Awakening to a New Life, with Eckhart Tolle

The alpha and the Omega, one could say is of course, the now. We start with the now, we end with the now, and the now is in the middle, too. There's only the now. Becoming aware of the now is a shift to a different level of consciousness. It's a very simple thing. Your level of attention rises, there's a certain rise in your alertness. And I'm not just talking about it. The words are pointers to that state of presence. And sometimes you can very clearly notice the shift from being immersed in thinking, which is a normal everyday reality for most people. The shift from being immersed in continuous thought processes and then stepping out of that into presence. It's a little bit like waking up out of sleep. And that's why this term, awakening, in many spiritual traditions, including ancient ones, is used to describe this shift. So we use a term that everybody is familiar with. When you wake up out of sleep and sleep, of course, you have dreamless sleep and you have the dream state, and then you wake up out of that. And there's definitely a shift in consciousness when you wake up in the morning, so you were in sleep consciousness, then you wake up. So that's a very easily verifiable shift in consciousness every morning. Or if you have a nap, as I often do in the afternoon, then you wake up. Oh, and animals do it too. If you have a dog or a cat, you can see them. They sleep, they dream, and then maybe you touch them and suddenly they go completely different world suddenly. So the term awakening, which comes from every day, everybody's daily experience, is used to describe something else. Since ancient times, the etymology of the word Buddha means the one who is awake. Buddha is not a name, it's a kind of title. Buddha comes from the Sanskrit root. Buddha is to be awake. So the Buddha represents that state of presence, awakeness. When I. When you look at the image of the Buddha, the Buddha images, to me, it's not the image of a person that once lived. I mean, anybody, nobody knows what the Buddha looked like. And it represents a state of consciousness. It's a reminder of a state of consciousness. The Buddha represents the state of awakening in mystical Christianity, Christ consciousness, a similar term you can use, doesn't matter what label you use, but it's. So it's. Awakening to the Buddha is the one who is awake. Strangely, this is not normally recognized. Jesus talks about staying awake quite often in parables, in little stories. Stay awake, don't go to sleep, stay awake. This is not usually understood by conventional Christianity, but I'm sure that what he was pointing to was this, the state of presence. So you can often notice the shift, easily notice when you step out of habitual immersion and identification with the stream of thinking. And suddenly. No, this sometimes happens when something unexpected happens. It can very briefly take you out of the stream of thinking. You suddenly, suddenly go. Even an unexpected noise that suddenly happens and you don't immediately know what it is. Let's say you are immersed in the stream of thinking, most of which is quite pointless. And obviously some thinking is helpful and great useful, but a lot of it has no purpose except to make you unhappy. But let's put that aside. So, and suddenly a noise. There's a noise in you. And if you're really in that moment for a few seconds, two, three, four seconds, you're not thinking. You have to be alert. You're trying to figure out what that noise is. But to figure out what that noise is, you need to give it your fullest attention. You cannot carry on thinking. You have to give it your fullest attention. And then after three or four seconds, probably the mind has interpreted the noise and now it knows what it is. It comes up with a label and then it starts up again and says, oh, that's what it is. Or it might not figure out what it is. And then it could be, perhaps the state of pure listening carries on for a little bit longer. It could also be. It doesn't have to be auditory. It could be a visual thing that suddenly arises every time you. When you enter a room. Not, I would say not, not where you live, but in another place. You get. So you go to a hotel or in some other building, you enter a room or doctor's office or whatever. You enter a room or you walking along the street and there's a turn around the corner and another vista opens up. Anything that new that comes in is always for one, two or three seconds. There's a pure perception before you interpret it again. And so that's very interesting to detect in yourself that sometimes presence can emerge briefly without you realizing it, and then it disappears again. It's immediately obscured by thought again. Then it can stay for a little longer. When you're engaged in some activity that requires your complete alertness, dangerous activity, for example, surfing or even car racing. You have to be really there. Can't be thinking about your problems. Climbing a mountain up the wall of a mountain. Can't be thinking, okay, you're not even thinking, where is my foot going to go next? You have to be present and the. That something else is activated. Other than the conceptual mind. An intelligence other than the conceptual mind is activated. But the wonderful thing is, once you reach a certain level and you recognize presence, you can choose presence in your daily life. One thing, yes, as I said, is notice when presence arises spontaneously. When you can look at a person. Suddenly a person appears there in front of you, and you look at a person, and again for 2, 3 seconds. There's no interpretation yet. And sometimes in those 2, 3 seconds, you can already sense something about that person. You have an intuitive perception of that person. How deep that is, we don't know. Perhaps you can sense something to do with the personality. Or you can sense something deeper, that is, the actual underlying consciousness, the essence of that person. You can sense that when you are present. You can sense often the presence of the other. Before you start interpreting the other. You can sense that they have inherent presence or consciousness beyond personality. You're also aware of personality, but beyond personality, you can sense their uncle, say, their beingness.