There Is Another Way | Special Teaching from Eckhart Tolle

there's a line in Shakespeare I don't remember which play it says nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so there's a very important lesson here an essential part of spiritual awakening or we could call it the awakening of consciousness is to learn to become aware of the difference between the situation that you find yourself in and what your mind says about the situation that you find yourself in particularly challenging situations many of you at this time are perhaps confined to a small space perhaps a small apartment not allowed to go out except to buy groceries or other essentials there safe to share that space several people or there's nobody else and you feeling lonely or you may be experiencing that money is becoming scarce because you've been laid off no more income or you're feeling sick and there's a fever as cough No all these things that many of you are experiencing now would conventionally normally be called bad and yes I suppose or the conventional level they are not pleasant particularly if your sake so what does it mean what does Shakespeare mean when he says nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so so you're very essential spiritual lesson is to be able to differentiate between a situation that you are experiencing and your mental commentary about the situation that you're experiencing the thoughts that you have concerning the situation that you're experiencing now for most people anybody who's not sufficiently aware for most people the whatever they experience and the mental commentary that they have about their experience a single phenomenon they cannot separate them so let's say you are cooped up in a small space have been there for already a week or two weeks and you're thinking about how much longer and you can't stand it anymore this is just too awful and the self-talk continues it's telling you how awful and unacceptable this situation is and you might this self-talk may generate self-pity may generate anger it may generate depression and or certainly will generate fear because a lot of the self-talk is about or badges it's not just how bad it is now but how bad it's going to be it's going to be worse that's what the mind is often saying and then when the mind saying that it's going to get worse then basically for you it is already worse and it gets worse and worse so since you many of you have spare time these days I suggest experimenting a little bit and becoming aware of the difference between the situation you find yourself in and the mental commentary about the situation so when you feel unhappy basically suffering where you are and you're saying is I can't take much more of this whatever the mind is saying or the - saying it's going to get worse I can take another three weeks of this how could I what am I going to live on and so on so the common train concerns certain things that are happening now it may concern some things in the so-called future so you become aware of the self-talk basically most humans talk to themselves a lot or you may also be talking to others if you share space with other people then this self-talk becomes your the dialogue that you have with others and as an experiment I will suggest that you ask yourself how would I experience the situation if I did not add any unnecessary thought to it how would I experience this moment the situation that I'm finding myself in without the addition of an interpretation of the mind I sometimes call that in most cases this addition this interpretation in many many cases it's negative is usually not that much that the mind can comment on a very pleasant experience it just experiences it but the mind can loves it when it there's a difficult situation then the mind can really get going and has a long story about it how would I experience this moment without the addition of unnecessary thought that's a strange question I sometimes say that this addition of thought is excess baggage in your life and many humans don't realize that they are making themselves unhappy for years and years and sometimes a whole lifetime because they never learned to differentiate between situations they find themselves in and that which the mind adds to the situation so they experiences it situation through the narrative of the mind they cannot say he is a situation and he is the narrative but this is what I'm asking you to experiment with now because you have plenty of time or many of you have I would experience this moment if I refrained from interpreting it calling it either good or bad okay without this question doesn't have an ant's on a conceptual level this question directs your attention into the present moment the aliveness of the present moment and if you don't add any thought to it but just in experiments you can if you if the experiment is fails if you don't like it and you can continue with adding continuously adding narratives to the situation and continue to experience the situation through the veil of the narrative let comments how awful it all is that your life is falling apart the world is falling apart it's also dreadful that's a narrative so how would I experience this moment if I did not add okay let's do it let's all let's refrain not it's not a doing it's a refrain from doing something that is normally an unconscious mind process okay what am I left with Here I am I'm sitting here looking around breathing whatever is here in this room look out of the window see a bit of sky 3 light coming through the window of furniture in the room whatever else is happening here sensory perceptions and your breathing and you are alive presumably although you may not actually experience being alive but you can experience it by feeling the inner energy field of the body which is alive it's all part of the experience of this moment and there you are sitting there and you have dropped the narrative and all you're left with is the bare isness beingness or isness of this moment that's interesting and you may suddenly feel the kind of weight lifting of your shoulders the weight that you a bit early probably carry which is the weight of this is why I call it excess baggage it is a weight of unconscious thinking reactive thinking the mind creating unhappy narratives and then what you then experience is the body is reflecting back to you the unhappy narrative in the form of an unhappy emotion that's got normal living that's what when you watch a movie or everybody's doing it that's just normal not very few people question it but there is another way and it's a way of awareness or presence so this is the perhaps one of the most of the most fundamental spiritual practice is to be able to separate the narrative from the situation and if possible as much as possible let go of the narrative and just be present with this moment as it is and of course the amazing fact is this moment is all there ever is your entire life unfolds in and as this moment in other words it's always now it's never not now your entire life is now whatever happened in the past happened in