Unleash the Power of NOW! - Best Eckhart Tolle MOTIVATION (4 HOURS of Pure INSPIRATION)

free will ultimately does not come in until there's some awareness in you that's where Free Will comes from until you have some awareness you are run by the conditioning of your mind and so you have no choice the element of choice comes in when you become aware for example of your the thoughts that go through your head and you might realize suddenly and for some people that's the first time they awaken spiritually when they realize that for years they've had a voice in their head talking to them which could be a monologue it could be a dialogue you could have a conversation with yourself you can beat yourself up and say I'm not good enough the voice in the head for some people the spiritual awakening comes when they become aware that there's a voice in the head and there's the awareness at the moment that's the awareness you might even be able to choose to let go of a certain thought a repetitive thought that you don't need anymore that you don't want anymore and then you you surrender it or you breathe it out you don't need it hey seven Carmichael and I make these videos because running the business is hard and waking up every day and getting to work when you're all by yourself is hard and the thing that saved me that continues to inspire me motivate me give me hope inspiration ideas is looking at the stories of people who've done a lot more than me and I learn strategies I get motivation and it gets me to believe in myself to go off and attack the day and so I hope this video inspires you to do the same as well so today let's get some incredible motivation from the one and only Eckhart Tolle enjoy but sometimes people's on the grip of strong emotions but if there's a little bit of awareness there if at let's say it's anger you're suddenly anger arises but in the background you're aware that this emotion of anger so there's a small element of choices come in do you want to then attack this person if there's awareness you can observe the anger but made no longer men no longer need to act it out I'm not talking about suppressing but recognizing the more awareness you have or presence the more choices in your life and then it's only then that you actually become truly intelligent because this awareness is not an IQ thing the way you can have I've met highly intelligent people with one or two or three phds academics and others we are completely unconscious completely unaware still just completely in their minds and and people in their personal lives often very dysfunctional personal lives so it's not to be equated with intelligence this awareness to take a responsibility for what is it that you can take responsibility for primarily it's taking responsibility for your state of consciousness which determines what kind of world you create you because you are Humanity humanity is an abstract concept doesn't exist humanity is the human being you are Humanity so for Humanity to take responsibility you need to take primarily responsibility for your State of Consciousness because only a diseased or dysfunctional State of Consciousness produces a diseased and dysfunctional world out there by world I mean the human-made world that is has been imposed on the what's already there the planet which is potentially of course a paradise the planet pristine unbelievable Jewel a being of great intelligence we are not separate from it but the being is going through a transitional process and every transitional process is critical it may or may not work in which case the being will go or some other way but the the your State of Consciousness determines what kind of world you create what kind of action you take and what consequences your actions have so here this is why my main work is to address the cause of dysfunction which lies in the human mind the dysfunction of the human mind or as it is sometimes called in Zen the sickness of the human mind so as I see it and I don't think anybody who reads history can doubt it there is a deep-seated dysfunction in humans has been there for thousands of years and if we're not if there's no shift in that then the dysfunction will destroy us it probably won't destroy the planet because the planet has enormous resources but it will take a while it would take a while for the planet to recover all you have to do then is primarily take responsibility for your State of Consciousness now now and this is what the entire teaching really is about what is what is my state of consciousness at this moment am I generating disturbance am I generating negativity am I generating conflict and suffering for myself and others am I generating inner pollution am I polluting my beautiful the beautiful being that I am with continuous absurd movements of thought producing negative emotions producing an entire entity that is illusory that I call the me so to take responsibility it needs to be just of course an Awakening where you can say okay I will take responsibility now some people don't know that there is even the possibility of taking responsibility that's why you are so important anybody who realizes it this is you are the beginning of the transformed world most of the time there is a voice in your head that comments and has opinions and viewpoints and interpretations about what's going on in your life I call that the voice in the head for most humans that is completely involuntary they don't even know that they have a voice in the head that never stops talking most of the time and silently in your head at other times it may even sort something out so it wants to be heard and so if you walk in the street you will find most people look fairly sane they're not talking to themselves it seems because they're not talking out aloud but if you listened into everybody's head you would be amazed of how noisy the inside of every human is it's like a raid you know these radio stations where the the people talk in an excited voice they go on and on if you go to a foreign country and you don't know what they're talking about you might think this must be extremely important but if you can understand what they are saying you realize it's it's completely meaningless it's just noise so a significant part of what happens in your mind the larger part is actually just Superfluous noise this thinking is a wonderful ability a wonderful tool if you used rightly it is an instrument that causes dysfunction and misery for Millions on the planet unhappiness for Millions on the planet if thinking is not used but if you are used by thought so when humans say I think in most cases that's actually not true because they have no control over their thinking it's a compulsive and involuntary and they are so identified with these thought processes they don't even know that they are in the grip of their thought processes because they are so identified they become their thought processes so whatever comes into your head you completely believe in it and then you yeah that's how it is whenever you feel unhappiness this is a generic term unhappiness in whatever form unhappiness can arise as irritation can arise as anger can arise as even boredom is a form of unhappiness sadness all kinds of states it doesn't they don't feel Pleasant they do unhappiness and usually they are attributed to life situation something that's going on in your life it looks so for example sort of waiting at the airline counter and of course how often things don't go well there uh let's hope they don't drag you out of the plane but it'll that could that could happen too Rising anger Rising upset in whatever form ask yourself is this caused by the situation or is it caused by what my mind is telling me about the situation and in 95 percent of cases you will find that the mental commentary that argues and complains about something that's going on but should not be going on but it is but shouldn't be and the gap between what is and what the mind says should be or should not be that Gap is the rising of unhappiness and misery or is the Buddha called suffering a powerful transformation can happen when you and this is one way of approaching it which may be helpful to you uh is not to desire any thing within you to be different from the way it is now so that would mean complete acceptance of whatever it is that you experience at any given moment at the moment there are these energies in you but you don't really want them so there is a there's a conflict in what you want and what you have now if you approach it in a different way instead of hanging what you want you perhaps you want Stillness you want peace you want that deeper sense of aliveness perhaps that's the yearning you want to be fully yourself and what you have is you perhaps you feel contraction in the body you feel excessive mind activity you feel and at almost semi-physical energy field blocking you so you have the two you have what you want and you have what you have now as a practice I suggest that you do away with a conflict between what you have and what you want and you want what you have instead which means whatever your inner reality or outer reality but we're talking mainly about inner now whatever your inner reality is right now as it's always now of course not it's not a big thing it's only the reality now accept it it's totally this is this is what it is and so bring that acceptance is a strange thing when you really can say well that's what it is you might as well accept it because it it is the reality of this moment so if you bring that exception through no matter even it feels not pleasant if it might be a contraction in the body or my mind is just so active Okay let my mind be active bring in bring the allowing to it and that the strange thing happens you may find when you do it you you it will already be have a little bit of space around the condition that you dislike but now you accept and so you accept the condition that you previously disliked but now you say well that's what is so I allow it to be and what you then Skin Sense if you're inside of you a little bit of space around the condition so not much and Trust just a little bit so let's say you have a contraction here and say that's what is and this acceptance brings space so here's the trash and then he have a little bit of hence what is and then it may grow a little bit this space around it and then you find [Music] you become more interested in that little space around it than in the condition so you give more attention to that the spaciousness that around that comes with the acceptance of what is and you can sense that space a bit more and then it's what I'm saying is not literally true but I'm just saying it grows it seems to grow and then there's a bit more the street condition is still the same but it has a receded somewhat it's no longer the center of your attention you that you're more aware of the space you become the space right also to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video I've 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 I had a very extremely painful relationship with myself I couldn't live with myself anymore and so I somehow said that's it I can't live with it anymore that's it but that was so total that I no longer sustained fueled the self through thought I didn't know anything about it it just happened so the Mind Made image dissolved the self that I couldn't live with that was so heavy dissolved and what was left was simply I so the I saved it from whereas before when I said I I was referring to myself the unhappy dense eye the story-based eye that dissolved and then the true I emerged had always been there presence I am [Music] nothing in particular anymore a simple sense of presence or beingness foreign and be without having a relationship with myself and that there is something so precious in that eye or presence so it's beyond