Clock time is fine, but psychological time is when future takes over your mind and your entire thought patterns are geared only toward future. For many years, before I wrote The Power of Now and it became successful, I was basically a failure. Many people spend their lives in a state of almost permanent dissatisfaction. If you're habitually and frequently unhappy, you believe that it has a purpose. - He's a German-born resident of Canada best known as being the author of the book The Power of Now. In 2008, a New York Times writer called him the most popular spiritual author in the United States. His books have sold almost ten million copies across North America. He's Eckhart Tolle, and here's my take on his top ten rules to success. Rule #1 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus clips. Also as Eckhart is talking, if he says something that really resonates with you, try to copy it down into the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired and learn as well. So many people have this idea, "I want to achieve something great, or be somebody great," and they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don't honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they're going to be great. - Right. - Some people believe I'm doing great work, I mean, I am, because the consciousness is moving through this form. I don't feel personally responsible for what I do as such. But even then, it is small steps. When the writing happens, there's a notepad and a pen, and there's the present moment, and there's the stillness. Very small. There's not some idea, "I'm going to create a work that's going to change everybody's consciousness," no, I'm just true to π΅π©πͺπ΄ moment, what this moment requires. It's a blank piece of- sheet of paper and a pen, and the stillness. It's a small thing. It's all a sequence of very small moments. And by being true to this one moment, something great arises. Talking about past and future and excessive emphasis on past and future in your life, yes, of course you need to have... 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 awhile. (audience laughter) So then your life will get very diffused. And so to have an intention, to make a plan; perfectly fine. Either a short-term plan like I'm going to meet you tomorrow at 4 o'clock, how would you ever meet anybody if we didn't have time?
(audience laughs) 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 it- clock time is fine, but psychological time is when future takes over your mind and your entire thought patterns are geared only toward future, and you treat the present moment as either just a means to an end, because it enables you to get to the next one. You're always reaching out, so to speak, internally to the next- you're never quite here, always looking for some fulfillment there, so you can never embrace the fullness of now, or you make the now into even an enemy. Some people are always unhappy- perhaps we all know some- one or two people like that. - Three. - (laughter) - Who are, wherever 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 should be somewhere else. You know the bumper sticker that you see on some cars, your 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 spiritual teacher Ramdas, who lives in Hawaii, he has a bumper sticker on-- Ramdas was a person who in the 70's wrote the book "Be Here Now"-- anyway, he has a bumper sticker on his car that says, "I'd rather be here now." (laughter) So- and then you realize you can actually- you can still pursue whatever intent where you want to get to a plan, I call it- it's a bit like a journey, your life is a jouney, 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 travelling, if your destination takes up most of your attention and you're continuously focusing on there, you miss all the jouney, really. You can't enjoy the journey anymore. And most of your life πͺπ΄ the journey. The arriving is relatively rare. The wedding, ahhh! (laughter) and a [?] graduation, ahhh! (laughter) But 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 π΅π©πͺπ΄ moment is really the most important thing.Yes, of course, you know you're going π΅π©π’π΅ 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. (chuckles) 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 at Cambridge, why did you walk out of there? You..." My mom and many other people said, "This person has failed in life. He has no job, he has no... insurance policies, nothing.
