheet will highlight all the Lessons Learned in this video as well as pull out our three favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something the worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results if you want the worksheet design specifically for this video absolutely for free there's a link in the description below go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business I'll see you there a lot of so-called unhappiness is also a childish way of trying to change things by being as unhappy as you can about them and the underlying unconscious or semi-conscious assumption is if I'm really unhappy somebody perhaps God is going to do something about it or I'm going to prove him wrong I'm going to show him how Dreadful it is and then finally this is an unconscious assumption behind the unhappiness because you believe if you're habitually and frequently unhappy you believe that it has a purpose it's an underlying assumption perhaps you wouldn't verbalize it in that way but you believe that it it's it works for you because it doesn't but things are going to change but just need to be really unhappy so that God finally even if you don't believe in God's this can still be the mechanism the underlying unconscious assumption behind it it's something is going to happen and of course the opposite is true because the more unhappy are with something the more you are stuck in the situation how you do what you do is more important than what you do you could have a you could have a stores serving customers with this or that which perhaps would not be regarded as a very uh important job and yet if that is done with a quality of presence where every customer comes into your store you give this person you just an example your fullest attention you appreciate him or her as a human being you see how you can best serve him or her in the present moment that is quality and then you would be improving everybody who comes into contact with you would somehow experience a small lifting in in their being in Consciousness and so that you could create a even a person with a relatively in relatively simple job could contribute in that way to creating a better world I need my story all the things that my I've been telling myself in my mind about myself and other people and my parents and my relatives and my co-workers and my ex-wife and my ex-husband and what people did to me and on what or what I did and shouldn't have done failed to do who am I without that I can't let go of that I need to think about this more so it becomes a habitual place the habitual place of the of the mental noise where you feel that's me and so if every therapist knows that you always reach a point where they are clients patients whatever depending on the school of therapy depends whatever you call the your clients your patients whatever there comes a point when you hit that resistance They Don't Want to Be Free of their problems and that the big challenge is there is this person going to overcome that barrier because that barrier is not just becoming free of my problems but also becoming free of a very limited and ultimately fictitious sense of identity the me so that is what I've described is the next step one could say in the evolution of human consciousness is stepping out of self-talk which is the conditioned mind and realizing there is much more to who I am than this conditioned content of my mind and that is the beginning of Awakening it's not it's not those words not not that you need to believe that there is much more to who I am than the self-talk in my head because that is still self-talk in the head I believe there's more to who I am and you better believe it too analytical thinking itself or processing information is not creative so to to even to find a creative a new solution to a problem in your life requires some creative Insight so whether it's a problem in your work situation or your personal life or something that you need to build or do and you have come to a dead end or you want to create something whatever it is a work of art or a new system for the computer I don't know the expressions for that you need to go to the place where creativity arises and every human who brings who is creative has some access to that even if they don't know it it seems to be as a general pattern at work that it is inherent in the nature of physical existence of life forms that challenges unessential ingredient of their lives and here and part of the way through which they evolve and when they say they Evolve Real means is the one Consciousness evolves awakens into this dimension through the different life forms in different ways and it awakens only because we are being challenged and that's already that is a quite a relief to realize to be Charles doesn't mean there's something wrong [Laughter] there's something wrong with my knife that shouldn't be if you believe or act every as if this shouldn't be happening then you get really unhappy then the challenges become transformed into unhappiness inside you know if it's not unhappiness it's resentment if it's not resentment it's it's anger it's self-pity it's complaining it's despondency instead of several the simple reason that you are misunderstanding the very purpose of life and expecting something that your mind has come up with it should be different some people are afraid of not succeeding in whatever they do because they have a self they they their self-image which is derived from thinking uh would suffer if I fail at something then I will myself image will be injured and therefore I'm not even going to try and again that's to do with deriving your identity from thinking and even the thought I have failed is a lie I am a failure is an even greater lie you have not failed you can simply reinterpret those I've learned something here this is not from me for example so but why believe the lies that your mind produces so as you know people many people live with a very hostile mind that's but those people are the motivation their motivation will probably be very great I would hope to get out of their minds but first I need to realize that their problems are self-generated mind generated we may be surprised to know that there are millions billions of people on the planet who have that same thought pattern there's something wrong with me it's part of the human ego but so you bring in the awareness and that will change everything that's the only true key if you fail next time you're the anger arises what happens you will become aware immediately after the anger has subsided and then oh there it was and I wasn't present and then the that the moment will come when you are there in the first if you can catch the anger the first moment it comes or if you might even see that it could be the result of a thought that creates the anger and if you can be there in the first moment because before it becomes the fully blown anger then you can stay there and it might not even become fully blown anger if you catch it the first moment you can feel the first stirrings of anger you may only have three seconds it may come very quickly and goes like an explosive energy you may only have two three four five seconds just to to bring the stay there with your awareness and feel it oh that it's coming there it is that's the pain body the angry pain body coming and if you catch it in the early stage don't suppress it by catch it I mean feel it be there as the witness then you can stay even as it grows the witness grows with it it may not even grow we'll have to see whether it still grows into full-blown anger or not that doesn't matter and so you be thankful for your anger because the anger can become a very important spiritual practice for you because through it awareness can grow so it's it's a sometimes strange for people to see you can be thankful for things that you think are the most difficult obstacles in your life but they become they can become their greatest opportunity for for Spiritual Awakening use it as part of your practice you can there is a source of power in you that transcends the person and it's not egoic power over somebody and it's one with the power that is the power of life in the universe where all life arises and people sometimes have a problem with self-confidence [Music] or valuing yourself and sometimes you try to convince yourself by changing your thinking that you are actually good enough that you should be self-confident but there is a better way to to find the source of self-confidence on the egoic level self-confidence is there because you see you can tell yourself I'm actually more intelligent in most of these people or I'm better looking than most I have to remind myself that I'm better looking than most and then you okay yeah I feel a bit more confident now or you say I actually have more money than these people so I should I have more self-confidence whatever it is some way of convincing yourself and then you compare yourself with others and then you focus in on those areas where you feel Superior to others and try not to think about other areas where inevitably you are inferior to others because you cannot be superior in all areas it's a complicated game when you start start comparing yourself to other people and if you want to bolster yourself confidence and you only have to focus on where you feel I'm actually better than most but that doesn't really work that well um so there is a better way of self-confidence that has nothing to do with comparing yourself with others or with feeling you are better than or not as good as and that is direct access to Inner power you don't need any comparison you can have it right now at this very moment if you're not stuck in your thinking mind but take your attention a little bit beyond the thinking mind and then realize that you are the presence behind the thinking mind without which there could be no thinking you're the aware presence behind it all that that is deeper you've gone deeper than the thinking mind and that aware presence is where power resides and it's not yours because it connects you with universal power therefore you don't need to compare yourself to anybody anymore or feel as the ego always does that you are either Superior or inferior to somebody else that's a not a comfortable way to live where you have to classify yourself when you meet people and so if the fears always I might be inferior or behind that fear is a desire to be superior what happens when you pay attention to the way in which you interact with objects and what is okay it's used every minute of the day this you pick something up you put something down you unbutton your search you you take off your shoes you lift this put this there open your back zipper back [Music] you look inside take something out can you feel it as you take it out can you feel the text of that and then you put it on the table it makes a sound as you put it on the table and then you have a glass of water and the light is reflected in it and it moves perhaps you drink and it tastes and you put it down again and then you look at a familiar object and instead of using it always as a means to an end here you have the luxury of occasionally just taking an ordinary object that you handle every day and just for a few seconds give it give it attention and acknowledge its being just as that as that object just feel it see it makes it as it makes a noise as you put it down and again you bring incense perceptions getting dressed in the morning putting his pants on they make a noise as you put them on a little bit listen do things you pick up the toothpaste you hold it for a moment put the cap on the sink click and then turn on the tabs and then while you brush your teeth you turn off the tap because you don't want to waste water but but that's not part of the exercise and it's you can actually begin to like and to enjoy the tiniest things around you that would normally be completely overlooked the essence of the way in which you interact with a world of objects and that brings a richness into your life that doesn't depend on how many objects you own you don't need to own them to interact with them and so here to acknowledge their beingness and you sometimes you might just put your hand as I'm doing now here's a table it's wood and I'm putting my hand on it and for a moment I feel the smooth texture surface of this table and it it feels very pleasant and I don't but I don't need the mind to tell me that I can I can sense that and the strange thing is even so-called inanimate objects in a strange way have a life of their own the true self-esteem comes from not identifying with form now whether we even want to call it self-esteem I don't know the true sense of worthiness and of power true power comes when you realize the formless in yourself that dimension and that all power comes from that but it's not it goes far beyond the person that you are and then you are rooted in the formless so to speak or you are it and that there's enormous sense of worthiness in there but it's not comparative it's not more than you see the same worthiness in everyone even if they don't know it for themselves yet so there's power but not not more than there's just there's just the power of life itself and you know everybody is an expression of that although they may not know it yet everybody so this is your transcend conventional self-esteem and it doesn't mean you lose your sense of worth it shifts into something much deeper if you think the world is full of evil people you will meet many evil people and in other words unconscious people and even people who are on the break or who are halfway between constant unconscious when you come together with them your belief will pull them into unconsciousness and that's Karma so karma is the complete absence of conscious presence and so it's it's automatic it plays itself out and time does not free you of karma that is a misperception that if you always have enough time eventually you can become free of karma karma reduce itself and repeats itself but it's it's a wheel and so the only thing that can free you of karma is the arising of presence and why how is it that for us some person presence right I don't I cannot tell you why I only know that at any point in the wheel of karma presence can come in it can happen to this it can happen to a criminal in prison condemned to death it can happen to somebody who's never heard of anything spiritual it can happen to somebody who's been meditating for 30 years or not happened to sustained person who has been meditating for 30 years so in your own life I can see from what you're saying that presence has already I can sense that presence has already come into your life and presence frees you from karma not all at once Karma has an enormous momentum meaning the patterns in yourself the thought patterns the emotional patterns the reactive patterns there's enormous momentum behind that but as presence arises gradually comma diminishes in its the energy behind it diminishes and gradually you experience of fading out of those patterns they become weaker you're no longer completely in the grip of those patterns so as presence arises there's a gradual fading out of karma not that it matters that much anymore because once you are present you can as we the previous questioner said when we were talking about certain thoughts still arising certain negative thoughts that's still part of the karma the old patterns the unconscious habit patterns inherited they still arise but it's no longer problematic and they no longer cause the suffering that they would have caused before because they are seen in the light of awareness so the light of awareness arises and in the light of awareness the patterns no longer dominate your life they no longer run your life and if occasionally it happens and the patterns do take over then after a little while you presence returns and say oh well there it was again pain body is part of karma your birth may be strong in some people not so strong in others and so as presence arises you are freed from Karma it has and then you have another completely different Factor coming into your life and so for example for a person to become free of collective Karma you need to considerable amount of presence for that to come in to remove and it then will remove you in one way or another either internally you find yourself completely free you might still live in a violent Society but internally you would be free there is such a there is a possibility you can have a holy man or woman living surrounded by violence it's possible it's rare but possible all very often it happens that life removes you out of there and you find yourself somewhere else so let's say vast Collective karma for example in the case of let's say do you have the Taliban there you have all kinds of unconscious movements you had Soviet communism you had national socialism in Germany and for a person being born into that and not being drawn into that unconsciousness requires considerable presence so not that many people for example in Germany had when Hitler came to power not many people were able to remove themselves somewhere some artists some writers they they left they could see what was happening and they they were strong enough not to be identified with a collective when there had been a tradition of obedience to Authority for hundreds of years a tradition of following your leader and so on to to take yourself out of that Collective Karma requires considerable presence but some people had it so it is our destiny then to go beyond Karma by being the receptacles for presence all you can do to be helpful in this world and help others is those people that you come into contact with you may everybody in this who is Awakening will find that sooner or later they become a kind of teacher to others and what a spiritual teacher does the teacher points out the possibility of Awakening out of identification with unconscious patterns which means the spiritual teacher teaches you to go beyond Karma the usual mistake or dysfunctional way to of living unconscious way is as I've mentioned before is devaluing the present moment and all the valuing the next moment ego lives always with reference to past and future the mentally are always somewhere else instead of giving fullest attention to this because this is the most valuable moment why because it's the only one the present moment give your fullest attention to this moment because it's not true that the next moment is more significant because it never comes so there is a way of being totally present in the planning for the neck for the future it's all little things and evenly whoever if you're the pope or the president of a huge corporation or the president of a country but still the same the present moment