words you could say it's like a diamond it's something extremely very very precious that's why perhaps Buddhism sometimes has the image of a diamond but this is not comparative it's not a sense of that deepest self not the Mind Made itself is so precious that it has it knows itself to be that in a non-dualistic Why without needing to compare itself to others it has nothing to do with the form or any mind form so as presence arises you don't need self-esteem anymore you don't depend on that anymore because what dissolves is the Mind Made entity with which you have a relationship and it's so self-esteem is an intermediate thing that for a little while makes your life more pleasant fine and then after a while you see the unsatisfactory nature even of that because you cannot uphold continuous self-esteem it's hard work all these affirmations and then things come into your life that tell you the opposite inevitably sooner or later so then suddenly you don't love yourself anymore nor do you hate yourself because there's no self to love they're simply the state of this which is love it emanates 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 um oh by the way um there's a funny movie made a few if 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 is 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 office can you look after my children or let's speak and because I I need your yourself so good with children the seal flatter you do 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 this 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 is not who she truly is but you speak to you 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 just you're just trying to use 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 qualities no I'm sorry that's it I can't do that anymore this it it reply it implies there's 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 a stream 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 will 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 a thought arising 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 it was on 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 mica 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 salt 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 a later 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 she 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 through 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 is 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 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 esposited 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 uh so in Ultimate terms or 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 have 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 so to to go about wanting to manifest material abundance in your life is perhaps not the the right way to go about it because you're concentrating on the outermost layer of abundance and even if you manage to manifest abundance on the outer level it's not going to give you the true feeling of abundance it's not in other words it's not going to make you happy it's not going to fulfill you except for a few days the new possession nice and shiny whatever it is and there you look at it got it now it's my and after a few days or a week or two or give it a month it wears off hmm it's no longer that fulfilling to be driving the Ferrari or whatever it is there's nothing wrong with the Ferrari but if you're looking to the Ferrari for happiness and fulfillment and to get you give you the feeling of it's not going to work for that long if you're just driving it because you enjoy that experience that's a different matter manifest abundance From the Inside Out not from the outside is hoping that you go find some Interstate through external things that is a dilemma of many people who practice manifesting which of course manifesting is a something that you can use and it works if it's done rightly but the Dilemma or the fallacy is the belief that whatever you manifest is going to make you happy it's to seek the fullness of life through what you manifest through things doesn't mind create a physical problem to distract us from emotion pain it is often the case that emotional pain that is not recognized when there's not enough awareness the emotional pain exists but in beneath your level of awareness and it can come out as certain kinds of reactivity in daily life so you are taken over by reactions to certain things that trigger that type of emotional pain that is in you that you're completely unaware of and emotional pain that is in total unawareness can very easily become a physical symptom it transferred into the Physical Realm any kind of prolonged negative mental States which produce corresponding negative emotions affect the functioning of the physical organism and even research has been done and on this and been confirmed that negative States mental emotional states effect in the long term affect the physical organism you need the challenge 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 I 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 weight is I mean if you ask your body what do you rather have a good just to relax or lift his weight no 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 there's a request or a 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 non-attachment to things does not mean not appreciating things but it means not seeking yourself or do regarding things things as an extension of yourself or think of things as needing them to add to yourself in order to be yourself more fully that's attachment to things it's an an ego dysfunction but in in the way in which the ego survives and it's it's not pleasant because you always need more and nothing really satisfies you when if ever you buy something and seek some kind of self-satisfaction through it very quickly you realize it doesn't work and then you look for something else however there is a way of appreciating things beautiful things or simple things appreciate is not being attached you can love even love a piece of furniture or whatever it is a little object or a piece of something you wear too not saying all this needs to disappear you can you can like things and appreciate them love them in a sense of having appreciate it without the it without the seeking in it and when it the thing leaves you [Music] it's you you lose it or it breaks or it gets stolen or whatever with all the attachments you'll say oh it's a Pity but you don't there's no reaction and no pain you're able to let go and that's a sign that something you appreciated and yet when it's not there anymore well that's all right too I always appreciate it since I I started in my between the age of 30 and well up to the age of 30 I don't know 36 my my main transportation was bicycle they always had a I always appreciated my bicycle uh and I developed a strange habit when I parked my bicycle and trained it to something railing outside whatever I would take a few steps and look back on it and just appreciate its its being is a very strange habit you look back at it and look back one more time there it is and sometimes people ask why are you looking back at your bicycle are you proud of it well it wasn't a particularly special bicycle just to normal no I just I I appreciate it being there and one day as when then I got in I Got a Car somebody gave me an old car and then I lent my bicycle to somebody and one and suddenly that person came and said I'm so sorry I lost your bike I didn't lock it for a few minutes and now it's gone and I had already gone through a shift in Consciousness so it's it's okay it's gone nothing we can do about it hopefully somebody else appreciates it now then I developed the same habit with my old car I would look back when it I parked it I'd look back and just appreciate it being there and then do the same now that I have a much better car and now with my good car people think I must be proud of this car or something but it's not that I did the same with the bicycle it's a strange habit I'm not recommending anybody that he should do that but it's just it's a way in which I appreciate it it's being Jesus often talks about the kingdom of heaven interesting expression I know 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 uh 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 misunderstation of repentance started when it was translated into Latin into latiness penitencia which was already wrong and now we have metanoia as repentance no a complete reversal 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 no what is that thing that's within you where you can never say it's there or it's there I I retranslate 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 and 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 it's 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 in this world dealing with things creating things achieving things and being is about being aware of the present moment which after all is all you ever have whatever you achieve through becoming in the future eventually turns into the present moment so as I speak to you the meditation if we even want to call it that it's perhaps best to forget about the word as I speak be aware of the start the silence or the Stillness between the words being aware means just notice that it's there it's very simple so you notice that in addition to the words there's another dimension that is easily overlooked and that's the dimension of Stillness which we could also call base or spaciousness so when you notice that there are two so to speak two dimensions here dimension of words which you here and which then become thoughts in your head and the dimension of no thing spaciousness you just so you just notice that's all that's required that there is that Dimension also present so you notice it in between words and even behind the words so to speak now when you notice it what happens inside you what does it mean to notice the Stillness be aware of the students it means you have become still inside it means you're conscious but at that moment at this moment you're not thinking but you're allowed present completely here but not thinking so that's the realization of the dimension of depths within you I have the main focus of your attention in your daily life in the present moment the rest of your attention so that's the 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 and 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 when I visited RAM does 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 when things go wrong that's a moment of becoming more conscious it's every even the smallest things if you don't react out of the conditioning the mental emotional conditioning but be the awareness and then oh and You observe if emotions arise you are there and you can say oh there's the anxiety again and then you know that there's anxiety without calling it anything so this is a huge difference to know that anxiety is in you anger is in you right now for example or anxiety whatever else it may be or some mood the time League gets hold of you and then you're suddenly in a bad mood don't talk to me don't think I'm grumpy well if you say I'm grumpy it's already a little bit step forward because at least you know that you're grumpy oh if you're totally can't conscious the grumpiness is you and you don't even know that you're grumpy to say it don't talk to me and grumpy that's already misses a little bit of awareness there it's great so there's a huge difference between saying I'm angry and slightly different I feel angry or there's anger in me I feel that there's anger in me I feel angry there's a somewhat a difference between I am angry because then you equate identity with emotion so it's not I am angry that's a beaut you're falling into a huge trap if you equate emotion with your identity