(audience laughs) No pension plan, just- almost nothing in the bank... Failure." And then a few years later, people bought The Power of 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 had 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 just a cheap substitute for who I really am. So I'm not- I don't see- I don't derive-- but the satisfaction that comes is the satisfaction that the work that's happening, the teaching that's happening, is transforming peoples' lives. That's very satisfying. I don't get any personal satisfaction, though, because it's not-- I don't feel it as this separate 'me' produced it. Now it's very easy to mistake an impulse that comes to you for some deeper answer that comes out of the stillness. And so in any decision-making process, you have basically two factors. Well, most people only have... you have the information that's available to you, and so make sure that you have the information, all the facts that you need. Sometimes before making a decision, you may have a few- a number of facts, and sometimes these facts may not be sufficient. So then you go over them and see what questions you can ask in order to illicit more facts or information from whoever is capable of giving to you that information. I'm talking very general terms, whether you are in business or wherever you are, or some personal decision that you need to arrive at. May- on one level, facts are- need to be looked at. What is the situation. And sometimes the facts are not clear enough, or there are not enough facts, and you become still and see what questions you can ask, and somebody may be able to supply more detailed facts. But in order to ask the right question, you already need a moment of stillness. So you may not immediately get an answer through stillness. The first step as you become alert and still is another question. A very important thing in decision-making process is not to come up with a decision, but to ask the right question that can illicit what you need in order to arrive at a decision. And in order to ask the right question, there needs to be that alert stillness for a moment, and in that alert stillness, you kind of listen within, and then a question comes. This is- I often, when somebody, like, call me and say, "We've had this or that offer, somebody wants you to do this, somebody wants you to do that interview, somebody wants to do that," and very often, I don't immediately say yes or no. I usually come up with a few questions what-- in addition to the information that they gave me, well, what about that and that and that, and then say, "Oh okay, I'll get back to you. I'll find out." And then they call again, then I know a bit more. And sometimes on the basis of the factual information, you already know whether you want to do it or not. You more easily know that you don't want to do it just by looking at the facts. Many people spend their lives in a state of almost permanent dissatisfaction, unfortunately. So they are maybe looking for some purpose, or they may have given up hope that there πͺπ΄ some purpose for them, and they're just surviving or making a living. (Oprah) Or caught up in the doing. (Eckhart) Caught up in the doing, in the stress of it. - Right. - And so usually when we talk about purpose, when people talk about purpose, they think of purpose in terms of future. "Where am I going, what am I supposed to do, what's the direction I'm going in, what's my goal; the goal that I want to achieve?" And that, of course, is there, it has its place. But I call that the outer purpose. More fundamental than the outer purpose is what most people usually overlook, and that is the realization that what matters most is finding your πͺπ―π―π¦π³ purpose. So inner purpose is aligning your life fully with the present moment. So that you are no longer out of alignment with the present moment, which leads to the state of dissatisfaction that we talked about that is the reality for many people. So you have to go, first of all, beyond the state of dissatisfaction that is so many peoples' reality. - Right. - But you cannot go beyond the state of dissatisfaction through some future goal that says, "One day, I would like to be in a state of fulfillment or satisfaction." No. You have to enter the state of fulfillment and satisfaction by becoming one internally with the present moment. And your purpose-- and your πͺπ―π―π¦π³ purpose is that alignment with where you are right now. To be totally where you are and whatever you are doing, even if it doesn't look like you're- the life purpose that you want for the next 30 years. Whatever you are doing now, to be total in doing it, no matter what it is. To be true to life by being true to this moment. It's not that difficult really, to step out of the stream of thinking. To... one way, of course, is meditation. It's what 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 with meditation, you have a technique or a message- you focus your attention on one thing, which could be a mantra that you repeat, 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 your body. In other words, you take attention away from thinking. And that's already a great realization that you are able- you actually have a choice of directing attention. You don't π©π’π·π¦ to go with your attention all the time where the habitual thought patterns want you to go. The habitual thought patterns πΈπ’π―π΅ your attention every time. Every thought says, "[?] give me your attention, follow me. Go this way." And another negative thought, and another one, and another one. Yes, compassion for yourself, of course it's as important as compassion for others. When... Often, I get asked questions, like people who did something that they now 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 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 to gain- 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 consciousness 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- 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 then you have to come to a stop and say, "Okay, there's something here that's not right, because I'm no longer enjoying what I'm doing." 