in its richness is usually overlooked because you're looking for something more significant it's not it's it's fine to achieve things especially if they are beneficial but for Humanity and the totality on the planet it's lovely to have that but they don't even that doesn't make up your identity the more you honor the Small Things the more likely it is that you'll experience more good things in the so-called future because you have such a good relationship with the present the Gratitude isn't an underlying the State of Consciousness which is giving your fullest attention and honoring what is the the power to manifest is in experiencing the [Music] fullness of the present moment the undifferentiated fullness so when you don't complain about not only not other people but also about your life and you can't be a victim anymore I is the light of Consciousness in which these feelings are being experienced right now the victim is a is a huge a huge prison it's not it is not who you are and remember thanks for everything [Music] I have no complaint whatsoever saw this this wonderful Stillness here and let's acknowledge it the power is not just in you it's all around you the Transcendence of thinking means the Transcendence of the egoic Mind it means that you are able to spend part of your time relatively free of compulsive thinking certainly free of self-serving thinking and destructive thinking that continuously creates unhappiness for yourself and the people around you how many people lived in the compulsive narrative in your mind that for many people is very negative constantly critical constantly complaining never at ease with what is there's always something wrong fault finding because the ego grows through the constant opposition constant antagonism never it is always looking for the next thing to complain about and its strengthens the ego itself the it the more you complain oh offended is a new version these days it's very popular on the internet very very offended outrageous how dare you there are thousands or hundreds of thousands that you go on every day they look on their screen waiting for the next scene to be offended by and the ego loves it and for many of them it's the only way they can inflate their ego by sitting on the screen and sending out tweets the Transcendent of thinking is not and any kind of regressive movement we are not regressing to the state of somebody who is whose mind is relatively undeveloped and who does not have a problem with egoic thinking because there's very little going on in their minds what used to be called before it became Politically Incorrect idiot or fool uh the fool was they were always you could see a happy fools there they they don't there's not enough thinking to rank them unhappy so there's they are below egoic thinking in the medieval times every village had at least one village idiot or fool and they were Norm was accepted essential part of the community uh and even the Royal courts had a fool very important figure although that figure probably was just pretending to be a fool and that was one of the most sometimes very influential position in the Royal Court but also one of the most dangerous jobs you could have because you could lose your hand at any moment but only the fool was able to tell the king or queen what was wrong no by making make it into a funny story but the fool is more deeply connected as we know wrong from mythology the fool is more deeply connected with the source still hasn't gone as far out as a normally developed human he's more simple he a fool for example a relatively speaking is a simpleton it's like The Hobbit in Lord of the Rings the The Hobbit The Hobbit is a simple guy um doesn't should something in complex terms loves the simple things of Life loves eating and enjoyment but why the fool has to go on this important mission that nobody else can carry out that's a mythological motive that's often the case because the fool is has a connectedness still with source that the more developed humans don't have similar motive in Forrest Gump the movie the food does great things this guy for his company but he's uh because he's and life always supports him if he watch the movie again he always he he saves people in the war he does heroic things but he doesn't claim credit because he doesn't have much of an ego yet and all his life gives him the next thing and the next thing supports him but we don't want to go there when I say cessation of thinking I'm not talking about regressing to this to the stage it is the pre-thinking stage of humanity I'm thinking about Rising above pointing to the possibility of rising above thinking so you stop thinking which is normally associated with the diminishment of consciousness and Transcendence of thinking is an intensification of Consciousness turning up the light this is why the term attention and alertness those terms are extremely important they're also used in Zen very frequently the Zen teachings could be described if you wanted to summarize then uh is what just because you can just say simple things like pay attention there was one then teacher who would whenever they asked him a question to explain Zen he was became quite famous he we would always raise his finger please explain Zen to us what is saying I haven't quite understood yet [Music] he was calling people to attention now this attention there's a state of attention that sometimes people experience when they engaged in dangerous activity you can climb a mountain do you think you're do you think you're doing much thinking when you're just hanging on this wall no you can't you have to be absolutely present in that moment you have transcended thinking and the situation has forced you is forcing you into complete presence this highest degree of alertness without it you slip and you're gone and so this High degree of Learners however has no has no tension in it in this in the case of somebody practicing the dangerous spot yes there's physical tension but the the state itself has no tension in it and you do not need to engage in a dangerous activity in order to enter that state we are entering it here because even as I talk about it thank you I hope well I don't really hope anything but I I trust that as I speak about it is simultaneously to listening to it you can verify in yourself this state of attention which is a state of very high alertness but there's no tension in it it's not the alertness that is sometimes goes with fear then you go but it's not that's really a contraction of the entire body it's not really alertness so that's not it it's a very it's a relaxed alertness in it coming together and it's it's that if you I just also mentioned the other day when you first look at something for the first few seconds a new Vista a new landscape you enter a room or you step out of a room into the open or whatever it is or suddenly something new comes into your field of into your perceptual field in the first two or three seconds you you don't know what it is you have to First Take it in there's a moment of a large presence in this but usually you're only aware of the sense perception you're not aware of the background of the alert presence itself but you can be aware of the alert presence itself as you take it in and that's the key so you're not just alertly present you're aware of the field of alert presence in yourself so to speak as yourself and the awareness of it and it are the same thing cessation of thinking now you can try it let's even now I would suggest that as I'm speaking you may find you may not know this yet in the moments when I'm not speaking like now and now and now if you're alert you're not thinking you're just present and now there's just an alert field of presence so some of you may not be able yet to be totally free of thinking but I believe that most people are able to feel better they have short gaps of north or pure awareness or no thought just to show and then you look around in that moment your whole your personal sense of self has receded in the moment of pure presence which is just this you have no memories and you have no expectations for future yeah because you have no thought but you're not you haven't fallen asleep you're very awake in that moment you're not a person anymore what are you just a field of Consciousness conscious presence something has emerged from within you and has taken place of the person is still there it's just gone receded if the only thing you achieve in life is this that you are able to become be free of compulsive and addictive thinking if you're able to almost one could say to choose not to think when there's nothing in particular to think about when it can just be present so in other words if you can step out of thinking into aware presence that alert space then that is the greatest thing you could achieve in this lifetime that any human could achieve in this lifetime and yet there's nobody left to say I have achieved it that's the problem for the ego the ego would love to say oh I have achieved the state of of presence thank you so it's not an achievement I'm just saying it's an achievement but it's not really because you didn't do it you got out of the way and then it happened you know that look into that I'm rarely content or grateful that's interesting it's very good self observation too I'm not content at this moment I'm not content my thinking is so negative another good piece of knowledge my thinking is negative at this moment what are the thoughts that are going through my head so if you apply the awareness that is already there hiding behind all these things if you apply the awareness to the present moment when these things arise defensiveness what is low self-esteem it's something that you tell yourself about yourself in your mind is certain repetitive thoughts that the voice in the head tells you those are this is self and low self-esteem you there might be certain emotions that go with it emotionally but really those bases for low self-esteem is something you tell yourself about your low words it's thoughts now it's not already knows that she has low self-esteem and if she can know that she has low self-esteem in the moment of the low self-esteem arising as thoughts she can recognize them as thoughts and not necessarily true thoughts arising repetitive thoughts that condition thoughts perhaps this road self-esteem might have started in childhood it often happens to people whose parents are very critical or parents tell them you're never good enough it this can be one reason so it might have started there it's a conditioned way of thinking conditioned thoughts now the awareness that's already there in the questioner would need to be there in the moment of those things arising and then you can see when these thoughts arise you recognize them as thoughts that are rising and you're no longer completely trapped in what these thoughts are saying in other words to use an analogy that we used not long ago you can your sense of being is not in the thought anymore it's in the awareness of the thought in other words if you look at the sky the vast Sky daytime at this time let's look at a daytime Sky the vasts the vastness of that the huge expansiveness of the sky is awareness in this analogy and clouds that come our thoughts so when the clouds come why can't I never do anything right why are other people's most successful than me or I'm not good at this when these thoughts come instead of being drawn into those clouds and then the clouds get bigger and bigger you remain the sky and allow the clouds to pass and then to pass away and that means you begin to no longer you're no longer feeding conditioned thinking and you are separating who you are you're taking your identity out of thinking thinking for a while has a chiller momentums old patterns will come again and again but you're no longer renewing them you're no longer feeding them by how do you feed them by identifying with every thought that comes there's a self in it it's in so you separate yes you are the awareness behind the thought same applies to any kind of negative thinking you recognize it as automatic it arises and it's a thought so but you are the awareness that knows that this is a negative thought pattern and if that can grow because it's already there to some extent if that grows which means deepens then those condition patterns will diminish they get transmuted foreign so another one point here mentioned I get defensive easily defensive can happen happens very very quickly in in human interactions the defensiveness can come up so quickly it's an automatic pattern and you may only know it afterwards or that was defensiveness again uh and defensiveness isn't of course these are all ego ways of the ego to protect itself ego being the Mind Made itself defensiveness will will just come up with any any lie just to keep its ego identity intact so it'll come up with anything uh just to it's automatic so you can of Course in Miracles as analyze lovely saying which is uh whenever you become defensive about anything know that you have identified with an illusion you have identified yourself with an illusion that's interesting is that true let's say you say that the distance from here to the Moon is 300 uh I think in kilometers it's like 350 000 or so kilometers and that the light takes just over one second to travel from the Moon to the Earth and you know that for a fact well I know that I haven't verified it myself but it seems to be true and somebody else says no that's completely untrue it actually takes one minute it does now this is just a difference of opinion or Viewpoint and of course you know very well that the other person is wrong now if you if you say no that's not right is that defensiveness well it depends how you say it the question is are you identified with your mind which has this position which happens to be true but are you identified with that mental position in other words is it do you derive your sense of self from thought if you identified with you will get angry and defensive about the other person who is so completely wrong and you might say things like well if you know that person well you always doubt me why do you always doubt me you never believe what I say do you that's called defensiveness and that's the ego trying to protect yourself and then the cause and Miracle thing applies know that when you become defensive about anything know that you've identified with yourself with an illusion the illusion is not that it takes one second for the light from the Moon to travel to the Earth it's not what the illusion is the illusion is that you identified with a thought with a mind pattern and so you are strengthening an illusory identity [Laughter] by identifying by strengthening the mental position of me my mental position that's unconscious so this is how just a difference of opinion can degenerate into huge conflict just a small difference of opinion because the ego becomes defensive so that requires alertness on your part so that you know when it arises oh so whenever you become defensive so without ego the same conversation would go no it takes one minute I know that for a fact the other person says it takes one second I don't think it takes a minute uh well no you're wrong it takes one second okay well we'll leave it at that then I think it's a second and you think it's a minute end of the story that would be without without defensiveness or ego okay and then you can go on on off where everybody goes on the internet and that would definitely solve it and in extreme forms of egoic unconsciousness you will say what it says in Wikipedia is wrong oh they didn't get it right that may bring me to another question or just to to end on this question the key is your awareness so that that deepens then all those patterns that you mention will weaken uh and there's already a considerable amount of awareness in this person the questioner the awareness of course isn't the person but it's deeper in the person the thing is to apply the awareness to the present moment when things arise not in some abstract way I am a defensive person will I ever become a person who is not negative I can't get rid of my negative patterns I'm I'm so negative though it doesn't matter like this moment is what matters so just apply your awareness to this moment you can't change things into mental constructs how can I change myself I don't want to be that kind of a person anymore look at it to this moment this is where you apply presence as I sometimes call it I haven't used that expression in a while the sort of presence that cuts through time and you go until you apply it to this so you need to realize most humans have this inbuilt dysfunction they cannot acknowledge the present moment unconsciously they regard the next moment with if it's a minute from now or an hour from now or two years from now always regarded as more important whenever you are impatient trying to get somewhere waiting for something impatiently what's the next thing I have to do and 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 uh that is I call that sometimes you lose yourself in 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 what if you lose yourself in the doing there's always another and this is how stress arises but stress is the gap in the gap between now and later the projected then now and then in that Gap arises this stress arises so the mental projection towards future creates the stresses between you where I'm here but I want to be there and for many humans that is their predominant State they are always they are here but they don't they really want to be there either they're 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 and that is the world has to make so many demands upon you 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 uh and you lose yourself in the doing you become completely un-centered and and basically lost the many even 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 that 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 you engage in all kinds of activities propelled by thought that I know I need to do this now I need to do that so the basic condition still from most humans on the planet so Prime 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 you identify them they identify with every thought that arises in this many thoughts are about future or the past not that many thoughts 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 the means to an end but it's another recognized for what it is in itself and often it is not it is more than a means to an end form 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 this continuous underlying unease and what's the next thing that is 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 then the the unease the 