or if you equate a thought with your identity or a story in your mind you create that with your identity or an opinion which is thought the world is full of people who don't know the difference between their opinion and their identity their opinion becomes their identity and then they have lots of fights with other people because they are they are totally confused about who they are they derive their identity from a set of opinions politics for example you derive it doesn't mean you cannot have opinions everybody has opinions but where does your sense of identity come from does it come from the opinions or do you realize that you have certain opinions which may be valid or not you you're on the human level you have opinions or viewpoints or perspective mental positions you have them they are there yeah but do you do this give you your sense of self or if they do then you're continuously arguing with other people making other people into enemies because when you contradict somebody who equates opinion with identity unconsciously they believe that you are attack attacking their very self because there's a confusion about who they are they don't know who they are so you you attack the opinion of somebody who's totally identified with their opinion and you become their mortal enemy they might even try to kill you up in an extreme form of unconsciousness affirmations are if they are done rightly it can be very beautiful substitutes for prayers um I'm Healed and whole and at peace and after that let there be a space and really the power is in that space in the space you experience that you already whole the outward form might tell you something different I'm holy causing Miracle says I am Holy for example that's again you are and so it's simply an affirmation of how it this is how it is or if you're ex healing for somebody else you are either with that person or that person comes into your mind you're thinking about that person and that person may be ill and then the most powerful healing I find is to be to hold the image of that person and then go deeper into yourself where the wholeness of Life Lies when nothing is needed nothing is needed to be added and there you you find the wholeness also of that person they already healed at that deepest level Beyond form they already healed so you go from form and then into formlessness happiness or fulfillment does not depend on any other humans acceptance of who you are that would be a deluded thought if you think you can only be happy if these people accept and understand you some people have that with their parents they so they say my dad my father they don't understand me at all it's terrible terrible I'm trying to explain what I'm at of course they under they cannot understand you it's beyond their comprehension if you have awakened spiritually and they haven't so compassionately accept that they cannot understand you instead of trying to explain yourself to them just be there in a loving way with them when you meet for Christmas or Thanksgiving and you hear all the judgments coming at you from them you should have why don't you look where it's taken you look at your sister she married a millionaire and you and you are into that weird kind of meditation stuff that's not getting you anywhere whatever judgments come and say okay I know that this is what you think and feel and I I think and feel differently that's all so you don't not need to justify you're actually accepting people's limitations and suddenly realizing whether or not your father your mother your sister your brother or anybody else Close to You accepts you for who you are is really not you become free of the need to be accepted but you can nevertheless have a deeper connection keep that deeper connection and connectedness with them I've had this strange feeling idea in the past few months um that a certain segment of humanity is losing the ability to think rationally there's a decrease in without I call it IQ or whatever it may be there is a diminishment of rational faculty as reflected in many ways on the mainstream media social media and so on uh and another segment of humanity is actually becoming more aware more where more conscious is not drawn into the regressive phase that some of humanity may be going through It's Not Unusual for Humanity to occasionally collectively regress to a lower State of Consciousness it has happened whenever a country or Collective has been taken over by uh and almost one could say toxic ideology that has completely taken possession of millions of people's minds look at of course national socialism in Germany the maoist cultural revolution was quite crazy what happened in Cambodia under polar pod totally crazy ideas invaded millions of people's minds and the reduce their ability to to actually engage in rational thinking and it thinks it happened for example in Mao East China during the cultural revolution children reporting on their parents when they were angry with their parents all they had to do is go to school and Report their parents if they had said something against the government the pounds would be taken away and never seen again they they went around public parks in big cities in China tearing out flowers out of because Beauty was regardless Bourgeois you have to kill your back your pets your your dogs and cats totally in these are just a few examples of totally toxic and irrational thoughts taking over people's minds so that's to some extent I've been seeing this happening collectively not just in one country in quite a few Western many Western countries that I'm aware of and but it has not affected everybody some people have managed to remain aware they have not been one could say infected by what one could perhaps call a a mental virus or mental viruses that reduce people's ability to actually see reality reality then gets distorted through the veil of these mental viruses that have taken over people's minds um this is um uh more serious more serious pandemic than anything that happens on the physical level as far as pandemics are concerned the actual viruses actually you might I don't know if you've read Carl Jung said that the greatest danger that Humanity faces is not from any external Force like natural disasters or diseases or pandemics that he said the greatest danger that Humanity faces is uh Collective psychosis for someone who's a little bit hyperactive what's the best way to get a balance between removing content which is really good but then not getting annoyed when content comes in and you think oh it's it's spoiling my piece is there somewhere to get a balance be more a listener than a speaker make that your practice for the time being I'm not saying don't say a word but be more like 80 percent a listener than a speaker and that would for example you can do by asking questions when you're in a rather than stating your view or whatever it is ask questions that encourages the other person to speak more as the other person speaks more it forces you to listen and then make the listening into a practice while the other person is speaking are you able to let's at any time to feel your inner body can you feel that the hands then I seem to lose them quite quickly okay but but hence you can't feel the energy in your hands the rest of the body is more difficult yeah okay well it's a good start it's a start so I suggest that once you've asked a question while you listen you direct your awareness into the inner feeling of your hands and that keeps it there so that it doesn't your mind doesn't take off so you ask a question what um where you're from how long have you been with a card or how did you first discover the the books um have you been to other many questions you can ask and people will be happy to help you by answering your questions and they will be happy to help you by not asking you too many questions Goods yeah yeah so and so while you listen have your attention in the inner energy field of your hands if if you can amplify that and have your attention also in other parts of your body for example your feet and hand at the same time that's even better but hence is fine too so you feel your inner the aliveness in your hands and from there you you listen and you know just giving this will help you prevent the stream of Mind from taking you over be aligned with the present moment rather than carry in your head this huge amount of mental content about your past and your future because the mind is primarily concerned with past and future so while you're walking here you're already thinking about in a week's time I'll be home again and then what then I'll have to do that and have those phone calls to make and then I'll have to do that and then those problems will be I shouldn't have come here because I've got serious so much on my plate at home why did I come here I should have dealt with my things there I should have waited gone to next year's retreat as such that's the self-talk in the head you will May encounter it here too as you walk from here to there you will encounter the self-talk in the head so how do you get out of the self-talk in the head one you need to know that that self-talk in the head you don't know itself talking ahead you become the self-talk in your head you become the voice in your head you don't know it you are it so you have to the the vital step and I cannot tell you how to do that that minimum of awareness needs to be there where you know that their self-talk happening in my head and it's telling you with some kind of story it could be the briefest of stories like I shouldn't have come here or I don't fit in here all these people up too spiritual for me or [Music] I'm so spiritual these people are not spiritual at all it's all little stories in the head every every even every fragment of self-talk is a little story in the head that goes around and then you look at reality through the lens of the little story it's not just one story of course it comes another one and another it's in some little some stories are not little they may be big stories about yourself and your life and what's gone wrong with it or what's gone right with it thoughts even that's a story more pleasant than if it's gone wrong so you you need to know when the self self talk happens in the head and um The Knowing is not part of the self-talk The Knowing is just an awareness that there is self-talk the moment there is an awareness that there is self-talk the possibility of freedom from the self-talk opens up I will probably be talking for almost of the time but there may be quite a few gaps of Stillness in between the words as they are now and these gaps are very important I would even say more important than the words if you become conscious of these gaps of Stillness in between words you notice the gaps instead of just impatiently being in your conceptual mind and saying why is he talking so slowly why hasn't he said anything even significant yet if you are able to notice the gaps give them attention that is the arising of that State of Consciousness that we call a presence it is a state of alertness relaxed alertness clarity a state in which the conceptual mind has come to arrest and something else arises thinking is most people's normal state of when they are awake in conventional terms and when you become aware of these gaps thinking subsides and presence or we call it awareness arises thinking subsides presence arises of course thinking will come back but it has briefly momentarily subsided something else has emerged and that is what we call presence it is a state of one could say pure awareness or pure consciousness so foreign people hope to achieve and embed it when they actually do formal meditations meditation is a good tool but it's not enough it's not even for everybody the most important thing is to bring that state of clear alert presence into everyday life there