Being At Peace | Eckhart Tolle on The Present Moment

Just checking if everybody is present. Especially important as you begin to move around again, leaving here, many of you, one little thing, if you remember to live, this little thing that would already significantly change your state of consciousness. And that little thing to remember, not as a memory, as a concept that you remember, but to remember, to apply every moment, is or concerns the value that you attribute to the present moment. Whatever moment may be happening in the present moment. The usual mistake or dysfunctional way of living, unconscious way, is, as I've mentioned before, is devaluing the present moment and overvaluing the next moment. That's so unconscious that most people have no idea that that's how they live. Because everybody lives like that. And everybody has been conditioned to live like that. But that is a significant factor in unskillful living, unconscious living, and it strengthens the ego enormously. Ego lives always with reference to past and future. For example, I come here, I emerge from behind the curtain, and then I walk to the chair. Walking to the chair has as much value as arriving at the chair. So by giving your complete attention to every step, you actually honor this moment fully, instead of unconsciously devaluing it. Because you believe that you need to arrive somewhere else, which promises some measure of fulfillment, no matter how small, or sometimes some big fulfillment, but no matter how small. So if I walked in here in that dysfunctional and unconscious way, the steps that I'm taking towards this chair would be devalued in my mind as being less significant than arriving at this tale or starting to speak. And the arriving is always very short. You arrive, and then it's over. So now, if you begin to travel again from here to home or from here to somewhere else, if you can remember that the present moment is all you ever have. And carrying your suitcase from here. People don't carry. They've got wheels these days. So wheeling your suitcase from here to there or wherever it is to the bus, to the car, to the airport, to the train station is not all those moments are not inferior to any next moment. Because then what? And then you arrive at the train, and then you look for something else to. Now I need to get mentally always somewhere else, instead of giving fullest attention to this because this is the most valuable moment. Why? Because it's the only one, the present moment. So to live as if the next moment were more significant, more important, is a very unconscious way to live. And you. The strange thing is you never really ultimately arrive anywhere, because the arriving is never enough. The arriving is immediately replaced by some new mental projection. Some next moment. Even on a big scale, often people experience that some huge success that they've been striving for for years. And finally it comes. And then they sit there in their big house. Often it goes with success or whatever, their private jet. And it feels good for a while. Especially invite other people who don't have private jets. Then it feels even better because it enhances your fictitious sense of self. But after a while even that wears off. So you have arrived, you've made it. That's the English expression, I made it. Made what? Well, in case you don't know that English expression, it means I have succeeded in my endeavour. I made it. Idiomatic expression, strange one. So the world is full of people who want to make it. And when they make it, there's a brief moment of satisfaction. That's the arriving. Then they go, okay, now what? The same dissatisfaction arises again. And then you have to the making it is not enough. You have to make more. So small scale and large scale, just this little thing. Give your fullest attention to this moment. Because it's not true that the next moment is more significant because it never comes. So it's a way of living absorbed in thought. If you always live for the future, you're absorbed in thought. Because future is a thought, it's never experienced as an actuality. So an essential part of being lost in your mind is to be lost in the future. Because to be lost in the future, always looking to the next thing, is to be lost in your mind. Because that's where the future is, not here and now. This does not mean you will no longer make any plans. That doesn't mean that on a practical level you can plan and say, okay, at such and such a time, I need to be there. Whatever you use for your planning, probably a device. And then if you're old generation like me, you go like I need to be there. And you tap in where you need to be in your diary. Or if you are with the younger generation, your fingers move in a different way. They go like that. Or the old ones, they go and still get it wrong. Every third one is wrong. So there is a way of being totally present in the planning for the future. This is actually you're very focused in planning your next destination. What time do I arrive there? What do I need to do? When do I need to be ready? And you can run it down and you can fully present in that. And once you've done that, your attention is again here now, it was even here now, when you were planning it because you were not mentally devaluing this moment of planning. And the strange thing is you begin to enjoy now all the small things in life that before you had overlooked or neglected. Because the mind projects the bigger thing. And even a small scale, it's a bigger thing. Like I need to pack my suitcase and I need to get the bus. That is on a very small scale, the next big thing that I need to get to. In the meantime, you devalue the moment between now and getting the bus or the train. So that's. And then once you're on the bus, you think, okay, now I need to be. Then