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 that 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 is not good then you get more deeply entranced and 15 years later you are still undergoing psychoanalysis and finds ever deeper layers of complexity in your past and there's no end to it so the present moment is devalue not recognized I regarded either as a means to an end or an obstacle that is the for many humans that is their predominant state of mental emotional state and as I said the identity is derived from that so it's the the 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 that identifies with the story what is it that creates this sense of identity that is mostly 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 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 that 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 10 years is there any and can you feel for example if it is an irritation somewhere is there some kind of anxiety is there kind of heaviness a certain heavy mood a despondent mode 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 when 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's anger in me right 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 because when you say I am you equate I with whatever condition is there in you this applies to emotion and it also applies to a thought when because anger is often is not just the anger as emotion the anger also exists as a angry thoughts and then they they in they reinforce each other as a vicious circle when you when they 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 or despondent person on anxious person They Don't Really Want to Be Free of the anger they don't want their turn if you suggest it to an angry person you can be free you will not get a pleasant answer and you you've seen angry people who 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 the minute later the door opens they come back because they're sort of something else to insult you with they are in the grip of it there is a 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 okay 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 one dimension has come in and that I mentioned 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 let's see 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 there's no need to demand the external conditions should be perfect so that you can become still in fact it's sometimes the case that it's precisely when external conditions are seemingly unhelpful that can sometimes be a greater opportunity to find that true Stillness and especially that is the case when external circumstances have the appearance of actually being a hindrance something disturbing something happening that upsets the status quo in your life and those are great opportunities because then your motivation for going deeper as you suffer when things happen in your external life that quote unquote should not be happening then you begin to suffer and as you suffer the motivation eventually arises of going deeper of finding the place where there is no suffering and you could still suffer a little bit on the external level of your life so sooner or later we find in our life that life does things to us seemingly putting obstacles in our past seemingly having bad intentions towards us we experience diminishment in some form of course the ego says or the egoic self says that's terrible I don't want any diminishment the management meaning loss or something [Music] that had become part of your sense of self it could be loss of possessions could be loss of a relationship loss of a loved one loss of a healthy body diminishment of physical health loss of you know Persona of what other people think of you one day they tell you they're the other greatest and the next day they tell you you're awful diminishment of whatever kind is abhorrent to the egoic self there's a beautiful saying I believe it comes originally I'm not sure but it doesn't matter where it comes it comes out of Consciousness so it doesn't really matter [Applause] but I believe it comes originally out of Sufism and that is when the ego weeps for what it has lost the spirit rejoices for what it has found and those people who there's no Human by the way who does not experience this in life several times sooner or later the next one comes some people experience it even very early in life some children have experienced loss of a parent of both parents so diminishment comes sooner or later how do you meet it recognize it when it comes not as a monster or the work of some malevolent deity or demon that wants to sabotage your life but as an opportunity also now you may not be able to be grateful for it in the moment of it happening there would be Perhaps Perhaps too much to ask but you will find that uh later a year may pass two years depending on what it is suddenly realize that it has taken you deeper into the essence of who you are because something was removed from you that you thought you were but it was a fiction ultimately you had identified with something that ultimately is not who you had the temporary thing possessions not status great physically strong body good looks a relationship and they need a retrospectively very often you should be able to be grateful for the loss for the diminishment because it drove you deeper it brought out the essence of who you are Beyond any form now it does not do that to all humans it's for everybody the management is only a potential deepening the the possibility is there many many humans are not able to use it because nobody has told them the knowledge this kind of spiritual knowledge is still very limited it is not part of mainstream culture people are dying every day without having any true assistance people who are approaching deaths who are getting old the our mainstream culture still knows nothing it's just let's prolong life as well as long as mostly even if it's totally pointless and it creates a lot of suffering let's just because we don't know what to do with this that's one of the reasons why the foundation will hopefully be able to reach people to use the opportunity of this greatest diminishment which is death the greatest when as you approach this an enormous opportunity for Spiritual Awakening realization but many humans of course miss the opportunity of that diminishment and with the result that the ego becomes even more hardened through it or in the words of Brother David shriveled shriveled up to an even harder life listing then either you carry continuous anger or resentment or despondency for years which becomes part of your egoic identity and the ego loves any kind of identity if it's a miserable one doesn't matter I'll have it just give me a strong identity may I take miserable anytime over being nobody so the opportunity of diminishment is missed often you see when people they're wealthy people and suddenly something happens they lose their money and then they jump out of the window because the entire sense of self was associated with their possessions there are people who lose their reputation or you remember of course the case of Mr Madoff years a few years ago who had this scheme fraudulent schemes and people lost millions or billions of people who were investing with him on Wall Street they lost it was a pyramid it was a Ponzi scheme I think it's the word so here just deceiving all these people and they lost all their money and he had accumulated billions and then finally it all collapsed now he's in prison and his sons couldn't take it one one of his sons apparently the sons didn't know what was going on I don't know if that's true but they were also working in his firm in his company I think believe one died of cancer soon after and the other committed suicide would have been a great opportunity if only somebody had told them you've lost your money you've lost your reputation is a great opportunity [Music] find yourself the opening is there but it's just lack of information nobody told them I hadn't actually thought of this until this moment because we had want to bring the the teaching to places where it otherwise would not be go not reach and I just thought of Wall Street thank you we will donate books and CDs to both [Applause] so we'll have to call Goldman Sachs tomorrow see if they agree now they won't be very interested perhaps at the moment but they may become interested in the future [Music] just wait so you have already I believe everybody here has already experienced some forms of diminishment to use that word through the physical form the psychological me entity and for many the reason why you're here is because you've gone through that and it has deepened you in the collapse of a relationship you don't even have don't have to be married but you have a relationship doesn't go well it ends it's a little death can be painful it leaves a little hole in you it takes it seemingly rips something out of you and for quite a while you feel it it's not pleasant but there too is an opportunity so when the ego weeps for what it has lost oh dear there's so terrible I'll tell you what happened and I'll tell myself what happened even if nobody's listening [Music] okay I can't take anymore of this I just can't take this it's just too much what's the point of it all just completely of course it's good to act out the the ego sometimes because then you can actually see it is like a reflection in the mirror because it's funny because you remember everybody knows familiar with that in some way and that's why it becomes funny I I'm learning from Marianne yesterday because she has other ways of acting out the ego it's a little bit more feminine but I can try that too it may look a little weird when I do it you know [Music] but it's there's a lot in it that doesn't really need to be explained in words just this simple gesture implies a self-image to look at yourself through a self-image with me be grateful for whatever you experience of this moment is and if you cannot be grateful at least allow it to be because it already is you might as well now if you did this little thing it sounds very little and it is very little allowing your experience of this moment to be the way it is just this little thing would remove oh well it's hard to put it in percentage terms let's say 95 percent of the suffering from your life I don't know about the rest of five percent we'll get to that sometime that would already remove a gigantic chunk of unhappiness in whatever form unhappiness is the most generic term one could use the Buddha called it suffering and so for the next six months then that obviously is one of the practices not to internally resist your experience of this moment now of course thank you many times [Music] possibly you'll forget that and that's fine the moment you realize that you forgot it it's there again and then you can accept the experience of this moment as the unhappiness that is arising in you because you forgot to accept your experience of this moment and so you feel this unhappiness arising in you and you say where does that come from oh I forgot to accept my experience of this moment and then say you accept the unhappiness and the weird thing with unhappiness is when you completely accept the unhappiness it cannot survive very long it doesn't like it cannot actually co-exist with acceptance so the weird thing that arises that you say something like okay I'm unhappy it's okay I don't mind being unhappy foreign it's not supposed to happen the kind of the unauthiness can just can't survive for very long were the acceptance even the acceptance of unhappiness not indulging in unhappiness but the acceptance not the acceptance of unhappiness it presupposes that there's an awareness there that knows that you're unhappy now that might sound like something very natural but it isn't because the most unhappy people and they're still millions and of course they have reasons for being unhappy yes the and it's not necessarily the people who you'd think would have the the most powerful reasons for being unhappy it's often those who you would think well they there are many millions you have it worse than they but these are more happy than those that's often the case it's all the unhappiness is something that when it's recognized as unhappiness and accepted something happens to it it begins to dissolve but the really unhappy people are so identified with the unhappiness which is a combination of certain recurring thoughts in your head a certain narrative that is not pleasant whether it is about my life whether the narrative says my life or Dreadful thing in my life why did it all go so wrong so wrong wrong and now I still have to that's it's nothing I can do and at least I'm or whether the narratives about somebody else The Narrative maybe about something that hasn't happened yet and it goes on and on or something that happened in the distant past or not so distant past there so there's a narrative and then the emotions that are reflection of the narrative The Narrative is thoughts certain types of thoughts the certain thought that have a certain frequency and and then that awakens the emotional frequency because the body thinks the narrative in your mind is a reality that is the reality that you're experiencing so you the body reacts with an emotion it's simple it's simple example at night you can't sleep because you're extremely worried about what's going to happen to you or somebody close to you [Music] or even the world and it all sounds very critical is a crisis in your head not outside outside your head there's a pillow and there's a a blanket or even something big and fluffy and soft down duvet [Music] and there's no unhappiness there and if you look around the bedroom also where's the unhappiness art is okay it's not unhappy it's all happening here [Music] and then the body since that Israel the critical reality that you inhabit you are there is a crisis in your life the body doesn't know the difference between what's actually happening and what's happening in your head what's happening in your head is taken to be the absolute reality and then you experience the emotion that goes with that kind of narrative and so there's no awareness and when you're trapped in that you don't even really know that you are unhappy because you are the unhappiness the unhappiness has become your identity so when you become the unhappiness you don't even know that you're all soft let's use the Buddhist term suffering when you are in this deep suffering you don't even know you're suffering because the suffering is a gigantic huge chunk part of your dead sense of self you are a suffering entity and as all therapists know that once the patient or the client or whatever they call the people that come to them according to their school the they reach a point where there's a possibility of going beyond the deep-seated patterns unconscious patterns and then there's a huge resistance very often because the person is afraid of losing a very important piece of their identity and sometimes it's the most important part of the identity if they have lived with an unhappy sense of self for years and perhaps even decades they don't want to let go and again they don't know that consciously they they never say I do not want to let go but if they could say that then that means there's already some awareness so lack of awareness lack of presence that is the unawakened state that still unfortunately millions of humans are trapped in that but the moment you know you recognize your inner state that that means there is an awareness which is there is another dimension of Consciousness that has emerged in you through you a deeper dimension of Consciousness that is not the conditioned thinking that's what we can call it awareness we can call it presence you can call it the unconditioned consciousness and then the beginning of Freedom around the possibility of Freedom arises and since it's from there that you recognize your inner states as they arise from there that you recognize your unhappiness and say oh you can like you can feel the unhappiness but the moment you become aware of suffering on happiness in you you're no longer feeding it with your thoughts as long as you're not aware you're feeding it there's a vicious circle you're feeding it with your thoughts with your narrative and you're trapped in the Vicious Circle your narrative creates more unhappiness the unhappiness creates more thought and you're trapped in that so for the next six months and and hopefully Beyond because it's much more pleasant way to live you make it your practice to be aware of your inner states and meaning no matter what situation arises in your life whether it's the little things big things difficult situations difficult people challenges problems because the next six months are not going to be free of challenges and problems so whatever it is realize that the primary factor in any situation is your inner state because that determines how you respond so no matter what it is your primary responsibility is to be aware of what goes on inside you and that means whatever arises in your life is actually to be used in your practice so that you do not become dependent on what's going on externally in your life so your inner State gradually is no longer determined perhaps still a little bit yes but not to completely determined by our events people situations and so on inner Freedom arises that's Awakening how you how you responded and that if you I have to we can use the two words react respond the way I use them is react means it's a comically determined reaction you you you you act you react out of the conditioning of your mental emotional field response implies that you are present and your action is no longer determined by the mental emotional the conditioning of the person there is a higher intelligence one could say or I I call I call it wisdom but in other words there's a high intelligence it can then operate in your daily life a higher intelligence which we could call Western so it's not the conventional intelligence that you can measure in IQ tests that's a very limited version of intelligence there's a higher intelligence that comes in through presence that deals more intelligently with any situation that arises in your life that's that's the only possible way of dealing intelligently is by um dealing with the situation through presence especially important of course in human relationships it's so much unconsciousness that happens in the interaction between human beings between two human beings and larger numbers of human beings and then groups of your collectives of your millions of human beings here and another million there and there or this you can see when you look at politics and Affairs and so what's happening in the world there's very little intelligence the way