was a long time when I had resentment towards my father because my father was pretty unconscious except very late in life I had a very strong ego and living with him as a child was living with an unexploded bomb that could go off at any moment without these intense rages would suddenly come several times a week so I lived in a constant state of kind of background anxiety but is when is this mom going to explode again next and then for a long time it was in my twenties I had a resentment towards him until I went to this shift in Consciousness and I suddenly realized he he did what he had to do but there wasn't enough awareness in him to act any different so he was at the mercy of his own conditioning and once you see that you no longer make it into an identity for him and so you free him and really perhaps this is the meaning of forgiveness you can forgive yourself by not making unconscious behavior in your past into an identity for yourself or for somebody else you may be surprised to know that there are millions billions of people on the planet who have that same thought pattern there is 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 with oh there it was and I wasn't present and then the 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 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 a witness then you can stay even as it grows the witness grows with it it may not even grow they will 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 your greatest opportunity for for Spiritual Awakening use it as part of your practice life without love is no life at all now what does that mean life Without Love can only be there when you're connected to the source of life who you are Beyond form it's illness spaciousness and then from there you perceive you relate you operate you do what you do and there's a sense of Oneness no longer a sense of Separation you're one with the present moment you're one with whoever you meet because the separation comes through mental Concepts and that sense of Oneness is love it's a recognition that you share with every life form you share the same consciousness so it's always a self-recognition you see you sense rather than see yourself in the other that is love there's an innate human feeling you see something and it has a lot of attention and it's shiny and it's whatever and that everyone wants to get in but basically you're saying if you would take that breath if you would just say I don't want in on this that eventually you can actually you can almost pull other people out of it too by your own behavior yes because this isn't just about you yes also not to feed uh other if other people post negative things about you in many many cases non-reaction is the best thing instead of feeding it that's a lesson I need to learn I will try to take that one with me that applies both offline and online in your personal life too often it's just well I believe Jesus was talking about non-reaction where these talked about turning the other cheek I don't think it's to be taken literally but it means when somebody somebody attacks you not not physically it's an analogy he uses a it's a parable uh turn the other thing is it means to just be free of reaction and that uh that uh very quickly deflates even the the other person's ego it doesn't the ego needs the reaction it needs the reactivity so that's a powerful thing but how do you avoid then just becoming a pushover within that well in some situations something needs to be said but even then that can come from you could say let's especially if you're with somebody that kind of behavior is unacceptable you can say that um in a conscious way rather than you know destructive and aggressive way you can but can actually be very firm and conscious or when you say no to somebody it doesn't have to be aggressive it's just really a clear is I call it a high quality no somebody says can you lend me again I've the two thousand dollars I need I know I still owe you 20 000 but I need some more and then and then not to make the other engine enemy just no I'm sorry I can't do it anymore it's a high quality no that's uh your present while you say it and then you can set boundaries if necessary so in some cases something needs to be said I need to do something but in many other cases complete non-reactivity can be very very powerful the normal thing to happen is that this the connectedness with your essence identity is lost very easily in human relationships because the mind is so active and we live in a civilization that provides continuously continuous and incessant stimulus stimuli is the plural continuous incessant stimuli for the mind even more than even 30 years ago 30 years ago it was just radio and television and you would people would sit there for hours but nowadays you have countless sources of stimulus for them for the mind and it draws you into continuously thinking about what's your next Facebook post what's it going to be and you look at the ones that are coming in all these people are doing these fantastic things and me I'm just sitting here and then you have to pretend that you are also doing fantastic things and usually it involves taking a nice selfie and the new project yourself image which has existed for a long long time before in humans they have a they haven't this is part of ego is to have this image of who I am and but in in these Facebook now we have the opportunity to project that image into the world and it'll reach hundreds or thousands of people all at once and then you you construct your life you there are many people alive these days without knowing it they partly live for their Facebook image and they're just looking for the next thing that they can project out into the world it's Narcissus well you might remember the myth of Narcissus the Greek ancient Greek means there was this young man who had never seen himself before because they didn't have mirrors at the time but one day he happened to look into a little pool of water and he saw himself and he realized that he was extremely beautiful he said oh that's me and it's The Story Goes he fell in love with himself not in a good way [Music] not by becoming one with who he is but but the separation happens this myth shows the the beginning stage of the egoic sense of self expressed as a story the image that is of himself in the pool is the mental image of the ego said and stories are part of that image that's me I'm me and my story so you have the image of me and then oh so this guy that says us he experienced that separation uh and then I think something bad happened to him but I don't remember a word so and then you have other Divine things that continuously stimulate the minds that almost designed for you not to not to to to become still it's like the civilization it has made a great effort to come up with as many things as possible to prevent people from becoming still and spacious and taking a moment of looking at the sky and feeling the inner spaciousness arise and becoming aware of the the leaves of the tree or the branches and the wind blowing and it the noise of water the simple thing becoming still a large sensing that Stillness within almost everybody uh has in one way or another being a victim of other people but in some cases much much more so than in others some element of having been victim is probably present in everybody's life in other words you're surrounded by unconscious humans and then unconscious humans will inflict suffering on themselves and others that's just how it is when you're alive in this on this planet uh childhood particularly is a place where many many children experience um abuse either minor forms of abuse emotional abuse or they live in a very toxic family environment and then of course the other children who are experience for much more serious forms of abuse and really uh suffer and have these care and carry with them or the the memory both mental and emotional memory of the what happened to them in some cases the memory is repressed because the child the emotions may be repressed the child could not deal with them and they had to repress them and then later the possibility of remembering arises and then you remember what happened to you and how do you do the question what do you do with what happened to you what was done to you how do you deal with what was done to you by other humans whether it happened in childhood or whether it happened later in life whether it was a relatively minor thing or whether it was a very serious form of abuse how do you how do you deal with that now the the ego the human ego is always looking for something to add to its sense of identity it's looking for a stronger sense of identity because it always feels I'm not enough so it's it's going it's trying to add something that it can identify with so adds to its sense of self and it very often happens that the memory of of having been abused is used by the ego that is added to the ego's sense of self so that means you not only remember what happened to you the memory of what happened to you which is a bundle of thoughts and emotions that go with it the memory of what happened to you is more than just a memory there is self-identification with the memory in other words it's not not perceived it's just something that happened to you but it becomes part of who you perceive to be so I am a victim of that it's not that this was done to me but I am a victim of so it's the transition from memory to self that is the victim identity the ego does that because the victim identity is a very powerful form of identity a very powerful form of ego and particularly in cases where the the ego is always is does not find sufficient things that it can identify with in this world because the most common form of identification for example is with the way you look uh you look better than others so you can identify with that if you look worse than others of course that we could become part of your victim identity because you've been treated unfairly by life and life has made you look worse than others that could become part of victim identity although it's not actually abuse but it could all also be incorporated into victim identity there are millions of people in this world who believe in God and have no access have not found within themselves access to the spiritual dimension so we are here in the case of some of you who are perhaps new to this so to speak we are here for some of you to get perhaps a glimpse of it as you sit here and watch and listen and I will endeavor to put you in touch with that depth Within You Without which your life is frustrating and without which everything you undertake every Endeavor and every activity ultimately becomes frustrating and for others we are here just to to deepen it to provide a reminder on a conceptual level but to deepen the dimension that they already have access to Within so that it can be sustained in everyday life one thing is accessing the spiritual dimension in a meditation setting like Here and Now that's already a good thing if you are able to do that when you sit still become still inside another thing is to carry that with you so to speak so that it is there when you lead your life when you do things talk to people interact even when you think to have that in the background so we have the two steps one could almost say first is you you realize that within when you're not being disturbed like now hopefully you're not being disturbed externally although you may be disturbed as you sit here by your mind that's quite possible who says what is he talking about if the mind doesn't understand it the conceptual mind alone is not sufficient to make this a satisfying experience for you so for this to be a satisfying experience you need to have at least a glimpse of what it is that I am pointing to and a glimpse also of that which underlies the words