Eckhart Tolle explores how presence and awareness transform everyday actions. He argues that consciousness matters more than what you actually do, and that stillness can shift you from ego-driven patterns into a new way of being.
The moment resistance comes, you're drawn back into identification with form protection, resistance, fighting. It's a. Are you going to succeed all the time in this? No. It's a shift from a way of doing that has been with us for thousands of years and a new way of doing that is only arising now. So you are transitional beings between the old consciousness and the new. And don't judge yourself if you fall back occasionally into the old consciousness. But you will quickly know it. How will you know it? You begin to suffer. You get upset. You get upset about situations, you get upset about people. You get upset about what somebody said, you get upset about what somebody should have said, but didn't. You get upset about what somebody did or failed to do. Oh, there's a sign that you've fallen back. Beautiful line in the course in miracles. I am never upset for the reason I think. Now, upset is a generic term. Could be in any way that out of alignment with isness, there's a disagreement with the isness of the present moment and then you become upset. Now, many people are upset a lot of the time, but they don't realize they are upset. And if you talk to them and say, why are you upset? They say, I'm not upset, I'm just bloody angry. Or I'm not upset, I'm deeply hurt because he didn't invite me to his birthday party. Deeply hurt, not upset. I'm never upset for the reason. I think now the deeper meaning of this, of course, is you are upset because you have lost awareness of being, your essence, identity, and the reason you think is superficial. When you lose connectedness with being, just wait a few minutes and something or somebody will upset you. And so if we believe that that which seems to cause the upset is the actual cause, this is not the case. These are interchangeable, could be anything. And it will. So you'll be upset many times every day by other people, by situations, by the slightest things or the biggest things. Upset, upset, upset by the entire world is so frustrating. So that's a little sign then if you're upset, you want to go somewhere. But people are not cooperative, situations are not cooperative. And you can talk to yourself. So that's a good sign. Then you can use. Also shows you to what extent the ego is active in you. Because what's upset is not you, it's the ego in you. The ego is the erroneous identification with form, a false sense of I which wanted something to make itself feel more at ease or bigger or more important or whatever, and is frustrated in its aims. Well, well, that's a good. Then it's like a little. If you had a little. It's almost like having a little technical device on your arm that tells you whenever your ego comes back it goes bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. You don't need that. Well, if somebody here is a technical wizard and is going to invent it, it's fine. But you don't need that because all you need is to know if you are upset or not. In everyday life. Now, for many walking egos, upset is their normal state. They might not even know it anymore because they are upset virtually all the time and just waiting for some other thing to happen to explain why they are upset again. But of course there's. The underlying dissatisfaction is always there. Foundation then is stillness. That's the return journey. So can we be then simultaneously in the return journey to the source of all life, spiritual dimension, God, stillness, and still be active in this world. And then if we are that, what we then do in this world becomes empowered by the intelligence that emanates from the Source. And then the source creates through you no longer. The power of the source is then no longer distorted by the ego and its power greatly diminished to a trickle. So the source is like light. You can say sunlight wanting to shine through fully, but for a long time it's become reduced to a tiny little hole. There's a little bit of light coming through just to keep you going. And now it can come through and use you. When we use language, we always create duality. So when I say it uses you, it's not quite true because you are it. But language does that it uses. Once we know that it's okay, we can use those words. It uses you then. Now, what exactly it wants, I don't know. Perhaps it simply wants to create beauty or forms that are alive and joyful and enjoy that. It's enjoyed the drama for thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. It's enjoyed the drama of people cutting each other to pieces and eating each other up. It's enjoyed the drama. The movie is changing now. And perhaps it's creating a much more pleasant movie. And who knows what is in store for us. I cannot predict the future. I'm not particularly interested. The present moment is wonderful enough. But something is. There's a change happening. And of course there comes a point in your life when you may not. The source may become much more important than whatever you do. So you reach a time when you say, well, I've done this and that and it's been wonderful. And then all you, as you are just still and you emanate that stillness. And even then you affect the world around you without any doing. If you just be there. And whoever you come into contact with is some, almost, one could say, transmission, even if they don't notice it. You can do that. And some humans perhaps will mostly live in that way. How much doing you do, how much varies from form to form, person to person. Some will be very active into conscious doing and create and enjoy the creation. And others may do relatively little or may just continue to do what they are doing already. But whatever they are doing will be a vehicle for consciousness or stillness that flows into this power, this beautiful energy that flows. It could be even a person who just gives information. Let's say you work at an airport and you give information to people and maybe you stay there. And then everybody who comes to ask, where's gate number 16? You say, well, you go that way and it's only about a three minute walk. And they were not only the words. There was a transmission of stillness with the words. Not in the sense that I am going to transmit stillness. No, it happens because you let go of the sense of doing, of I do. It happens. And the person. This one traditional word for it is blessing. The person goes away being blessed with that energy and so beautiful. So what you do really is secondary. Some may do great things, others may do things that look on the surface not so significant. And ultimately what you do is secondary. But how you do it is primary when the how means the consciousness that flows into what you do.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