they deal with things and you would be you're amazed how can they be so short-sighted and ultimately have to use a simple word stupid but these people have degrees they have University degrees how can they be so stupid because well they only activate it if a very very limited version of intelligence that you can measure in IQ tests that's not enough you you I'm sorry I don't want to confront anybody who has a very high IQ uh or is a member of this there's an organization called menza I believe so if you have a very IQ you can be a member of that and that's good for your identity of course so I don't want to take anything away from you but the there is that is what real intelligence it's sort of yes it is a form of intelligence but it's a relatively low form of intelligence a much higher intelligence comes in through presence and that is lacking in the world there are occasionally you see the very rarely you see a politician actually you can see oh this person has some real intelligence and insights and it's usually not the people who are running things it's if it's a politician it's usually somebody who's been pushed to the periphery of politics and from there he used to see comments on the under the stupidity of what's happening in the wild I've observed it it's in different countries to a similar phenomenon they are okay there are a few people here and there who like you can see clearly where we are going and what we're doing it it's crazy because there is a lack of true this higher intelligence that is beyond the egoic mind and um well at the moment it doesn't look good because we're going one now I was going to use that weird expression about the hand basket again [Laughter] so you can see it now it's important when you look at the state of the world um it's important that you don't you do not enter a reactive mode because that will draw you into unconsciousness if you also if you watch too much television or current affairs you will be drawn into most likely unconsciousness unless you watch it as an uh you watch it as an anthropological study of how misguided Humanity can be so you need to stay present while you look at all this and see what's happening question may arise shouldn't I be doing something to well there may be something you can do bring some sanity into this world perhaps to saying something speaking out pointing out something not clear not creating enemies if you see people that do you are deluded in what they say or do don't make them into enemies and to track them and say you are totally crazy no it's the it may be that the what they what they do maybe and probably is [Music] dysfunctional and stupid or the the opinions they hold maybe the extremely misguided and irrational so you can you can address the opinions that they hold their mental positions and point out the irrationality and so on without making the people who hold their opinion into enemies so don't equate the mental positions that people hold with who they essentially are you can speak out maybe you can post something on one of the many platforms that are available something there that is saying rather than insane but it may perhaps you can post something that points out the insanity of it all some people do that so that's a good thing now because some people makes suddenly say oh yes that's true foreign so high intelligence comes in and that can then deal with situations and that's the end of karma what humanity is doing now collectively is uh Karma playing itself out the movement of unconsciousness and so as we mentioned yesterday with reference to individuals you remember we talked about responsibility I had you can you hold a person responsible for what they do if they are unconscious we talked about that yesterday if they are in the grip of their their mental emotional conditioning that is part of that's a Karma can you hold a karmic formation person can you hold a karmic formation responsible for what they do not really so there's a deep wisdom in what Jesus said forgive them for they know not what they do forgiveness means the realization that they are not responsible they can but I cannot do otherwise but we also in this also applies to the collective what all the politicians are doing and so on they don't they don't don't know any better they are in the grip of egoic reactivity and short-sightedness it comes with it and so on but as as it is the case with individuals although they may not be and are not cannot be held responsible and yet they have to suffer the call the consequences of their unconscious this is how humans ultimately awaken they are not responsible they still have to they create suffering for themselves and others and through the suffering that true created through the uncle by the unconsciousness an Awakening happens still in other words the ego yeah is necessary for the Awakening to happen the ego ultimately self-destructs it has built into it a self-destruct function that is Ultimate wisdom so that's also applies to the collective already if you look at the 20th century the wars that happened and the internal conflicts in countries it happens the countless Millions upon Millions killed by other humans what they did the terrible suffering this is all the movement of unconsciousness there they can't they don't know what they do and then they solve Humanity suffers and suffers and suffers through the suffering gradually an Awakening happens so the the the ego's dysfunction creates suffering and ultimately the suffering acts as an awakener it's just a question of how much longer is the suffering going to go and what's the next stage you may ask in the on the scale of collective suffering I don't know but it doesn't look good at the moment but you are here to represent to embody the higher intelligence I mean hopefully you don't make that into a mental concept I embody the higher intelligence [Music] oh it is true but it should not become a mental concept that you identify with and so the sanity you you embody the sanity in a world that is still predominantly one has to say insane in many ways not all of it is insane but a lot of it some important parts are insane so let's see what the whatever comes is it may be bad from from the lower perspective doesn't look good but ultimately everything that happens in the service of the evolution of consciousness even in your own life and if it applies in your own life it also applies to the collective of humanity adversity can either he can strengthen the ego or it can gradually or in some cases suddenly dissolve the ego or at least diminish it it can go either way and I must agree with you I don't know whether you literally said it in perhaps still in the majority of cases it strengthens the ego because nobody knows people don't know the opportunity that every adversity represents so why does it happen how does it strengthen the ego you can see it sometimes with people who are sick of people who are disabled to us let's say I've met disabled people people with physical disabilities for example and in some cases they are very they're really angry with the world and bitter because look at what happened to me they say why do I can't move anymore I've been Afflicted with this what have I done to deserve this and these are questions that are still there the justifiable questions the uh the question what what have I done to deserve why has the world or whatever they say go to the world the universe or whoever they've done this to me while and then they become bitter and angry and the ego becomes more and more rigid and hardened and uh [Music] oh Lord and so that is one way it could go and then I have met people with disabilities who through their disability at some point whether through a spiritual teaching and in some cases never come into contact with any spiritual teaching it just happened that at some moment they realized intuitively that all the suffering was generated in the school resistance and then the resistance to the is-ness of their life this moment they were able to let go because perhaps the suffering was getting too much something happened something clicked inside or even if it didn't happen completely they were able to have moments of uh inner peace an inner peace that is not caused by an external condition an inner peace that seems to be in control contradiction to an external condition so that they would survive How could a person who is suffering this feels so peaceful and so um also that applies to people who are approaching the end of their lifespan because they have some illness and they have been to the doctor and the doctor says you have six months or one year and so and suddenly something Inland opens up and all that remains is that the person already dies there's no more future and All That Remains is the present moment and the the aware space so I've had the privilege of working with when I was still seeing individuals where the two or three people to whom that happened and they became luminous beings in the last few weeks or months of their lives and became just there was no there wasn't I couldn't see there was any person left there was only a space of conscious presence left just wonderful as if they had just come into this world so they came and then they came to me and then still asking questions very profound questions wanting to understand what happened and it was beautiful so this can happen it can happen collectively to people who have Google through Warfare and in countries or become refugees they lose everything and again it can go either way uh whenever there's any great loss in your life that again an opportunity opens up if if you resist and you regret you resist the resistance origin the origin of their existence is a narrative that forms in your mind uh that says something about the situation and about your life and about other people uh so the narrative forms in your mind and the narrative is an unhappy one and then there's continuous resistance and non-alignment with the isness of the present moment now one could ask well how could somebody who is lost who's lost their home perhaps even lost love loved ones and then they don't know where to go how could this person be in a state of alignment with the present moment isn't that how can how can somebody accept the unacceptable except that which in conventional terms would be regarded as unacceptable how is that how is that possible but that's precisely it if you can accept the unacceptable that is the sudden the opening and then you realize the unacceptable is actually not unacceptable it is acceptable and the I was homeless was a period in my life with not knowing where to what to live on the network next day or the next week and I had already gone into a state of acceptance so it was a very pleasant experience but potentially would have been extremely unpleasant so not having a home was for me already something that wasn't not experienced as something bad but I knew I had to take some action eventually to to get a home and so gradually something happens I don't want to talk too much about that I also mentioned in the the new ass I believe um when I was at University there was the Stephen Hawkins the physicist who was confined to a wheelchair who passed away a few couple of years ago on there it was um he would always he wasn't famous at that time only famous locally in the University we would always be in the same dining room having lunch but not the same table I never we met him was introduced as well observed him many times did he better neighboring table and I said and then I the one moment when I hold out opened the door for him he was coming through on his wheelchair and I looked into his eyes and I could see there was no unhappiness in this world you have to be careful with what kind of shorts you absorb from the collective because there's so much unhappiness in the collective energy field of humanity so it's very easy to get drawn into that you're not careful and participate in the suffering of the collective fear anxiety anger that's everywhere it's also very easy to be affected by certain thoughts that can take over your mind that come from the collective thoughts and thoughts patterns anybody who is not sufficiently present sufficiently aware is susceptible to uh being infected by certain thoughts the mind certain thoughts become lodged in your mind that every thought is an energy formation like you could say a little entity thought gets large in your mind and attracts Associated thoughts and becomes a bundle of thoughts and without awareness you identify with the thoughts and then you are in being possessed by certain thoughts they may be they may arise from your personal but very commonly they arise from the collective in your personal life you could develop some kind of thought that of an obsessive nature that occupies your mind and you can't get rid of it um it could be the thought of one directed to one particular person very very negative thoughts um even foreign level some people have you can have a Melody that you can't get rid of in your mind you can have a whole day or two days and you can't get rid of some this thing that's in your mind it repeats itself again and again you can have certain assumptions about this world like they may be totally absurd and irrational or they may be some truth to it but only there may be an aspect of the truth uh you might think that um the most absurd thoughts could be there you might think that's the uh the extraterrestrials already here well there may be but and every other human is actually an alien and you just have to look at them carefully to figure out whether they are aliens or humans and that good I'm not excluding the possibility that some aliens may be here but we are really I'm talking about obsessive thoughts that are probably not correct and then they'd call us your subsequent perception of reality gets totally colored by the obsessive thoughts and it can explain everything in those terms or the evils of the world have suddenly one explanation um another one that's also in the collective you can have a thought that the entire world is divided into oppressor and oppressed are you any human being either belongs to the oppressors or to the oppressed that was an idea in communism in economic terms in terms of Social Power they divided Humanity into oppressors and oppressed and then they look at you can look at any human being he's oppressed he's an oppressor now thing is of course oppressors and oppress have existed and to some extent in Syria and some areas still exist but to take one for one fragment of trolls because the totality of human life is much faster than that this is one aspect but if you take one aspect that then occupies your mind because of lack of awareness you are possessed by a thought and this all tests the entire world this is just one example it could give many examples the entire world is either either the essential Identity or any any human being is either they are oppressed or they are the oppressor no of course if that is the what the thoughts that dominate your mind then obviously you will probably regard the oppressed as the good ones and the oppressors is the bad one so that then that simplifies life enormously you immediately can decide who is good and who is bad and you are probably good presumably um even if you if you're an oppressor traditionally your your you now uh um recognize your sins and you will atone for your sins of being an oppressor and you side with the oppressed and therefore you become one of the good people okay so we had the same phenomenon in very extreme form we all know about Soviet communism we know about Chinese Maori Tung cultural revolution quite a crazy time here to be known national socialism in Germany all these the evils perpetrated by all these Collective delusional systems The Divided people into good and bad entire groups gave them an identity um I was in Cambodia a few years ago and visited the um the the death camps of where the cambodians are it's a small country so not many people are familiar with the recent history of Cambodia but they had a a an extreme Communist Regime and a mad dictator called Pol Pot and in that risk extreme Communist Regime come and Cambodia experience Dreadful suffering one-third of the population was um killed by their own government because they were the oppressors and oppressor was anybody who could read and write because obviously they were exploiting the peasants anybody who wear wore glasses it could would immediately like that's why the oppressor they would be sent from the citizen to the countryside to work on the fields where they didn't have enough food and most of them starved total lack of humanity total like because of the entire country was dominated by one observed and obsessive thought that that made them made it impossible for them to relate to any human being as a human being they relate them through the conceptualization that they that thought had created for them they couldn't sense the humanity the being of the other human anymore the moment they had imposed the conceptual identity on them this is an extreme example of what can happen to you when you're taken over by certain thoughts in your mind is not to mean that of course oppressive impressive existed and exist but it's not not the entire explanation them there are many other facts in this life but I'm saying all this because that you need to be very alert so that your mind is not taken over by certain thoughts that are not um that invade your mind and color your view of reality and there are there are certain irrational thoughts that are floating around in the collective at the present time so it's very easy to for you to absorb some of them and being possessed by certain thoughts and maybe it's so irrational that it's unbelievable but I'm not giving any examples but you have to find it out for yourself with awareness you can and be be very careful with observing your mind be there as the witness of your mind so that you don't get taken over by by certain thoughts that your mind does not get taken over by certain thoughts and then you you you cannot perceive reality anymore as it is you everything is colored by the veil of irrational thinking so when you nowadays these things can spread very quickly and easily these irrational things in the past they were confined to either one country or one area in a particular country but nowadays certainly the rational thoughts can go through the entire world through the technology we have and can quickly affect millions of humans all over the world so in the past you had it as I said limited let's say the uh the the hunt for witches in the past are totally absurd and irrational it's a mental disease that uh affected certain countries or areas in certain countries and this mental