and that's ultimately not in me but ultimately you can only Glimpse that in you there's a Stillness behind the words as I speak Within Myself and it can be a Stillness in you as you listen to the words and that would already be a glimpse of the spiritual Dimension so part of this is of course to be give more attention to the present moment because the more you think the more future you generate [Music] and the more tension you give to the present moment a little less thinking because to be really present you don't think about it you just are with it give it attention foreign the little things of life to be more attentive to all the little things that make up every hour every day every minute every hour and give them more attention [Music] walking steps one step at a time objects that you're handling your all the time you're handling objects in your life they always touching something putting something here there is everything that you handle Justin means to an end or are you able to just appreciate the simple presence or even of a so-called inanimate object contemplation also of all the lovely things that make up your environment part of your environment for example if I were sitting here alone let's say I'm waiting for everybody to arrive I might be sitting in looking across at the flower sense of Stillness and then there's a glass table here and then there's a glass of water here and there's a clock and a bell and tissues and they all reflect the light in different ways there's a little bit of a rainbow effect in the glass of water here and then the lines are reflected on the the belts almost like a mirror and there's the clock ticking away it's a beautiful scenes sometimes you go to an art gallery well not so much but Modern Art but it very favorite favorite thing would be still live artists and it took a while in art before they discovered these the artists in the history of art before they discovered the seemingly insignificant things and started to give attention to those before that happened they were very much interested in the huge things the Saints or the Kings or the huge battle scenes or the the big they had to they painted those things or the important people uh or some dramatic thing the volcanic eruption or whatever a fire and then at some point they started to discover the beauty and the incredible [Music] sense of the quality that is in the little things perhaps after these more of these artists depicted relatively in seemingly insignificant things perhaps it motivated some people to give more attention to that but even now it's still people very much Overlook that and you overlook then in a large part of your life you don't give it attention when I say give attention there's an element of appreciation of everything of the little things and you begin to realize that your entire life consists mainly of little things if you find the strange phenomenon that you are always right and others are always wrong it's an important realization how is it possible I must be superhuman and in the eyes of the ego of course that's kind of the case because the ego which is that which is perhaps the major obstacle towards the realization of their deeper dimension in the the ego strives incessantly for some kind of superiority and so this is what you are condemned to when you have not yet awakened even just at least to some extent to the deeper essence of Who You Are the awareness the presence the Stillness then you are in the prison of your own personality and it's not a pleasant place to be I sometimes watch people into their soul burdened with their personalities so in the grip of that thing what is personality it's the sum total of their mental emotional conditioning from the past mental emotional conditioning mental conditioning means certain thought forms mind structures that become repetitive certain narratives concerning your life my life says the ego certain narrative concerning my other people in my life what I did what they did to me my victories my defeats what many things form the the egoic condition itself and one important aspect of the egoic condition itself is it it talks about my life all the time in the head and out allowed [Music] in my life is what concerns me obviously it's my life and what is my life it's a story in my head but they don't know that they think it's the reality but it's a story in my head it's a narrative it's the predominant narrative it in my mind and it's the narrative through which I interpret everything that comes like come into contact with it becomes a screen through which I interpret other people situations places events I don't know that because I am so identified was that mental emotion conditioning that it has become me it has become me and my life it's I don't know anything else that's the Fate still of the majority of humans on the planet all the the minority that is Awakening is growing it is still a minority most humans are still totally in the grip of their egoic self and probably most of you are moving still in and out of your echoic self take your attention more deeply into being or into the tension itself purely practical don't turn on the TV in your room please I have not installed hidden cameras to take on you second limit your interaction the interaction with your devices if you cannot eliminate interaction with your devices completely and I understand that you may not survive if you do at least put aside just maybe once a day 15 minutes when you check your whatever it is that comes through whatever text email um Facebook Snapchat tender it's all very important but there's something more important and that's why you're here if you so now let's see I suggest to you that you make an agreement with yourself that not to go there unless any more than is absolutely necessary how do I strike a healthy balance between simply accepting life as it unfolds and actively working towards and striving towards goals destinations aspirations well accepting life as it unfolds of course is the foundation for conscious and sane living accepting whatever unfolds in the present moment there is nothing else that's the foundation doesn't mean you cannot have goals you cannot have aspirations wanting to achieve this do this do that it's perfectly compatible with accepting what is arriving in this moment one difference between the unconscious state which denies this moment and wants to make it into a means to an end all the time difference then is what is the motivation for your doing If you deny this moment can never embrace it honor it appreciate it then the motivation for your action is basically dissatisfaction with what is and the action is looked towards as a possible way of overcoming the discontent and the dissatisfaction that you feel with the present moment and that's a very normal pattern and that's in for many many people that what is what motivates them they don't feel good enough they don't feel with some they feel there's something fundamental missing in their lives they don't feel recognized they don't feel loved whatever and so they try to find something achieve something that will bring them that which they feel is missing they don't realize that that is not going to work you need to start with the foundation for your life which is this moment and go deeply into that and become okay with it friendly with it realize it's the only thing there ever is just this moment nothing ever exists that's not this moment so you might as well become friendly with it and appreciate it and look around and see how actually it's okay this moment is actually okay and if it's not okay that you can still say well that's what it is right now something goes wrong that's what is and then things will come in that you want to do you suddenly an idea comes or you need to do something to make a living and then out of that state of becoming one with the isness of the present moment something Rises and wants it wants to take form in the world that perhaps you want to create and then you created out of the joy of doing instead of out of a feeling of lack that you need something to make you complete or happy so the motivation change is from neediness and discontent to joyful doing it's not stressed anymore when stress is a sign that you've lost the present moment the next moment has become more important than life itself 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 There's 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 where 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 has arisen 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 arisen we could call it presence we could call it awareness it's not thought but its 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] so there's the ability to suddenly be aware of your inner states to be aware of what's what your mind is saying that 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 [Music] 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 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 it's 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 [Music] 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 common law still operates but without you and you can notice coming 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 built 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 that 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 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 compensatory factor in karmic law and you can feel that as the pressure inside you but it keeps you trapped in karma 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 do 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 Karma 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 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 call my suffer being created 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 it 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 only on your computer or the iPad and you type in this guy does not deserve to live [Music] should be die slowly then you become part of the same Karma if you've ever done that please forgive yourself foreign and if you enjoy reading those comments also forgive yourself the greatest obstacle is probably when meditation comes out of a sense of lack or neediness so you feel you you are deprived of something be it money or relationship or a living situation and you feel there's a great lack in your life and you desperately want this to change and so you perhaps use manifestation in a way that is not likely to work when for example you use affirmations such as I want a better job I want a job isn't as a good income and a life situation in a nice place and I want this and I want that by making these statements uh you're actually by implication saying that you don't have it so yeah also by saying that you are there's a reverse side to your statement I want and on the reverse side of the statement I want there is the statement I don't have and I need and similar things please give me if you you pray to maybe God maybe you pray to Jesus maybe you pray to Buddha they do that in Buddhist countries maybe you pray to a saint or whatever it is or you pray to the universe and say please the universe please give me this please give me that that also doesn't work very well if it works it could be accidentally who knows but usually that greatly diminishes your power of manifestation because it is the manifestation practice arises out of a state of lack or neediness so there's no powerful manifestation there The Secret of manifestation is expressed in one simple statement by Jesus and that encapsulates all the books that have been written on manifestation and will ever be written on manifestation is just one simple sentence it says when you pray for something believe that you that it has been given or that you already have it and then you will receive it so the important