Consciousness in Action, with Eckhart Tolle

When you are working, I don't like that word, but work isn't. Maybe the word should gradually become obsolete because work somehow implies that you don't like what you're doing. And there's a proverb somewhere, I don't know where from. Enjoy what you do and you'll never a day's work again. So enjoy what you do. And then now the trap here is another attachment. When you become active, it's all very well taking consciousness out of thought as we sit here. But when you become active and start doing in the world there very quickly you can slip back into identification with thought. And when you are doing things and you are active, the danger is that you become attached to the result that you want to achieve through your doing. The end result, where you need to get to, becomes more important than the doing now, which again is because the end result, it's a thought form, you're not attached to anything out there. You're attached to the thought form of the result, the end result. And there's a new trap and there. So when you become active, a high degree of alertness is required so that you remain centered in present moment and give that more attention than where you want to go. You know where you want to go, that's there. But the doing now, if you're not enjoying that, what is the point? The great fallacy is say that once I get there, I'll be fine. No, you won't. You have to be fine already and then you'll be fine when you get there. So this is an ancient teaching, non attachment to the fruit of the action. Ancient Indian teaching, even from the Bhagavad Gita, which in India could be called Karma Yoga, which is a spiritual practice of being, staying conscious in action, in the doing. Non attachment to results. Is that difficult? No. All it means is enjoy what you're doing and see that the doing now is primary, the goal is secondary. You can have a goal. It's a thought form, of course, but it's secondary. So this is the awakening, the awakening from identification with form. Self identification with form, which means the entire sense of self that was an illusion because it was identified with form based on thinking thoughts. A bundle of thoughts constituted the sense of self loosely held together. Some come and go, but basically a bundle of me is this what's me? And my life is this and this and this and this memory and that and that and those possessions and those and all those things that was the self and that is the. If that's not transcended that limited sense of self based on identification with form, then life is frustrating. You just go from one frustration to another. So ultimately another way of putting it is that you can say you need to transcend yourself. And again, that's a very ancient teaching. The 2600 years ago, the Buddha talked about that. Because the self that you think you are, the Buddha said, well, that's not in the sutras. But my intuition tells me that this is what the Buddha more or less said. The self that you think you are is an illusion. You identified with form, you are not form. And as long as you identify it with form, thought forms, you suffer. That's what he said, and he didn't really say. Some people believe that. He said, all life is suffering. No, he said all identification with form is suffering because all identification with form creates a false self. And as long as you live in a false sense of self, you suffer. There's fear always around the corner or underneath. If you look closely, there's fear somewhere when you identify it with form. Because everybody knows that forms are fragile and everybody knows that forms are fleeting. Even if you don't know it constantly, you somehow can feel that. Everybody can feel the fleetingness of forms. Something could happen to my car any day. It's parked out there. Well, who knows if it's still there when I get there. And then of course, when it's not there and if you had identified with it, then the thought form of my car will create suffering because there's no longer a correspondence there in the sensory input. And the thoughts go, oh, my car. Upset. Now it's easy to deceive oneself and say, I'm not attached to. Sometimes you don't know it until you finally get to place where your car was and it's gone. And then you'll know whether you were attached or not or your social position. Let's say suddenly you lose it. The papers suddenly say, let's say you're a vip, and suddenly the papers say you messed it all up. And so were you attached to your position, to the opinions of others about you? Which again are thought forms in your head because that's where you know them. The opinions of others are their thought forms. So you take them on board, they become your thought forms and you identify with them as give you this sense of self worth. So our practice then is to take identification out of thought, consciousness out of thought. Simple. Simple. And a radical shift inside you. Radical shift. I'm saying simple because thought is complex. And all the problems of the world when you look at the problems of the world through thought. You'll want to commit suicide because of the complexity of it all, because that's all. My God, so many problems. I mean, even your own life, even your own problems may be enough for that. Oh no. So complex. So when I say simple, it means this new state of non identification is a state of great power and simplicity. You become more simple, but also more empowered. The shift, you can say it's hard from looking at, from one point of view, the shift from the old state of consciousness, the false self, to the new state of liberal, the awakened consciousness, which the Buddhists call no self, which the Indian teachings call the self, the big self, as opposed to the small self. And of course people who haven't realized it within believe that there's a huge conflict between the Buddha saying, Buddhists saying there is no self, and the Hindus, Hindu teaching saying there is the Atman, the ultimate self. And people who just study the scripture think there's a huge conflict here because you say that there is no self and we say that there is a self. It's just concepts, it's just little pointers. They're talking about exactly the same thing, but you don't know that until you realize it within, of course it's the same. The Atman has no form. It's. It has. So it's, it's not a. It's the formless. So forget about no self and self and just say the formless. There we are, Sam.