disease and uh so there were some places in in Europe there were Villages and towns in Europe in the Middle Ages during that time of collective insanity there were almost no women left in in some villages in Towns at that time if they're all in the burnt okay or drowned because they were called as witches absolute absolute Insanity so don't underestimate how insane humans can become the only um antidote that you have against that is awareness so that your mind does not get affected by mental virus the awareness the awareness is aware of what your mind is doing so that your mind does not get occupied by one particular way of thinking which is probably irrational anything that's one-sided that does not see the totality of a situation like oppressant oppressed uh if you don't see the the many factors that make up a human being's identity uh so very be very careful with what you consume in the media the the media that brings the news to you be very careful with what you consume so that you take do not take on without knowing it unquestingly certain ways of looking at the world uh realize that you're being homanipulative most of the mainstream media has become so you need to watch that if you watching or knowing how you're being manipulated and there there the people themselves are being manipulated too so it's they are in the grip of unconsciousness and they want to draw others into unconsciousness so they are not they're not the evil ones they just don't know any better you are now compared to years ago you went out you are now definitely more conscious than you were before and it could be that in the past when you were not conscious you did things that you know now recognize as not right or you inflicted suffering on another being or other beings and you can now see it at the time you didn't know what you were doing because you were not conscious enough to act differently now the fact that the faster feels guilty means he or she can see something now that he or she could not see then if you were still in the same Consciousness then you wouldn't be able to see that that was wrong it's a you did the right thing by whatever killing that person I did the right thing but now you see you have awakened and then you can see a lot of your past as dysfunctional unconscious action inflicting suffering on yourself and others virtually every unconscious human inflicts suffering both on themselves without knowing it and others they create their own misery and they make others miserable that's what unconscious humans do and some to a greater degree than others so guilt can come up as you awaken and suddenly see how unconscious you were that can bring up guilt and say because the guilt says I did that The Guild says uses the word I but what does that mean what does it mean when you say I what is that I who is I is I the conditioning of your mental emotional conditioning or does I have a deeper meaning is who is I when you think that your mental emotional conditioning is I then you aren't deluded your mental control engaging is not I it is the mental emotional conditioning in you it's a false identity there is no real eye there the only true I is the I am it is you are you the the essence of who you are is consciousness that is the eye I am that I am that's even this how God describes himself when in this property some one of the most profoundest lines in the Bible somebody asked God who are you or what's your name I am that I am because your deepest I am is the I am of the universe it's not personal your deepest identity is the identity of God and of the of the universe this is the eye that's the only true I so when you confuse the unconsciousness of your past which was only conditioning which was a reflection of where humanity is at at its present evolutionary stage you reflected where humanity is in its present evolutionary stage that's all you wear a reflection of the evolving but or the unevolved as yet unevolved human consciousness that's all there is no I in there it's not that I did that the unconsciousness the human unconsciousness did that if you construct an eye out of a human unconsciousness that you represented that is an ego attempt to manufacture another mind made identity for yourself because the ego loves to have a conceptual identity the ego is conceptual identity in the head that's me I so and the ego doesn't mind even if it's a very unhappy conceptual identity it prefers that to having no conceptual identity because that's its end so the ego will cling to the guilt and Associate unconscious action in the past with identity my identity and that's how how the ego can survive for years and you can touch it can torture you for years saying I did that and it's a terrible feeling that that you did that you can now see it as so wrong that was so wrong but it's ultimately a delusion find the true I and then that will free you of that and then you will naturally forgive yourself without needing to take an action and say I must forgive myself that doesn't really work in the same way that it does this can also be applied to other humans you can also do that to other humans what you do to yourself when you see what they did and you can manufacture an identity out of their unconscious action also and then say this is who they are this is who he is who she is it's not it's unconsciousness playing itself out human unconsciousness there is no ultimate identity there but but the Mind likes to manufacture a conceptual identity not only for yourself but also for others so the Mind loves to get indented these are those evil ones and sometimes you do it to a whole group of people those millions of this particular group of people no matter what they are they are this is what they are and this is what they did and this that is who they are no it's human unconsciousness that's all so very careful the same process and then you cannot forgive them because you've made an identity for them out of their unconsciousness and so that's they are their unconsciousness and then forgiveness will be very hard okay I have to try to forgive because I'm supposed to do that I have to forgive them for what they did it's just terrible things but I have to forgive them okay I forgive you uh it's not easy yes the real forgiveness happens when it's just you realize that ultimately there's nothing to forgive and that's true forgiveness there's nothing to forgive and forgiveness happens naturally in this way not not as a conscious thing that you do but a thing that happens by itself it falls away the false identity that you inflicted on yourself or or another human being or a group of human beings let false conceptual identity Falls away and that is an essential part of being here as a conscious human being a conscious human being does not have resentments anymore because what could you resent it's only a few manufacturers due to Identity and this resentment so all those things just they fall away and there's the the flowering of Consciousness you need the chance and you need to challenge yourself if you want to create something if you want to bring about some change in this world you want to make your life your so-called life better you are looking to achieve this or to learn this or to acquire this that's part of being human we don't deny that and if you don't want to achieve anything let's say you have no ambition whatsoever and say oh it's all pointless because you don't want to be you don't want to challenge yourself then life will challenge you even more if you don't if you're challenging yourself would be even to engage in physical activity and jogging you're challenging yourself or you're lifting weights for your challenging the body on a physical level the only way you can make the body stronger the physical body is by making let's put I'll put it like this is a strange way of putting it but it's true you have to make life difficult for your body otherwise it doesn't get stronger well to lift the way it is I mean if you ask the body would you rather have a good just to relax or lift his weight I just want to relax I don't want to make but don't make my life more difficult than it needs to be so I'll just okay you don't get stronger without the but when you you make life difficult for the body then more energy is demanded and more energy comes flowing in the energy isn't come until you demand it as a request or demand for energy because there's a there's a gap between uh what you want and what at the moment the body doesn't have enough energy and suddenly it comes then you reach a point when an influx of energy starts then you it's no longer perceived that the the you make life difficult for your body once the Energy starts flowing the body enjoys this love energy but before the Energy starts flowing life was difficult for the body and so you always you meet always the the threshold of life gets difficult for the body and then energy comes in and then suddenly not even perceived as difficult anymore and that you may experience it every day when you start exercising when I look at you first thing I would see is your personality or of course the physical body and the personality whatever makes up your personality but if I look more deeply and not just look but actually sense your presence I know that beyond your personality there is an Essence in you that it is one with the essence in me and one could describe it as Consciousness itself the essence of Who You Are the essence of who I am is consciousness when I recognize that Consciousness the same Consciousness that in me this Consciousness beyond the condition itself recognizes the Consciousness in you that which is beyond your condition itself and that recognition is what Jesus called love and therefore he said love thy neighbor as thyself but that as a separate statement it doesn't work but when you put it together with Kingdom of Heaven that then it reads find the Kingdom of Heaven within you the dimension of spaciousness then you will recognize your neighbor which is anybody that you are with that you will recognize him or her as yourself and this recognition that in essence you are one that you are deeply deeply connected that you share the one Consciousness when you recognize them in the other then you have suddenly an outflow of benevolence and Good Will and love not the ego love but true love towards the which in the Old Testament in the New Testament Agape spiritual love for another human being you can sense their very beings so and that's the whole secret of the of of all spirituality it's in Jesus in the teaching of Jesus I haven't gone through physical death yet as the design master who was asked about life after death said I don't know and they said why don't you know you're the master and he said yeah but I'm not a dead monster [Music] but I've gone very deeply to what one could call death to identification with form so in a way I have gone into that Realm from where I can say and know that ultimately what we see as death is the dissolution of form that the Eternal in US which I know that firsthand cannot be touched by that so what exactly happens I would say depends on whatever state of consciousness you were in that was be a predominant State of Consciousness in this lifetime if in this lifetime you were continuously identified with form your body or the psychological form of me that means Consciousness this expression of consciousness was still in a somewhat dreamlike state which is identification with form and you can easily extrapolate from that if the tendency of Consciousness to identify with form was still there which in other ways The Awakening had not happened this tendency will continue there will be further identification with form and the process will continue as the Consciousness that is not yet fully awake will continue to identify with form again and then gradually come to a place where Awakening happens or if there has already been a disidentification from form in this lifetime then you can extrapolate from there that the compulsive urge to identify with form and to seek another form or another cycle of form identification this compulsion to seek further experiences through through identifying with form then would either be much weaker or be completely absent in which case the Consciousness that you are is no longer bound to to this realm and will not seek to re-experience the realm of form but in either case you really I know I can tell you that all is well does not really matter whether this person now needs further experiences of identification in which case this will happen or whether he is already free of this urge in which case he will move on and live in a realm that we can't even conceive of from where we are here I get a sense deep within in the forms of what that is but we don't need to talk about it here all we know is nothing this is the beginning of the Course in Miracles which is the entire Course in Miracles summarized in two lines nothing real can be threatened nothing unreal exists herein lies the peace of God that which is real in him is beyond form anybody can know that when you see a dead body you realize that this is no longer whom you knew this is not the this is not the being that you knew this is only a shell so nothing real can be threatened nothing unreal ultimately exists this is why sages from all Traditions speak of this realm of form is ultimately illusory It ultimately it depends what level you look at the important thing is all is well beyond the appearance on the level of form which is the only level where death exists it is a transition from from one form into another form or from one form into formlessness that is what death is no more than that nothing real dies nothing real dies which is to say ultimately there is no such thing as death there only seems to be it's a transmutation of form either form dissolves or seek some other form some other identification with form Jesus often talks about the kingdom of heaven interesting expression and there there's a line which I opened the Bible the other day and I saw the line said Jesus went from Village to Village and from town to town and said repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and the whole thing is already contained there repent means it's Miss it's a mistranslation repentance the original Greek is metanoia which means a turnaround a shift a complete shift so the repentance what do people think of it as apologize or something like that yes beat yourself up I'm such a miserable sinner that's not that's a missing it's a misinter interpretation of repentance started when it was translated into Latin into latiness penitentia which was already wrong and now we have metanoia as repentance no a complete reverse a complete turnaround in other words a shift in Consciousness repent now what does he mean by the Kingdom of Heaven no Christians traditionally believed it's something that's going to come that she believe they completely overlooked when they asked Jesus when when does the Kingdom of Heaven Come he said the Kingdom of Heaven does not come with observation in another translation it says the Kingdom of Heaven does not come with signs to be perceived you cannot say it's over here or it's over there for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you now what is that thing that's within you but you can never say it's there or it's there I I re-translate Kingdom of Heaven into modern terminology for Kingdom I would substitute dimension and Heaven what is heaven when you look up into heaven you see the vast Sky the spaciousness of the sky he used that analogy to point us an inner reality he is used because language usually refers to external things that you can see and touch so the closest that Jesus could find in the external world to point to Something in the inner realm was to look at the vast spaciousness of the sky which in itself has no particular form but is amazing and he said the kingdom of heaven then is heaven my translation is spaciousness inner spaciousness which is the uncluttered Mind Consciousness without conceptual without thought it's inner alert Stillness the dimension of spaciousness find the dimension of that's the primordial teaching in Jesus finds that within yourself find the Kingdom of Heaven find the dimension of inner spaciousness where you're able to be alert and still completely conscious but not thinking and that's the essence of Jesus teaching I have the main focus of your attention in your daily life in the present moment the rest of your attention so that's it from the main focus here is this the rest of your attention is where you want to go to your whatever task you're engaged in has a certain purpose the purpose is you want to finish the task then it has achieved its purpose and that's here and that's in the in your peripheral the peripheral vision of your Consciousness that's where you want to get to and this is what you're doing in order to get there and your main attention is not where you want to get and in the meantime you're just doing it in order to get there you can see how that's already creates an inner stress I'm here but I want to be there that's a normal way of living is the main part of people's attention is there but in the meantime they are here where they don't really want to be rather be there as shown in famous stickers on bumper stickers on cars which say something like I'd rather be fishing laughs when I visited ramdas the spiritual teacher who is now passed away he lived on Maui on his car I saw a bumper sticker which said I'd rather be here now our purpose here beyond the personal purposes that we have everybody has their personal purpose the work you do or whatever it is there's a deeper purpose that the personal purpose must be aligned with and that deeper purpose is to live from that deeper place uh the way I interpret you know in the English language doesn't have a word that describes both men and women it's the German language has Mensch which is also used in Yiddish to the genre has meant means both man or woman for a long time I regretted that the English language doesn't have a word for human you have to say human being but now I'm happy that I have to say human being because that describes exactly the two Dimensions the human is the conditioned self it's a personality your historical person which comes from the past based on past who you are as a person that includes your physical body and your psychological self I call that sometimes your form identity there's a physical form and there's a psychological form of you that's the human and then there's a being the being is the Deeper Self that is consciousness unconditioned and no human life is fulfilled unless the human has at least some access to this Dimension within them that really is the ultimate purpose to at least maybe