thing is he doesn't say believe that you will receive it it says believe that you have received it so there the secret is hiding in that statement believe that you have received it my North Star is the monk the story you shared about the monk who lived saying is that so for everything that came I am trying my best to get there in my journey to accepting the easiness of things and accepting the moment what I'm struggling with is when am I being a doormat how do I determine it's clear in the example you just shared being homeless in the gray areas of life how do I determine when I need to take action the important thing is non-resistance is not so much to do what externally what you do but it's a it's an inner state of consciousness of non-resistance acceptance of what is of the present moment in this this moment um it doesn't if it's misunderstood then it could lead as you say it could lead you to become a doormat because then you would go along with with what everybody say anybody says to you uh and you would can you do this can you do this for me yeah okay I can do it and then you could be used by people um but a state of non of non-resistance sometimes um may require you to say no to uh let's say somebody request something but you feel you don't want to do it or you cannot do it uh for some reason and you say no I I don't I think I wrote about this I I had this expression a high quality no as opposed to a low quality no a low quality noise you make the other person into a kind of enemies and why you always ask me this like what do you remember you should argue in yourself you accuse the other bird you're just trying to use me I can see it you've used me before and now you're doing it again now you're asking me for money again I've already lent you five times here have you given it back to me no you haven't so no I'm not going to do it just don't leave me alone that's one no and then there's another no which is non-reactive it's not all right does not arise from reactivity but is a response to the situation that says uh no I don't want to let's say whatever the request is or the demand no I I can't do it anymore I don't want to do it anymore no I'm not going to give you money again because I've already given you five times so uh this um I won't give you again uh that's just how it is I know I can't uh no I no I cannot [Music] foreign no without creating an enemy without treating or a situation without making a situation into an enemy so it's a conscious no and you're still in an inner state of non-resistance the state of resistance strengthens the ego and this is a way of not operating through not operating through ego I wonder could to connect that to what I'm doing with this month um I I suppose someone like you kind of kind of digs something like this the idea that someone could put down the devices and I wonder what what do you think just in general about a world that is so obsessively connected to other people's thoughts all day long yes that's good so um the over this excessive identification with thinking and overthinking excessive thinking have been there for a long time long before we came up with these devices but these devices amplify the human tendency to to engage or indulge in excessive thinking and problem making thinking rather than constructive thinking focused thinking uh so the what you are doing is very very helpful because you are basically [Music] having a period of what we could call it decluttering your mind you declutter your mind and this is necessary because our mind most people's minds have never been again as cluttered as they are now Gladden means there's a continuous input of stuff that comes in through the devices the messages come in Facebook posts tweets and continuously the devices demand your attention and say this is important and a lot of it is not important but as we all know there's an addictive quality to it it draws your attention to it and then every time it draws your attention you add to the Clutter of your mind a lot of not is not constructive a lot of it is just random people often see people they get out their phones and they do this random scrolling I can see it's random there's nothing specific but they think they have to do it because everybody else is doing it around them wherever you are these days people are engaging with this and they're continuously taking in thoughts from others and as we said before some of these thoughts may be toxic and they may easily become lost in your mind so to declutter is extremely important and you can see if you even just not using a device for a day for many people is very very hard and some think they can do it but they can't so they are truly addicted um no when you when you when you declutter your mind first of all you put down your phone you don't use it not everybody can do it for whole months like you of course but I recommend to everybody to have certain periods of time when they do not engage so for example in your bedroom might be a good place to start for not engaging with any device uh certain periods of time when you go out into nature be there rather than carry that thing and every time it makes a noise you still look up and you still even while you're surrounded by Beauty and your liveness you're still engaging with this and the moment you watch the screen whether it's television or whatever screen you might have noticed that the your own your so-called own thought processes come to a stop so to some extent you're free of the self this is why people sometimes find watching television relaxing say okay I just need to relax now let's turn it on by this they mean while they watch the television screen they are not burdened by their self-induced thought processes what they do however they replace the their own Thoughts with the for Collective thoughts so they just the United States you're not in a state of thoughtless awareness when you watch television or you watch something on the screen you absorb the thoughts from there into your mind and you you link in so it for people often in a state of semi or hypnosis when they was and it kind of paralyzes you it can also happen with the screen with television already started of course um I don't know when whenever 60 years ago whenever television started and you go and so your mind is just absorbing whatever is playing it's the TV Minds which is receiving stuff from where it comes from it's going into your mind and you become a no longer thinking your own thoughts occasionally your mind you say oh this guy is so stupid and then you're watching again and then another thought why am I watching this rubbish half an hour later this is so awful but you can't you can't you can't turn it off here's the here's the remote let's let's just try one more Channel there might be something out there oh no that's stupid try one more this is this is how an addict behaves and the device is even more addictive you go because you have to carry them with you and you have to admit you may have to admit that you there's an addiction in you that not everybody here but quite a few it would be almost normal to feel this draw towards it and you use it even when you don't need to use it that's the amazing thing when you're standing at the elevator waiting so another person is standing next to you and he or she is pulling out the phone and then you pull out yours if you don't know why anywhere you are in a you are waiting you're ordering a tea or coffee somewhere and you're standing in line and if you look around there's almost nobody and probably nobody who is not looking at this little thing this is scary zombie-like the feeling first of all needs to be acknowledged and accepted you can't start with letting go so you have to start with acknowledging it and accepting that it's there because it's part of what is the easness of the present moment whether it's an external thing or an inner thing it is it is what is and to deny or to argue with what is creates suffering so you acknowledge you accept that it's there then how much time you need to be with it depends varies from person to person and what what kind of feeling it is and so on and then the question arises what is the link between that feeling and your thought processes the the person needs to find out whether the thought process is keep that feeling alive continuously whether they renew by playing out for example a past scenario in their minds by Reviving memories from the past by dwelling on certain narratives that are painful repeating them in their minds that gives Renewed Energy to the feeling so the first the most important thing is to be aware of both levels what's the level of my thinking how does that contribute to the perpetuation of what I feel and so you also then acknowledge that oh this these are the habitual thought patterns that go through my mind in relation to the feelings and then the you would begin to realize that the Letting Go the most important step in letting go of feelings is to cut the link between your thinking and what you're feeling how do you do that you do it by by being aware of your thinking and realizing that that thinking is pain it feeds the old feeling and the narrative whatever it is is a painful narrative and you realize that you've been keeping it alive for some years and you when you there's some enough awareness you realized that it has no purpose except to make you unhappy and to perpetuate that feeling the Dao or consciousness in its pure form is pure no form before it becomes something before it becomes the thought or words so right now you're aware of sense perceptions because you can still see me you're aware of the words but more importantly you are aware that you are aware you know yourself as this aware presence space without that space that aware space you would there would be no sense perception it is the light of consciousness in which or the object of Consciousness are perceived most people are not aware of themselves as consciousness they're only aware of the object that arise in consciousness and their sense of identity also their sense of who they are ultimately is an object that arises in their consciousness that's me this is my story me and my story my identity I am this and that and that and all those things together that's me but they're all thought forms or emotional forms that arise in Consciousness they are an object in Consciousness and this updating Consciousness for most people is the founder the foundation of their sense of identity but that unfortunately is a an enormous limitation and ultimately a misperception of who they actually are most people's sense of identity therefore is based on a misperception because who you truly are is not an object in consciousness that's ephemeral it it is here for a while then it evaporates who you truly are is the space of Consciousness itself and so you become aware of an underlying presence just to use a word and an awakefulness a certain alertness a Stillness but not a Stillness that is asleep an alert Stillness that's the realization of consciousness of yourself as Consciousness let's just uh take a moment and become aware [Music] of the present moment vitally important in any endeavor that you undertake no matter what it is not to lose your connectedness with the present moment [Music] so before you start a new Enterprise a new activity always go to take a moment for awareness basically that's what it is sometimes people ask well what is the present moment how how do you be where is it what does it even mean to become aware of the present moment and the first thing of course is that you become aware of whatever surrounds you that's the entry point into the present moment the very easy entry point into a present moment awareness some people may call it mindfulness is to become more aware of whatever surrounds you here and now sense perceptions just be