the now and when you remember it you remember now whatever will happen in the future will not happen in the future it will happen in the now because when the future comes it's no longer futures and now and when you think about the future it's of thought in the present moment in the now so life and now your life and now are inseparable and there's an enormous power hiding in the now which is means hiding in you and a deep sense of aliveness and beingness that goes far beyond what we conventionally call happiness it's not happiness it's Deva but you need to be challenged by life to find it and this is what's happening from millions collectively now first on a personal level every boy gets telling periodically also but now collectively are being challenged we need to wake up wake up out of unconscious thinking out of complete identification with the thinking mind which is conditioned by the past and we need to realize that there is in us there is in you another dimension of consciousness that has always been there but a bit chilly one could say overlooked and that is the dimension of awareness which is consciousness without thought you probably have experienced it on many occasions briefly and for example when engaged in an activity that requires you to be absolutely present climbing up the mountain sometimes perhaps engaged in some kind of sport activity requires you to be absolutely present and then there's an awareness there but there's no conceptual thinking there's no time for thinking and the strange thing is this this awareness is a deeper identity it's the the the awareness that you are frees you ultimately from yourself the self the limit itself the conditioned self the mind mate sense of self that for most people that's all they know but there's more to you and this there is a deeper identity in you legislate that and then identity is awareness itself that is consciousness itself it's the unconditioned consciousness itself and it's not difficult to experience them to realize that and but humans don't they need the challenge to be driven there and this is why what we are going through right now is potentially very helpful so the practice is how do I experience this moment without the addition of thought and then you come to experience the pure business of this moment in which there is no suffering there is only the isness of this because all the unhappiness ultimately was not created by the situation it was created by the narrative but you didn't know that as most you would have still don't know that because they cannot separate the situation from the narrative and so whenever you feel unhappy you feel fearful you feel depressed you feel resentful what's happening self-pity whatever it may be use that as a little wake-up call say okay how does this arise where does this how is this feeling of unhappiness in whatever form how does it come about and then you become more aware of what goes on in your thinking mind the awareness is deeper a deeper dimension of consciousness we can say hi our deep it doesn't matter it is a deeper dimension of consciousness than the activity of thought which is also consciousnesses every thought is a form that consciousness takes but underneath H there's a vast realm of consciousness in the same way that the rapper on the surface of the ocean let's say that's the thought but the ripple is only a temporary fleeting expression of a much deeper reality underneath it and so you wake up to that deep identity by realizing the fundamental difference between what is and what the mind has to say about it and then more and more you're able to experience situations with the power of your presence you're facing a situation with the power of your presence it's not your presence but let's just call it yours you face it with the power of your presence which is true intelligence instead of being reactive and complaining about what it is you're experiencing a lot of that unnecessary mind activity the narrative the excess baggage a lot of that you might have noticed is complaining you can complain about life about other people around you about you can complain about if the unfairness of it all our life has treated you or whatever it is you can complain about whatever the politicians and all kinds of the infinite it thinks you can complain about and so a lot of that narrative is as an element of complaining to it and it's not pleasant but the the false sense of self the ego of the meat it loves complaining and because then it feels it has a stronger sense of identity that fictitious identity it's it loves the Trump to make somebody wrong another person you can make a whole situation wrong and this should not be happening it should not be happening it's a travesty but it is happening this should not be happening is the narrative and that what makes y'all happy in most cases perhaps all cases is the narrative in the mind not the situation the situation is as it is and as when you realize that and more and more are you able to face every situation which is in the present moment the only place where any situation can arise you face it as it is in the now with the power of your presence and if action is required to take action if nothing can be done you leave it alone it is as it is and you are not unhappy about it anymore you rise above it so to speak you're no longer at the mercy of whatever is happening or not happening around you yes it's nice when nice things happen and it's not so nice when unpleasant things happen but that's it doesn't touch you that deeply because this you have access already a deep and I mentioned within yourself so you're no longer at the mercy of conditions because as long as yet the mercy of conditions life is very frustrating because conditions that are situations you find yourself in are never satisfying for very low and a lot of the time they are unsatisfied a lot of the time they are challenging because life is not here to make you happy the world isn't here to make you happy it's you to awaken you to make you conscious how does it do that it does that by challenging you and it's doing it now so and as you are able to let go of the unnecessary narrative that makes you unhappy you can so then you automatically become present to what is and then you understand perhaps what Shakespeare meant when he said nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so thanks I will talk to you again soon in the meantime please try it out practice and see what happens Thanks you you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

Views: 1,705,765

Rating: 4.9111028 out of 5

Keywords: eckhart tolle dealing with challenges, staying conscious in a crisis, staying conscious during suffering, eckhart tolle meditation, eckhart tolle thought, eckhart tolle youtube, dealing with stress, eckhart tolle presence, eckhart tolle 2020, staying conscious, coronavirus outbreak, self care, consciousness, fear, anxiety, stress, coronavirus, mindfulness, presence, conscious, eckhart tolle

Id: 5MG1XcntrT4

Length: 25min 16sec (1516 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020