not complete access but at least you have glimpses of that which transcends the self to have glimpses of self-transcendence in your life if you you no matter how successful you are in this world if you have never had even a glimpse of self-transcendence then your life is pretty purposeless and it is very unlikely that you will be a happy human being is is the ultimate Paradox with all of this that it's almost impossible to hold on to so even someone that has spent their life uh trying to attain that State uh that you can't a you can't you to function it as a human maybe not as a human being but just as a human uh it would be almost impossible to constantly be in that state in a world that doesn't exist in that state yes not constantly but it is possible to uh to to to not just have that when you are perhaps let's say engaged in spiritual practice or you're meditating or when you're out in nature and some happy moments out in nature it it is our task to as much as possible incorporate that deeper level of Consciousness into our daily life even if we don't succeed all the time and that's fine that's part of the practice so one could say then our purpose in our daily life beyond the personal purpose which is also important because we need to honor who we are as a person to and we need to honor our identity as a person because no doubtedly that exists and whatever it is that makes up your identity whether it's mostly personal kind whether you identify with a concern a collective around you it could be your religion it could whatever it might be or the culture that you grow up in that has its place that there's nothing wrong with it but if that is all you know about yourself that's very limiting so you honor it but there's more to you than that and that's why the ancient Greeks said starting from Pythagoras 500 BC know thyself the most perhaps the most important dictum in ancient Greek philosophy which was carved carved on the walls of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi know thyself very deep saying know who you are in your essence so because you have the form identity which is a personality the fall and you hasn't have as I call it an Essence identity and so to know yourself at this Essence is it called in in Indian some in some Indian Indian spiritual philosophy is called self-realization I am is the word all you can say is I am but you don't need you don't add anything not this or that I am in the Old Testament God is asked who are you then that's perhaps the most profound sentence in the Old Testament is I am that I am where God defines him her itself as the I am as the essence identity of all forms and also another beautiful sentence in the Old Testament as you know the Old Testament is a mixed the notice the Bible is a mixed bag of fantastic things and other things the but I like to look for the jewels that are there another beautiful statement that points to all this is be still and know that I am God be still and know that I am God now these words are all synonymous be refers to being still is the State of Consciousness without thought Stillness being and Stillness is the same thing and no there is a deep knowing in that in fact it's that is because that is the source of all intelligence there's a deep knowing but from the point of view of the conceptual mind it looks like unknowing it looks like ignorance because it's not knowing through Concepts anymore it's there's a deeper knowing and this is where what we call wisdom arises which is very different from intelligence the IQ kind of intelligence the wisdom that the world needs not more intelligence please know but wisdom that yes be still and know that I am it is the I am of the the I am of being God okay here we come to a difficult word but they're all synonymous what is God then I rarely talk about God because you can't really it's so Transcendent that whatever you say would be very limited as you know human language and human thought is relatively limited how can I make statements about the ultimate Transcendent reality just by producing a few weird sounds with my vocal chords Plus air pressure through my tongue and lips all the vowels a i a e i o u e uh this is what language is okay now tell me the ultimate secrets of God in the Transcendent universe foreign just produce a few sounds and that explains no however I'll carry on talking [Music] all we can do is give a an analogy or like a poetic image of what God might be and how God relates to who you are and that image is I that I prefer is the image of in of our you know we can only use images from our sense perceived universe if the Sun is a life-giving thing in our universe the sun gives of itself ceaselessly for millions and millions of years one could almost say eternally it's not Eternal but as far as we are concerned it's Eternal without the sun there would be no life no physical life here so the sun gives off itself it emanates continuously uh the very heat in your body ultimately comes from the Sun so the sun if you use the Sun as an analogy for for the the transcendent during the Transcendent God has no location in space or time God is neither there or if we have to say anything we could say God is right here because it's Transcendent to this dimension so if we use this as an analogy the the Transcendent emanates into this Dimension something that creates form that creates life and what It ultimately this thing that it emanates is consciousness at first very little at first Consciousness appears as as it were frozen as minerals and stones and then Consciousness becomes as if it were liquid if we use energy of water then it becomes vegetative life then again Consciousness gradually evolves so one Consciousness more of it comes in then you get animal life it's like and then you get human life it becomes ethereal it's a human mind emanating from the source of all life that is transcendent of which you cannot say anything into this world as the sun emanates light the god emanates Consciousness and this brings about this universe and in this universe it's a process it grows in the transcendent we don't know anything about that so not the important thing is the ray of sunlight that you come that hits your hand you feel the warmth on your hands that Ray it's not the sun you couldn't say I have the sun on my hand I mean if you got close to the Sun you would immediately disappear but this Ray of sunlight is still connected to the sun in some way it is still part of the sun we can't even say where the sun exactly ends it doesn't really end anywhere it doesn't have a clearly defined surface it extends outward so it emanates continuously so what the what the source of all life emanates is consciousness and you can sense that in yourself when you can sense yourself as Consciousness the presence then you are then you realize this the Ripple on the surface of the ocean has realized that it is not only a ripple I'm mixing analogies now it's not only a ripple more fundamentally the Ripple is the ocean and suddenly the Ripple is no longer no longer fearful because it can sense its deep connectedness to that which is vast and all-encompassing and so the ripples only lives in a different way because it realizes its own Timeless essence or the Sun the ray of sunlight could do the same it could suddenly become aware that it is still connected and part of the sun it can and you can sense in yourself the undoubted fact that you are conscious but not only that we're creating a duality here that doesn't exist when we say that you are conscious the essence of who you are is consciousness so you are Consciousness I often say say yes to the present moment or I say make the present moment your friend not your enemy so it's a to say yes to the present moment is a powerful teaching but it can be misunderstood and has been misunderstood sometimes and it needs to be explained what that actually means it means oh by the way um there's a funny movie made a few some years ago with Jim Carrey it's called the Yes Man and this is a person in the movie a character the character he plays he works at a bank I think to in the mortgage department and he's very he's very bitter and he likes to say no to people who apply for mortgages every no you can't have any Lovesick and it's very negative about everything now his life is the uneventful boring everything is negative then he goes to a new age a friend invites him to a strange New Age event with a new age teacher and the teacher says you have to say yes to everything say yes to everything and he kind of becomes convinced well I might as well try that I've got nothing to lose and from then on whatever people ask him every mortgage he approves and whatever people ask him can you lend me money sure yes can you do this yes yes yes yes and then his life becomes very interesting but also very chaotic he gets into most chaotic situations and he kind of all gets out of hand and I and in the end he kind of seems to realize that this wasn't quite working it's that that was that is not the true meaning so to say yes to the present moment does not mean that you accept everything that people ask of you in some cases you have to use the now the no but in the um non but not in an angry way that denies the present moment I call that a high quality no so it's let's say um in the August can you look after my children or let's begin because I need your yourself so good with certain the seal flatter you you feel obliged you're such a wonderful person I say I love you can you do it again please and at some point safety I'm sorry I can't do it anymore um but without any negativity a simple statement it is not a reactive statement you don't make her into a bad person I know she you want to take advantage of me I'm not doing it anymore that is a low quality now even if perhaps you she did try to perhaps she was trying to take advantage of you but that is not that maybe then a dysfunction in her egoic self many humans do that the world is full of people who perhaps are trying to take advantage of you that's what the egos do and so it's not who she truly is but you speak to you do not speak to the ego in her you simply say I love your children they're just wonderful and I enjoyed my time but I can't do it anymore I'm sorry about that high quality no no no I can't do that a person says can you lend me another thousand dollars um and you do well I've already lent you 2 000 three months ago and last year I lent you five thousand I haven't got anything back yet and then it's I'm sorry I have to say no but you don't say did you adjust you're just trying to accuse me and I'm not going to do that anymore I'm not going to be used anymore by you this is it that's it I know more that that's another kind of no but it's a low quality no and the high quality knows no I'm sorry that's it I can't do that anymore it implies there is a presence behind what you say it's not reactive and with the same the person who asked you to write something you say I've seen the background I'm not in agreement with that therefore I'm sorry I need to say no to this I can't do this thank you high quality knobs it's beautiful and it works quite often you may have to use that make sure that it's not reactive and then becomes low quality when I meditate dream fear often arises in my mind I feel like I would be destroyed or completely disappeared so I stopped meditation because of the fear I'm so afraid to keep going on although I intuitively know that bearing the fear would get me closer to Enlightenment how can I conquer this fear this is yes of course the fear of the person the personalized sense of self or the ego which can feel threatened by the arising awareness and once you know that you can still meditate and allow the fear to be there it's only when you try to run away from the fear that really it becomes a great obstacle but if you can be with the fear allow the fear to be there as on a pure energy level Feel the fear then you will find it begins to dissolve so rather than not wanting to feel it allow yourself to feel it then this is the beginning of change if you always run away from it then it'll linger there's no change there's a book called think feel the fear and do it anyway or something like that but that is a quite good advice although I mean not applied necessarily to everything I'm going to jump off now but to allow yourself to feel whatever feeling comes is part of the present the what the is-ness of the present moment so if the fear Rises but then you also realize what is is the fear created by a thought you will know that or is the fear arising just by itself in a particular situation when you become still do you have a fear of Silence do you feel uncomfortable when you go into a room and there's there's no noise in it some people do feel some people are uncomfortable in nature it's not noisy enough so see it may be that the fear arises when you when you become still you meditate then it's not necessarily associated with the thought but with that arising of awareness and instead of British stopping your meditation just what happens if I just carry on and make the fear into a meditation meditate on the fear so in when if you do meditate nothing really can disturb you with the good meditator incorporates whatever arises in the present moment into the meditation including the most irritating noise that suddenly starts up outside and the mind says I can't meditate now I need Stillness and then you realize no perhaps this is part of the meditation and how does it become part of the meditation by allowing the isness of this moment which is that by just letting go of resistance allow whatever it is to be and if it comes from within fear anxiety you allow that to be but you have to be careful that it doesn't become a thought because the moment you are drawn back into thinking that's the end of your meditation you can allow a thought to be there but to order to allow a soul to be there that that implies that there is some awareness there behind the thoughts or you are still there if so to be able it's a wonderful thing do you allow the thought to be that's very different from being drawn into the thought and following it where it wants to take you of course that's the end of your meditation or your mindfulness or whatever you want to call it I don't use mindfulness as you know because it's not about a full mind that's why I avoid the word mindfulness but mindfulness is a lovely thing it's really its presence so you can follow a sword it takes it grabs you it grabs all your attention and pulls you along that's one way or you can realize there's authorizing about what my ex-spouse did five years ago to me while I'm meditating and you can allow the thoughts to arise instantly be aware and if you do that instead of being pulled into it then you will find that it quickly it arises and it subsides so then it becomes very much like you know the sky in this one let's say you have a blue sky and clouds occasionally come so the clouds are the thoughts that arise in the mind the blue skies the vastness of that space is your awareness so clouds are not a problem if within the larger context of the aware presence they come and go and they might be thoughts that say ridiculous things there might be a thought about I'd like to eat a apple pie now I really need to eat apple pie the Minecraft is the most absurd things to interrupt your meditation can you imagine an apple pie you're eating and then you know there's the thought of apple pie you allow that to be you don't get drawn into the apple pie sauce or even suddenly you have to get up and run to the fridge to see if there's an apple pie is still in there the thought arises you are the sky that's the awareness and the thought is what comes into the awareness now if more and more thoughts come or if you follow one of the cloud thoughts that drift into the space of awareness one of the cloud thoughts and you suddenly go it it it grabs hold of you and you follow it and the cloud gets bigger then it attracts other clouds that correspond to it they suddenly come from out of nowhere and then you are in a big cloud you're still sitting there trying to meditate but you're really in a big cloud of thought and before you know it the entire sky is cloudy all totally overcast now of course there's still some light shining through the clouds but you'd no longer know where that comes from there's some light of of course Consciousness sword cannot exist without Consciousness thought is a manifestation of consciousness but so there's the Consciousness that is behind the thoughts but you don't no longer know that Consciousness directly only through the filter of thoughts in the same way that you don't know the sunlight anymore except to the filter of the clouds I'm surprised there's nothing on Google about Eckhart and free will but maybe maybe I haven't said anything about it uh so here we go as you know it's an it's an eternal ancient philosophical question and there's never been a definitive answer but that everybody would agree with in that sense so is there Australian you mentioned everybody's doing their best because every nobody can act beyond their level of Consciousness etc for example okay let's start from on one level uh and then we go on to the next level on on the level of egoic unconsciousness where you are a conditioned entity your your mental emotional makeup extra totally conditioned by the past and you are completely identified with the conditioning of your of your mind and in that state that spiritually speaking is the unconscious state it is obvious that in that state there is no Freedom at all because you are forced to act out the unconscious conditioning of your mind with which you are completely identified so I think most people would probably agree if you understand that that on that level there is no possibility of Freedom their actions are determined by the unconditioned mind you are forced to act as you do because there's no choice because choice would imply some awareness so on that level there's certainly no freedom then awareness comes in the human being begins to awaken then it appears I'm not saying it is the case it appears that then the human the free Freedom begins to be a possibility because you can choose to step out of the conditioning of your mind you can recognize a conditioned thought and do you are no longer compelled to act it out because there is an awareness there you can choose a certain cause of action not not from the conditioning of your mind but from the the presence so you can you can you can act and you have much more freedom that before you could not have freedom comes with awareness so it's then relative to the unconscious day there is now freedom to act but if you look more deeply even there even there on that level