with what it is give it attention some attention the room you're sitting in maybe there's a window you can look out of the window you can see trees behind me I can't see them I know they're there this is you enter the Present Moment by becoming more aware of science perceptions auditory Visual and perhaps others and of course what that does you might notice is there is less mental noise the voice in the head that speaks and speaks that talks to you or that you have a dialogue with a monologue that comments and interprets and takes positions mental positions it identifies with likes dislikes there's no never stops talking lets the mind the the voice in the head that most people are completely identified with and that means they are not present so the first step is take some attention away from that by simply becoming way of sense perceptions [Music] and if you can look at something natural that's even better because a natural thing a tree a flower a plant a sky a natural thing lends itself to the presence moment awareness more than a man-made a human-made thing so anything natural that you can look at for moment focus on and give it attention acknowledge it you don't need to think about it so it's just come away of the present moment through a sensory perception and already if you can do that if perhaps a few minutes before you were very much immersed in the problem-making mind it wasn't actually solving any problem because this continuous mind activity actually creates more problems than it solves if it's not focused it's unconscious so already certainly there's a certain amount of peace that descends upon this the world the old world it becomes a bit more peaceful you become aware of the aliveness of things to practice self-observation is implies that there is enough presence or awareness in you from where you can self-observe and in almost all of you there is maybe not all the time but there is there is enough to have brought you here and that it was quite a bit so is there enough presence in you so that you can self-observe your own motivations your own thought structures what are the habitual thoughts that I think so that you are not drawn continuously into every thought that comes and follow it where it wants to take you one little thought comes in about your life or and then another thought and you follow it oh oh no and then before you know it you more thoughts coming than other conflicting thoughts and no no that's not how it is yes it is no I can't take anymore and you believe in that thought too that you can't take anymore [Music] so the ability to to observe non-judgmentally what goes on inside you there is awareness there needs to be awareness so that is self -knowledge is there some type of discipline that is needed to be successful with conscious manifestation if so can you describe or the discipline is that is needed [Music] well basically I have already described the discipline that's needed for in your daily life to be a to be aware of yourself and of your own state of consciousness uh also an important factor perhaps that is implied in what we've been saying but it's worth pointing it out explicitly is the importance of what is conventionally called gratitude but there could be other words gratitude is a very powerful transformational tool and also one of the most powerful tools for manifesting better things in your life now what does that mean the Gratitude is to to acknowledge the good in your life now and you it's surprising how many people don't do that who can only see the bad in their lives or only complain but it's extremely powerful to acknowledge the goods that's in your life now the ability to think of course was a wonderful evolutionary achievement it is associated also it's linked to the development of language too so gradually humans develop the ability to think and it was a wonderful evolutionary evolutionary advance but over the over many many Millennia the the thinking activity began to take over and so most human beings these days actually never stop thinking so what they experience is what I call a voice in the head which is the internal dialogue that most people uh experience experience throughout the day during their waking hours there's this continuous inner dialogue taking place monologue dialogue whatever you want to call it there's a there's a commentator in the in your mind that interprets immediately and judges situations and people and and things it spends much more time thinking about some other moment rather than this one and usually it's the future and and some people of course dwell excessively on the past too they carry around the burden of past in their minds and in and in their emotional field without knowing it without realizing that it doesn't have to be that way without realizing that they are allowing the past which after all is only certain thoughts that they carry in the head they're allowing the past to uh to sabotage their whole life they're carrying such a burden of past that they can no longer experience the present so you either burdened by the past or you're buried by the future now the question of why is very important what what is the ultimate cause of this and that is the what one could call overthinking thinking was a wonderful thing and still is a wonderful thing but it has taken over human beings it has proliferated to such an extent that now thinking has become almost a a parasitical entity that lives in your in your head that won't leave you alone you know most people's sense of identity most people sense of who they are is bound up with their mind activity with their thinking so they derive their sense of self from certain stories that they're telling themselves in their mind and that's to do with what happened in the past what other people did to you things you identify with that these are thoughts things that belong to me these are my things these are all thought formations so people identify with the voice in the head and the voice in the head becomes a for them impossible to to distinguish from who they are so they talk to themselves in that you everybody has met people in the street who talk themselves out aloud and usually people look at them say oh there's a crazy person going but virtually everybody does that except that they don't do it out loud if you could listen into when if you look walk around in this city if you could listen to to but what's going on in people's heads you would realize they're all talking to themselves a lot of chatter yes and they are so identified with it that they they kind of they are it the voice has taken you over the the the the Mind activity the conceptual mind has taken you over and then it becomes virtually becomes you so in that state which in spiritual terms we call unconscious when we use the word unconscious in in spiritual terms right it does not have the same meaning as as it has in conventional terms usually when we use unconscious in conventional terms we're talking about somebody who is just dropped off but he's unconscious when we use the word unconscious in spiritual terms it means it refers to somebody who is totally identified with the stream the consent continuous stream of thinking which is conditioned by the past the types of thoughts that you think the stories that you continuously revive in your head uh have been conditioned by your past in the past of the culture that you grew up in the country you grew up in all the things that make up your past your personal past and the collective Paths of your environment so a person who grew up in let's say Saudi Arabia will not be thinking the same kind of stories and will not interpret the world in the same way as somebody who grew up in Canada or in the west but what they have in common they are both identified with the continuous stream of think they may be different stories there may be a different sense of identity but but in both cases they are they they cannot they cannot separate themselves from The Voice in the head I haven't gone through physical death yet it as the zen 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 master [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 first hand 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 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 Miracle 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 deaths exists it is the 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 they are inner state does not have to be totally determined by external conditions you're not at the mercy any longer of external conditions which means for example also people some people are I mean people are very problematic people people so proud summer is rude to you or somebody fails to do something that they should do or should have done all kinds of things that you can complain about in people's behavior and a lot of the complaining that one does about other people is totally futile it does not change them because you you when you talk to others about them you say well do you know what he did and then he said and I only did that oh my God he did that or you do it in your head it's all futile it does not change that person so uh if somebody is rude to you like oh it's he doesn't you're carrying yourself or the supermarket carrying your shopping and somebody slams a dirt or on your face because it doesn't it's rude for many people there the triggers can trigger a train of negative thoughts that lasts for the next 10 15 or 20 minutes so that means and if you're completely identified with the stream of thinking you don't even know you think you're now experiencing a bad reality you do you because you have not a stakenness you have not taken a step back from your thinking you have not become aware of your thinking you are so in your thoughts that you are totally identified with the thoughts so the the key then is to to uh be able to separate your your mental interpretation of things from the Simplicity of the isness of the present moment so you don't add unnecessary suffering to situations you no longer create unnecessary suffering for yourself because you realize the unhappiness that you're experiencing in a given situation in 90 percent of the cases is not produced by the situation it is produced by the way in which your mind tells a story about the situation 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 German has managed 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 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 and it's 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 victim in ancient Greek philosophy which was carved cuffed 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 have the main focus of your attention in your daily life in the present moment the rest of your attentions of that scene 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 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 there 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 somehow didn't there must have been a mistake um it's often Outsiders is being feeling an outsider on the one hand is seems a terrible limitation that you can't participate as much but on the other hand it's a great opportunity because some of the most creative people uh in the world have what have been Outsiders they did not fit in uh Misfits it's the English word Misfits um another the friendships I had when I was a child 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 uh 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 that's true I saw the list 70 countries and you may find I'm sure you will find quite often uh you you you can feel a bond or you have 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 where you might live I don't know whether you live in a big city or a small village a small City small small City yeah yeah what city uh in Spock in Austria oh yes yeah nice very nice uh 