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 works for you. Of course 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, this can still be the mechanism; the underlying unconscious assumption behind it. Something's going to happen. And of course, the opposite is true, because the more unhappy you are with something, the more you're stuck in the situation. (chuckles) How you do what you do is more important than what you do. You could have a store serving customers with this or that, which perhaps would not be regarded as a very important job, and yet if that is done with a quality of presence where every customer who comes into your store, you give this person your-- 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 their being, in consciousness. And so that you could create- even a person in a relatively simple job could contribute in that way to creating a better world. (Oprah reading) (Eckhart) Yes. So what that means... if nothing changes in your state of consciousness, the ego has many ideas. It says, "I want to be a spiritual person." "I want to be recognized as a spiritual person." "I want to be more spiritual than all these people, and I'm definitely more spiritual than πΊπ°πΆ." So the ego has all kinds of ideas of what it wants to be. It might even say, "Yes, I want to be good," because it wants to have a better image of itself. But on that level, by the essential dysfunction of the ego is still operating. So this is why we have the phrase, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions," because no matter how good your intentions are, when you're still trapped in the ego, it will always take you into conflict eventually. So you have to go deeper beyond the realm of opposites where there's good and bad, and reach a place within yourself that is unconditioned, that is, what I sometimes call, the formless. Expressed beautifully in the Old Testament in the little saying, "Be still and know that I am God." That is- and that's in the Old Testament. It contains the entire wisdom of religion in those few words. Be still, meaning go to that place where the mind is no longer operating, where there's- you're just conscious without thinking, and that is the level where the eternal resides. Thank you guys so much for watching, I made this video because LiveNow06 asked me to, so if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I also love to know which of Eckhart's top ten rules had the biggest impact on you and why, what change you're gonna make after watching this video, what inspiration came to you after watching these clips, leave in the comments below and I will join in the discussion. Finally, wanted to give a quick shoutout to Jay GrYnD. Jay, thank you so much for buying a copy of my book, it really means a lot to me. For those of you watching, if you want your chance of a shoutout in a future video, make sure to pick up a copy of the book and email in your receipts so we can keep track and send you the bonuses too. Thank you so much for watching, continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon. And a lot that is required to truly perceive things, and immediately things become more alive and less problematic when you go into sense perception, because the problematic dimension is in the head, and you go into sense perception, suddenly you [?] into the present moment, and in the present moment, problems disappear. Isn't that strange? So the mind says, "Well, I still π©π’π·π¦ 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 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's an absolute presence, and then that person does what he or she does. It flows from that presence. So you look- there's no problem. Problem is when you dwell mentally on something that will happen, could happen, might happen; a problem that something I have to face next week but not now, and you're totally absorbed in that. That's problem. An interesting thing- I may have even written that in The Power of 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 my wife, my ex-wife is suing me, I'm about to lose my home... a person 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 π΅π©πͺπ΄ moment? You're breathing, feeling the aliveness in the body, looking around. "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. (chuckles) It's an amazing realization. It 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 cannot be dealt with at this moment. If you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about your problems and what you can do about them, It's extremely unlikely that you find any solution by worrying at 4 o'clock in the morning about it. But if you became still at 4 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, you suddenly say, "Oh, I know what I have to do now. I know how I can deal with it now." And the right course of action happens, because you've gone π΅π©π¦π³π¦. 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 being challenged, practice it. And then when you π’π³π¦ being challenged by little thing 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-- I mean any movie you see, what actually happens in the movie. I can describe every movie to you in three words: Something goes wrong. (audience laughter) Because there wouldn't be a movie otherwise! Nothing would happen. Nobody would evolve. Everything would be dead. But in your own life, you complain. So you see movies to see something go wrong, but when it happens in your own life, you complain. Not you personally. You've transcended it perhaps already. (audience laughter) But so the strange thing is, things are not meant π―π°π΅ to go wrong. Going wrong is part of the totality of how life experiences itself. If things didn't go wrong, they 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 that which goes wrong in the movie. In a bad movie, so to speak, the character does not go through any changes. That which goes wrong is only solved on an external level. In the end the bad guy is killed, and that's the end of the movie, but nothing else happens. (chuckles) 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.