you are connected with the totality of Consciousness you're only an expression of the totality of Consciousness you are not really a separate entity you are a like a who said it you are was it Alan Watts who said you are you in the same way that the the wave is something that the ocean is doing you are something that the whole universe is doing in the same same way so the wave is something the ocean is doing you are something that the universe is doing so although it appears from a certain relative to the previous state of unconsciousness there is freedom and relative to that there is freedom but then if you look more deeply into that you realize that even there one cannot say that you are choosing this speak you are an expression of Consciousness and Consciousness one could say is choosing and you think you're doing it sometimes people ask me can you choose to be present uh and you know from one perspective you can choose to be present from another perspective one could say that the presence chooses you it chooses to become present through you depends how you look at it so in Ultimate terms of the in relative terms there is freedom relative to the unconscious State when you become more conscious but even there it's only relative to the unconscious State even there there is no not absolute freedom because you do not exist as an independent entity you are a part of the web of interconnectedness that is the whole universe so in that sense there is no freedom of choice of the individual because ultimately there is no individual I have the main focus of your attention in your daily life in the present moment the rest of your attentions of that say the main focus here is this the rest of your attention is where you want to go to your whatever task you're engaged in has a certain purpose the purpose is you want to finish the task then it has achieved its purpose and that's here and that's in the in your peripheral the peripheral vision of your Consciousness that's where you want to get to and this is what you're doing in order to get there and your main attention is not where you want to get and in the meantime you're just doing it in order to get there you can see how that's already creates an inner stress I'm here but I want to be there that's a normal way of living is the main part of people's attention is there but in the meantime they are here where they don't really want to be to rather be there at as shown in the famous stickers on bumper stickers on cars which say something like I'd rather be fishing the sense of being an outsider is also something that I have had throughout my life and the sense of not belonging here watching my parents being engaged in continuous conflict not because they were bad people they were they did what they did and they loved me as best they could and they did what they did as a reflection of their state of consciousness at that time which was a normal State of Consciousness egoic state of consciousness but I sometimes felt how did I get here yeah somehow didn't there must have been a mistake um it's often Outsiders on as being feeling an outsider on the one hand is seems a terrible limitation that you can't participate as much on the other hand it's a great opportunity because some of the most creative people in the world have where have been Outsiders they did not fit in Misfits it's the English word Misfits um another the friendships I had when I was a child and that's another interesting thing I had to friend one of my friends was it was severely physically disabled and nobody else wanted to be friends with him because of that and he was probably my closest friend and the other one was so weird that nobody wanted to talk to him but he became my friend so they were Outsiders too and dot but the interesting fact here as you know I couldn't believe it when they told me that there are people here from 70 countries it seems almost unbelievable but it's true I saw the list 70 countries and you may find I'm sure you will find quite often you you you can feel a bond or yeah you have more in common with many of the people who are here then you have with your own people in your own country at home who are not going through any Spiritual Awakening who are still totally conditioned 100 conditioned by their culture so you feel a connectedness here with other humans that transcends culture and conditioning and all this silly political stuff it transcends that and this is a wonderful thing so to some extent you can now connect with people even if you don't always see them physically you might live I don't know whether you live in a big city or a small village City small City yeah yeah world city in spoke in Austria oh yes yeah nice very nice I don't know how many people in Innsbruck are 120 000 and how many of those are Awakening we don't know we don't know of course but this helps I believe being here and feeling you are not alone you are connected so this would be a help for the rest you just have to accept that this is how it is no matter how hard you try to fit in on the normal level you probably won't nor do you have to so I know this there are many people here who feel that and be happy with it but don't make it into some kind of superiority because the ego can always creep in before you know it there's always a back door and then the ego is back in so you can you could go from feeling bad about being an outsider to suddenly feeling okay I'm an outsider because I'm superior and then so to have to be careful and don't go there so um that's just how it is if you you probably would not be here if you had not been an outfelt like an outsider for many years so it worked you won't really enjoy the fruit of your labors if habitually you cannot be present in the moment no matter what you achieve the enjoyment will be short-lived because of the habitual pattern of dissatisfaction in the background it's always there some obscure sense of lack and often it comes into the foreground as real unhappiness frustration and then if you realize that there's always this waiting for the next thing which is a thought when you're waiting for the next thing you're trapped in thought because that's what future happens now the realization that this is happening to you is very important the first step is the beginning of something else arising and in all of you that has already Arisen or that occasionally it still gets obscured perhaps probably I assume something else hasn't risen that's not thought that is beyond thought the ability to recognize thought the ability to recognize certain patterns that habitually arise in your mind your mental emotional field the ability to witness that which arises in your mental emotional field that's an enormous believing consciousness another dimension one could say has a risen we could call it presence we could call it awareness it's not thought but it's intelligence so intelligence is not confined to thought there is a dimension in you that is far greater far more intelligence than any intelligent thought it's the place from where all intelligence arises a place of where all creativity arises [Music] foreign so there's the ability to suddenly be aware of your inner states to be aware of what's what your mind is saying the The Narrative the habitual narrative that you're telling yourself you're having a monologue or many people have a dialogue with themselves where they split themselves in two and then this one argues with the other why aren't you good enough why did you do this why do you never get anything right you shouldn't have he shouldn't have said that yes but on the other so you can have a dialogue in your narrative or you can have a monologue it says I am such a miserable creature because a lot of the time the narratives the unconscious thought processes tend to be more negative than positive for many many people so to be aware that this is happening that's an enormous gain in continence it's the beginning of Awakening oh spiritually speaking something arises that is not part of the conditioned mind patterns so there's the ability to observe your inner states and that's a wonderful little pointer to ask yourself [Music] frequently wants my inner State at this moment and then look at it direct your attention to it the narratives what have I been telling myself and the emotion that accompanies The Narrative what am I feeling what's the emotion so in addition to it being a story in your head and an emotion there's a knowing behind it there's a space behind it sometimes I call it Inner Space there's an inner space from where you can be aware of what's Happening on the level of the person the personality because that Inner Space the awareness is not part of the personality it's but it's the being the knowing that it's inherent in the being you can look at the world wars you can look at all the the terrorism and all the other mad Wars that are being fought as just it's just a question of degrees of unconsciousness not different so when you go into that state of unconsciousness you it takes you over you lose it basically then that is the same energy field that has created what we see as the Mad Madness of human history and what we see of The Madness of the so-called world news the same energy so don't complain about all these violent people who are doing all these Dreadful things all that it is is human or unconsciousness in a more pronounced form than yours or your partners and so that helps a little bit to find perhaps almost some compassion towards all these crazy people that are doing such crazy things and creating such terrible suffering now if you become compassionate towards them don't worry it doesn't mean that they will not experience the consequences of their unconsciousness that still happens you just by being compassionate to another human being you don't necessarily remove the karmic consequences of their action but you yourself become free from the from being drawn into the karmic cycle so the the act of forgiveness does not mean that this person is not going to suffer the consequences because life makes sure in whatever form that they do suffer the consequences of the suffering that they inflict on other human beings it's a karmic law but if you don't want to be part of that anymore if you want to step out of the karmic law the the first step out of the and the most important step out of the karmic law is forgiveness then you do not feed it you don't become part of it that's why traditionally in spiritual teachings of various traditions forgiveness is always emphasized it must be real though it's there are many forms of superficial forgiveness when Justin minus okay I forgive you it's not deep it's not real yet the mind is trying to forgive but you you can only forgive if you realize that whatever actions have been perpetrated are the effects of human unconsciousness in other words what Jesus said on the cross or is reported to have said forgive them for they know not what they do very profound statement it is a profound statement that can be applied to any Act of violence perpetrated against other humans or life forms forgive them for they know not what they do not knowing what they do of course means they are unconscious the word unconscious probably in that sense wasn't used at the time so he said they don't know what they do karmic law still operates but without you and you can notice karmic law [Music] when when you see a movie some movies like to manipulate your emotions and so there are particular types of movies where they first they build up the tension by showing you some very evil persons and this evil person is killing all these people or hurting all these people and then you're being manipulated to feel that incredible pull that this person should suffer for what he or she has done that's the manipulation the audience loves it they love watching things like that so then the emotion builds up and finally there even some movies like The the movies that uh about um Vigilantes who take justice in their own hands because the justice system doesn't deal with the criminals anymore so finally you have this guy who goes out and kills all the bad guys and the your emotions have been manipulated so much that the audience that yes yes he must die not realize no what you what you are free what what you are feeling this incredible it might also happen if you read about some Dreadful crime that somebody has committed and then if you read it on the internet the you can read in some on some news websites you can read the comment section and in the comment section on every other comment says we should have the death penalty who needs to say electric chair he needs to be done to what he did did he they should do to him and all these and this is an enormous pressure that people feel inside and this is connected to karmic law because there's a competence compensatory factor in karmic law and you can feel that as the pressure inside you but it keeps you trapped in karma huh so in that sense watching these movies is not helpful because it keeps you trapped in that that wheel of the of karma so they don't teach forgiveness there so this is we are talking it's about something very important and that is dealing with human unconsciousness and what looks like evil they saw there are many things that uh quite Dreadful so how do we how does that affect our state of consciousness and what role does our state of consciousness play in this whole scenario it does have a role to play so it's for us important that we are no longer part of action and reaction because the definition of karma is action comma means action and reaction and it goes on and on and as you can see in certain societies and so on the karmic thing goes on what goes back centuries and centuries the same grievance transmitted from one generation to the next and the next and the next and they are all asleep this is why spiritual teaching say that you are asleep they are all so unconscious they get taken over by the collective mental emotional pattern and the mental story they just inherited from their parents and then they pass it on to their children and then they and each generation suffers they suffer they coma suffering think right for each each other and at some point the suffering becomes almost unbearable for certain people within that society and that's the beginning of a shift when it gets too much so suffering drives humans to appoint of Awakening it's a strange Paradox here is the suffering is created by the unconsciousness in humans but in some strange way eventually it wakes you up it awakens you that's the redeeming feature behind the suffering that humans create for each other eventually it leads to a spiritual awakening so it always a good thing to realize it all comes down to your state of consciousness and how you relate to the people around you and that spreads that is what creates the world and even how you react to when you listen to the world news that has a certain influence because all [Music] all human minds are connected at a deeper level so the way in which you react to what you hear on the world news contributes either to the unconsciousness if you get on the on your computer or the iPad and you type in this guy does not deserve to live [Music] he should be die slowly then you become part of the same Karma if you've ever done that please forgive yourself and if you enjoy reading those comments also forgive yourself certain actions take place you do things you know they are not the optimal things to do but you can't help it it's something acts through you um there seems to be some power there that makes you do things that you know no are not right or not good for you and yet you can't stop it that seems to be the case um and that of course um is often the case with people who are with you it might be many different different areas of your life but um this is also the case with addictions for example people 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 to recite and this thing this this powerful thing does it anyway and again my answer is a little bit similar to um what I say to the first question tonight the 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 um if you're addiction is to have a to indulge in intoxicating beverages in other words booze is the British word 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 then you have to reach out and you have to pour yourself a drink now when you're not aware at all you don't even know what you're doing you're so unconscious that you you're already holding the drink and you're drinking then you at that point you 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're ready they've already eaten in the middle of the night they've already unconsciously gone to the fridge taking out the chocolate cake and then they're already halfway through the chocolate cake when somebody's like what am I doing but so awareness comes in at a very late point willpower would be to hold an urge down that say oh God they have to pull or even what the example you gave you want to turn on the TV and you know it's not right because I I'm not here for that and he actually told us not to do it help it I have to go I can't I can't no willpower you would you would say I'm going to hold this I'm not going to do it I can confirm the odds but you're holding it down [Laughter] when you hold things down often after a while an explosion happens it's like a boiling kettle can't hold it for that long and then you have some kind of rationalization in your mind but it's you'll do it anyway the mind will give you a reason first you see the need to be a victim identity also unfortunately is a form of ego because any conceptual identity is a form of ego and even though you seem to be employees justified in having a victim identity because of the things that other humans did to you you yourself are finding you are finding yourself in a kind of prison that created by your mind so there's no denial of that bad things happen to you yes now question is how do you exit this mental present the first step is perhaps to see [Music] um that unconscious human beings unconscious human beings in the grip of their own conditioning their own ego they have virtually no free will when you are unconscious you are controlled by the the Mind patterns that are lodged in your psyche you have you cannot really speak of Free Will by somebody who has zero awareness and the entire makeup is uh conditioning from the past so the famous sentence phrase used by Jesus in connection with forgiveness on the cross he said forgive them for they know not what they do now these these two interesting these points put together forgive them why forgive them they know not what they do in other words if he had spoken these days using our terminology he probably would have