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 helped for the rest you just have to accept that this is how it is and 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 certain actions take place you do things you know they're not the optimal things to do but you can't help it it's something acts through you um there's there seems to be some power there that makes you do things but you know no I'm 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 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 recite and this thinking 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 uh tonight the the power of the 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 your addiction is to um 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 uh 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 and suddenly what am I doing but so awareness comes in at a very late point willpower would be to hold an urge down let's say I'll go they have to pull or even what's the example you gave you want to turn on the TV and you know it 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 and I can confirm the odds but you're holding it down [Laughter] um 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 amp is Justified in having a victim identity because of the things that other humans did to you you yourself are finding yes 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 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 called Mind patterns that are lodged in your psyche you have you cannot really speak of Free Will by somebody who has zero awareness and yet the entire makeup is 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 could injured you near volcano and my dad what had problems with anger huge the outbursts of anger quite frequently it was living like living the legs to a volcano that 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 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 it 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 operate inhuman 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 are 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 usually happiness exists as part of the play of opposites you experience the happiness because something makes you happy and then that thing that made you happy either leaves you or the very thing that made you happy suddenly makes you unhappy marriage for example [Music] relationship before you start living together you're happy when you start living together you're unhappy so what is if it's not happy what are we talking about the there's a if you let go of thinking and remain as the awareness then there is in that that awareness emanates a certain peace alive peace Joy peace a peaceful joyful sense of aliveness in a piece may be a better word than happiness but Mom would have to add to it it's an alive piece it's not the Peace of having deadened yourself through emotions or anything like that it's an alive intensely alive piece you can sense it even if it's only just a glimpse right now surrender thought and of course right now if you're not thinking about the problems of your life there are no problems in this moment there's only a sense of beingness or liveness and that is the connectedness with being and so you transcend the Opposites between happiness and unhappiness when the Buddha was teaching 2500 years ago he told people to seek out a quiet place in the forest and meditate there that was an essential part of his teaching so nature was an essential part of his teaching and of course as you know probably The Story Goes that the Buddha said under a tree when as The Story Goes he awakened spiritually or became enlightened so his enlightenment is associated with that tree a tree don't believe what science tells you there's more to the tree than that and you can know that and sense that if you become still enough and give it your attention looking almost sensing its Stillness sure but it is a reciprocal movement it goes both ways yes nature becomes conscious of itself through you but nature also helps you to realign yourself with Stillness 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 has 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 a 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 no but wisdom that yes be still and know that I am it is the I am of the the I am of being God oh 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 sword is relatively limited how can I make statements about the ultimate Transcendent reality just by producing a few weird sounds with my vocal cords Plus air pressure through my tongue and lips all the vowels a i a e i o u e uh this is what the language is okay now tell me the ultimate secrets of God in the Transcendent Universe it's upset 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 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 son 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 Universe 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 hand that Ray it's not the sun we 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 be aware of the conceptualizing your life and allowing an unhappy story in your head to make you unhappy people think they are unhappy because of the circumstances of their lives in most cases the unhappy because of what they are telling themselves or what the mind is saying about what's going on around you and has happened will happen so that's a it's a suffering the origin of suffering to a large extent is there and even in extreme situations having lost your home for example not knowing where to live even there it applies you do not in the face of a challenge if you are present you don't convert the challenge into suffering you just be with what is and you start experimenting with little things in your life that cause you irritation or a little bit of anger or some impatience lit situations that are very common every day and you look at the situation you become aware sadly that there's irritational writing or anger Rising and you become aware that it doesn't actually feel very good and the body knows it doesn't feel good the body doesn't like it there's irritation arising and you think it's because of what's going on but if you look more closely think now is this situation causing this or is what I'm saying about it causing this what my mind the commentary of my mind and in most cases you will find it's the mental commentary that you had been identified with that causes the unhappiness and then you say let's experiment with removing the commentary how would I experience this situation if I did not ADD the mental baggage to it thank you so in other words you're just now with the isness of this moment without any thing mental stuff added being added to it that says this should not be happening I don't want to be here and many other things suddenly you're fine a minute ago you were extremely air irritated and angry and you couldn't differentiate between the circumstances external sanctions of your life and the inner commentary about the circumstances and this is the essence of unconsciousness unable to differentiate between the circumstances and the commentary so the circumstances and the commentary becomes single ethics are experienced as a single phenomenon and then when you suddenly you can separate this is the isness of this moment and it is as it is the enormous power is suddenly arising in you which is the power of the present moment which is The Power Of unconditioned Consciousness also the power of dealing with the situation if there's something that you need to do suddenly the right action as the Buddha calls it the right action happens or non-action if action is not possible then right surrender happens but you allow this moment to be as it is without but what does it mean means you don't add unnecessary mental baggage to it that argues through the is-ness of this moment oh yeah there may be one or two people being with us here there who perhaps are stuck somewhere in a room and can't get out because of physical disability or they may be in prison and they say what can I do what can we do we can't get out into nature well you need to remember that your body also is nature so you can start there every time you take a breath that's nature nature is breathing the air that you're breathing is nature the very fact of breathing is a natural process it's not choice it's done for you it's not so much that you praise although we say I breathe but you're not the body breathing so it's a natural thing that happens you wouldn't say I'm beating my heart you don't do that but that's the same thing the body does it it's a natural process for some reason we say I'm breathing because breathing is semi voluntary you can't stop it for a while but not for that long because if you stop it for too long nature takes over and you go so nature takes as nature you live with nature with your body so even if you can't get out you can start by being aware of that level of yourself the the physical level the natural part of Who You Are the body and not just by saying okay I'm looking at my hands or my feet not just the physic not the external image of the body but you can go into the body with your attention and that's your nature even if you're in a present sale you can do that and even if there's no opportunity you might be in an office Block in Manhattan and you look out of the window and all you have is maybe a little bit of sky okay there's a little bit of nature there you can look at that but you have more nature than that in yourself so as you sat in your office wherever it is go within first be conscious that breathing is happening the body's breathing be conscious also of the the preciousness of the air it's such a precious substance so to acknowledge that is actually part of what sometimes is called to live in a state of gratitude now some people say what can I be grateful for there's nothing in my life that I can be grateful for well are you breathing yes well you start there is religion necessary it depends who you are on the level of the farm 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 uh communism as a as an ideology or any political theory of 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 and it can influence almost your entire mental functioning if it becomes something of 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 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 that is wonderful no personal possessions 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 idea became contaminated with ego so when these people came to power the egos became inflated to an enormous degree almost to absurdity and without realizing it they uh re-enacted the same evils in in some cases worse than those that they were fighting against 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 Bruce Lipton inspiration check the video right there next to me I think you'll love it continue to believe and I'll see you there one of the things that really upset me for a long time was the fact that I had great ideas and intentions and I wanted to manifest them and I thought this is how it's going to manifest and so I had all these visions of how things were going to unfold and then I'd started processing it wouldn't unfold

Channel: Evan Carmichael

Views: 46,535

Keywords: entrepreneur, yt:cc=on, evancarmichael, eckhart tolle youtube, eckhart tolle 2021, eckhart tolle, eckhart tolle presence, present moment, eckhart tolle teachings, eckhart tolle teachings youtube, living in the present moment, the power of now, eckhart tolle special teaching, how to live in the present, eckhart tolle meditation, eckhart tolle spiritual teachings, jordan peterson present moment, eckhart tolle the power of now, eckhart tolle youtube 2022, eckhart tolle youtube latest

Id: 0Mhu91XHVI0

Length: 227min 35sec (13655 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023