you get off the bus and then where do I need to go? I need to go there now. And then you arrive there. But of course that's only very temporal relief because now you know you're somewhere else. And when you're sitting on the plane or wherever or in the car, you're. You mentally project yourself to tomorrow morning. There's always a more important moment and it's in the future. Now what you neglect then and what you continuously overlook is all the small things that actually make up a vast percentage of your life is all the little things that before are relegated to the periphery of your life. What are those little things? Well, whatever, for example, things that you handle in your life, things that you pick up and put there, and objects around you, the world around you. Walking, breathing, looking at the sky, looking at a tree, seeing, breathing in the air, looking at another human being, sensing their deeper aliveness. All the little things that constitute life. Even if you are a so called VIP in the eyes of the world, which is pretty meaningless, it's just a narrative and you go from one significant thing to another. But all the steps that you take, even if you get picked up in a limo, as I sometimes do when I go for a talk, the organizers send a limo. What a big car? Big. Plenty of room in the back. That's a limo. And you can stretch your legs. So then it's just very little things. You walk to the car and you breathe and then you get in and you sit. Okay, well it's just you're sitting somewhere and breathing and looking, you're looking out of the window. And then you arrive at a venue and you take a few steps into the car and you sit again and then you walk onto the stage. It's all little things. And even the whoever, if you are the Pope or the president of a huge corporation or the president of a country, it's still the same. Life consists of Small things, all the things that look at lust, your relationship with objects. This is usually overlooked because every object is treated as a means to an end. But if you live in a way that is more present, then the objects may still be a means to an end, but they are also giving just short attention. Just picking up a glass. There is pleasure in enjoyment, in even just looking at a glass and the water and drinking. And to realize that most people realize that for the first time, if ever, when they take certain types of drug like acid, because it amplifies your sense perceptions and it shuts off your thinking mind. And then for the first time, you pick up a glass of water and you go, oh, wow, so amazing. So amazing. I can't believe it. And it is. And then you drink and the taste is so incredible. Water. It's amazing. It's liquid. Alive. It's alive. It's liquid. No, I haven't taken acid before coming here. It's just giving it your fullest attention without interference of thinking, just awareness and all this. The background then to that state of inner peace or contentment is all the aliveness of everything around you. When you pick up something, put it in your suitcase, pick up something else, unfold it. That's a nice thing to do. Taking a fruit, maybe peeling it or biting into it. The present moment in its richness that is usually overlooked because you're looking for something more significant. But even the most significant thing, let's say you got the Nobel Prize. You can come to Oslo. I think there's one Nobel Prize that goes from people come to Norway for the peace. And then you stand on the balcony of that hotel that overlooks the square, where the Parliament is. I think apparently that's where they go. And there you are. I have made it. You're just standing on a balcony, looking and breathing. Unless you live through and for a narrative in your mind that you completely believe in. And that becomes a conceptual sense of identity. I am such and such a person who has achieved this and that. And this is all the story, and that's me. And a big narrative that gives you your sense of identity, thought, movement. And then you feel bigger while you stand on this balcony. And then you feel deflated when you step off the balcony. Or let's say you're a pop star. What's the word that use? A rock star. That's millions of people say, wow. Wouldn't be great. Especially youngsters. Wouldn't it be great to be a rock star? You can do anything. And people. And of course they experience this in a magnified way. They are on stage and energy moves through them and then they walk off stage and they are regarded as gods by all these. By the audience. Let me only touch you. I hope nobody does that to me but let me only just touch you, they say to the rock star. And the rock star then having in most cases not that much awareness, they feel they are more and more like a God because they believe in the narrative that all these unconscious people have mentally manufactured for them. And then they begin to believe in it. And then there comes the huge conflict or discrepancy when they go off the stage and they sit in the green room or somewhere. Where am I now? And then they have to take drugs because what happens? There's a sense of lack returns much more strongly than ever before. A sense of lack and insufficiency. So I need another fix, a drug or I need to smash up my hotel suite. That's what they do, rock stars, apparently. And that enhances their sense of self a little bit more. So people live for. Many people live for something that's going to happen in the future. And of course you may succeed in your endeavors. This is a nice thing, but it's not going to give you long lasting and ultimate fulfillment or tell you who you actually are. It's fine to achieve things, especially if they are beneficial, but for humanity and the totality on the planet, it's lovely to have that. But they don't even. That doesn't make up your identity. It.