said they are completely unconscious because that's what it means they know not what they do they are completely unconscious so when you see nobody can act beyond their level of consciousness then you see that it's almost like it becomes almost like the evil that was perpetrated it becomes almost like a natural phenomenon that is like you've been hit by lightning or something or lived in very unpleasant climatic conditions that that injured you near volcano and my dad what had problems with anger huge outbursts of anger quite frequently it was living like living the Lake Street volcano they could erupt at any moment um and he could not help it it was it was impossible there was no possibility of being different and so these humans are run by unconscious conditioning it usually goes back to their childhood and what happened there I know why my father was angry I I needed I realized much later that it all originated in his childhood the the reasons why he was so angry and also for a while also I felt a resentment towards that and only when I was able to awaken out of egoic consciousness I saw that there's nothing that he could have done differently because there wasn't enough awareness now when you see that then you don't personalize or you don't create an identity for other humans out of their unconsciousness because in essence that's not who they are the recognition that their first recognition then step one you recognize that no human can act beyond their conditioning in the absence of awareness if there's awareness they can transcend their conditioning and then they begin to become conscious of their own conditioned mental emotional dysfunctional mental emotional patterns yes so they couldn't they can't help it so that's that's already a useful step in forgiveness but you may not yet be able to arrive at at full forgiveness because of that another before I continue with that does that mean then a question may arise in your mind doesn't mean then humans are not really responsible for what they do if they are unconscious how are they responding does that mean then that we shouldn't punish them from what they do if they commit a crime are they not guilty that's an interesting question the the unconsciousness that operates in human even if you are able to forgive a human when we come we will go more fully into that in a minute even if you're able to forgive and human for their transgressions or whatever they did this does not mean and even though the human is not responsible for their unconsciousness and yet it is built into the structure of human life they still need to suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness is religion necessary it depends who you are on the level of the form for some people it can be necessary or helpful for two reasons it can provide the more superficial reason it can give your life a certain amount of structure which for some people can be helpful regular practice gives you a feeling of comfort some people have too little structure in their lives and others have too much already if you have too little structure in your life then religion can provide that more importantly on another level religion can either obscure the spiritual Dimension within yourself and often it does or if used rightly if approached rightly if understood on a deeper level it can help you access and stay in connectedness with that deeper level of yourself or the Transcendent dimension of consciousness whether or not you need it only you can know whether you find it either helpful or a hindrance we can be either depend depends on you as a person your past what function it had in your past and so on it is a hindrance if religion becomes an ideology then it operates only on the level of the Mind and it's very similar to any other kind of ideology that you may believe in whether it's don't know communism as a as an ideology or any political Theory or anything that explains the universe it could be a metaphysical system that you completely believe in philosophical system and so on so an ideology is something that takes possession of your mind and exerts a controlling function [Music] and it can influence almost the entire mental functioning if it becomes something of a overwhelming power in your mind it's a it's a little thought that grows into a huge thing in your mind and the tentacles breeds into every aspect of your mind and there are religious people like that uh usually you can recognize that it is an ideology by the fact that they are not peaceful human beings and by the fact that they have enemies either even within their own religion or another religion anybody who does not agree with their ideology becomes an enemy in the same way the people who were not nowadays that many were deeply believing in communism which was a wonderful idea to start with of course the road to hell is paved with good intentions it was a beautiful idea of equality everybody the same and that is wonderful no personal possessions so it's wonderful too and the only mistake was it was imposed from outside by people who themselves has not gone beyond the egoic State of Consciousness they just played it in their mind isn't that's a good idea and then it was imposed on on other people who also were not in that state of consciousness but most importantly those who impose the idea on others forced them to live it out the ideal became contaminated with ego so when these people came to power the egos became inflated to an enormous degree absurdity and without realizing it they re-enacted the same evils in some cases worse than those that they were fighting against I don't remember who said it but then Master said it don't seek for the trolls just cease or stop cherishing opinions hmm that is as I believe points to the same in a state of disidentification from thinking she doesn't cling to ideas cling to it doesn't mean she doesn't have ideas the master but the master does not cling to ideas and the Zen master when he said don't look for the truth just stop cherishing opinions he didn't say stop having opinions just as loud say does not say don't have ideas says don't cling to ideas and the other Master says stop cherishing opinions so this clinging which is the same as cherishing is self-identification with thoughts that arise in other words you then believe completely in every thought that comes into your head amazing you believe in it that means you are it you that is self identification with thinking so how then to be at one always add one with the dowel so simple on the one hand you could call it stop cherishing opinions now any thought that arises ultimately is an opinion you could say stop cherishing stop your self-identification with that or don't cling to ideas in the words of loud say or the this present translation here so that there's always a space between you and your thoughts that you and or rather you are not the thought you are the space for the thought that is how I put it sometimes you're familiar with that and perhaps you in yourself you know it you don't have to be in your thoughts but you can be the space for your thoughts then no matter how weird your thoughts are it doesn't matter that much you don't say oh my God I shouldn't be having these weird thoughts no because that's another thought laughs I'm spiritually I'm supposed to be spiritually Advanced and why am I still having these thoughts there must be something wrong with me does it sound familiar that's also thoughts that's more thoughts that say I shouldn't be having these thoughts there's something wrong with me or and then you believe in those thoughts thoughts that judge other thoughts that may sound familiar to some of you and there's nothing personal in it it's the human mind so you don't need to eliminate thoughts or just say I should only have pure thoughts because I'm a spiritual person because by now I should say transcended all impure thoughts well then you're in a dilemma because in this world of polarities if you only want to have pure thoughts you're creating the other polarity in the Unseen and sooner or later the other polarity will come up from behind creep up and this has been done sometimes by Christians who try to practice the teachings of Christ without entering the State of Consciousness out of which it comes so they try to be pure and spiritual and good Christians and denied the other polarity repressed it and then suddenly they get overpowered by something deeply destructive and negative so you have these occasion you have a nice wonderful person always talks in spirituals just sold and spiritual and before you know it he's screaming at his wife or even hitting his wife where did that come from and he can't even admit to himself that this is what's happening and so if you push away certain thoughts that you because they do not fit into the mental image of Who You Are as this or that then they get it because assume a life of Their Own and before you know it they invade your mind again if only in your dreams and suddenly you have Dreadful nightmares during a day you're such a spiritual person and at night you suddenly have Dreadful nightmares monsters come or you become a monster oh my God this shouldn't be happening and that's because you're pushing something away the true spiritual does not lie in one thought or another thought it lies in being there as the space for your thoughts then it doesn't matter anymore really any whatever thought arises is no more than that it's a form that arises at this moment you don't resist it you don't need to resist it but you are the space right you don't become it somebody sent me a sticker to put on the car I haven't put it on my car yet A very wise stick I don't know where it originated it says you don't need to believe every thought you think laughs so this is the practice then of being the space or the witness for your thoughts rather than being the thought and you can practice with your opinions many thoughts are actual most thoughts can all thoughts could be called opinions but there are certain things that are definitely clearly recognizable as opinions when you are talking to people every day when you're having a discussion or talk with friends or colleagues or Neighbors so they will Express their opinion whatever it may be about and you may express your opinion and you can then observe whether or not there is self-identification with your opinion and your opinion of course is a mental position in the position of the Mind are you identified with a mental position if you are then you are cherishing opinions in the words of the Zen master or you are clinging to ideas in the words of loud say and how do you know that you know that when as you discuss things you become either defensive or aggressive in the expression of your opinion emotion flows into and you get worked up in oh why is that happening why are you becoming defensive or aggressive and of course you have to look inside yourself to see whether this is the case or not are you becoming defensive or aggressive you feel the influx of emotion and why is this happening because unconsciously you feel threatened by somebody who attracts or questions or contradicts your mental position why do you feel threatened by somebody who questions your mental position that is a sign that you had identified with a mental position and identified means your sense of self was in it so the person is not attacking your opinion in your unconscious Viewpoint the person you're being attacked in your your very alive is being is under attack because he identified this this is not true but this is how it is perceived as if they were attacking your very existence because you identified with a mental position there was a self in it so anybody who questions it questions your very existence it's unconscious process so that's an amazing thing to realize in yourself and it's a deep seated unconscious pattern in most human beings and of course as you become conscious of that you can usually see it much more clearly in others more easily in your friend or whoever you're having then in yourself usually says oh yes that's what he always does of course now I understand what my husband or my wife does I understand completely that step one an allotment is required to truly truly perceive things and immediately Things become more life and less problematic when you're going to censorship because the problematic Dimension is in the head and you're going to send medicine suddenly you have into the present moment and in the present moment problems disappear isn't that strange that the mind says well I still have them yeah when you start thinking about them you have them again but when you're not thinking about them you have no problems now some of you will argue with that but let me explain you have situations in your life that can be challenging and you have to deal with these situations but the only place where you can deal with the challenging situations is in the present moment and dealing with a challenging situation in the present moment is not a problem you're dealing with a challenging situation you're facing it you're looking at it and that looking is important what I call looking really is paying putting your attention on it which is The Power Of Consciousness and while you're looking you're not thinking every person who has achieved mastery in any field knows what I mean by looking because there isn't that absolute presence and then that person does what he or she does is it flows it flows from that presence so you look there's no problem promise when you dwell mentally on something that will happen Could Happen might happen a problem that's something I have to face next week but not now and you're totally absorbed in that that's a problem an interesting thing I may have even written that in the path now if you think you have problems ask yourself what problem do I have at this moment but this moment really means this moment and then you have to go hmm well I've got um my wife my ex-wife is suing me I'm about to lose my home passing close to me is ill I might lose my job I have to look for a new job okay what problem do you have at this moment [Music] you're breathing feeling the aliveness in the body looking around well well at this moment I don't actually have a problem you have to then admit if you really go into the present moment the problem cannot survive in the present moment but it's an amazing realization doesn't mean that you no longer deal with what you need to deal with you deal with it when the moment comes more effectively when you don't waste your life energy in the mental realm of creating problems that you cannot be dealt with at this moment and if you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about your problems and what you can do about them it's it's extremely unlikely that you find any Solution by worrying at four o'clock in the morning about it but if you came still at four o'clock in the morning and wake up and go into the inner energy field of the body rather than thinking about your problems in other words leave the dimension of problems come deeply into the present moment then perhaps the next morning when you wake up oh I know what I have to do now I know how I can deal with it now and the right cause of action happens because you've gone there but not through the problem making faculty in the human mind so again coming back to your question when things are when you're not not being challenged practice it and then when you are being challenged by little things that goes wrong so to speak in daily life tends to happen you might have noticed things don't always go according to your expectations sometimes you miss the bus or something you miss the plane or something else goes wrong it tends to happen actually quite a lot it seems to be part of life that's by the way it's the reason why people go to see movies because the substructure of every movie that you see we could call it it applies to virtually every movie you see if you can examine any movie you see what actually happens in the movie exactly I can describe every movie to you in three words something goes wrong because there wouldn't be a movie otherwise nothing would happen nobody would evolve would everything would be dead but in your own life you complain so you go you'd see movies to see something go wrong but when it happens in your own life you complain and not you personally you've transcended it perhaps already but so the strange thing is it's things are not meant not to go wrong going wrong is part of the totality of how life experiences itself if things didn't go wrong there would be very uninteresting and nobody would evolve because people only evolve through the challenges that they encounter and in a good movie the protagonist or the character changes as he or she faces the pro that which goes wrong in the movie in a bad movie so to speak the character does not go through any changes the that which goes wrong is only solved on an external level the in the end the bad guy is killed and that's the end of the movie but nothing else happens so something going wrong is part of how life experiences itself and again you can then bring awareness to that so that you don't always fall into reactivity when something goes wrong but you immediately align with it because you made it this far in a video I want to celebrate you most people start and don't finish most people never actually follow through most people say they want something but they don't ever do the work to actually get it but you're different you are special believe Nation you made it here all the way to the end and I love you so it's a special celebration if you put a hashtag believe down in the comments Below on this video I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome for some incredible jodus spends on motivation check the video right there next to me I think you'll love it continue to believe and I'll see you there when you begin to create from the field instead of from matter the only way you can do that is you have to learn how to take all of your attention off your body and become a nobody take all of your attention off all the people in your life that you give so much of your attention

Channel: Evan Carmichael

Views: 190,707

Keywords: entrepreneur, yt:cc=on, evancarmichael, evan carmichael, believe, success, motivation, evan carmichael advice, how to manifest anything you want, the law of attraction, law of attraction, manifest anything, visualizing wealth, turn visions into reality, manifest fast, reprogram your mind, the ultimate law of attraction hack, law of attraction technique, law of attraction money, law of attraction explained, how law of attraction works

Id: KPHZJqE7_r8

Length: 252min 23sec (15143 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023