Discovering Your True Self Through Body Awareness | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

Now, not each one of you, not every one of you is able to yet step into no thought without some kind of help. I'm meditation is designed to help you with that. But as you probably know, the main thing I recommend is to have some attention in the inner energy field of your body. And that keeps thought at bay in a gentle, non violent way. Not willpower, it involves no willpower. So it involves just a decision that right now you would prefer to be alert and still and not be thinking. And that decision you could arrive at because you've realized that, let's say for the past hour you've been engaged in futile, useless thinking, that all it did was make you unhappy. And suddenly the awareness is there again that had been temporarily lost. And you say, what's all this futile thinking about? It's just making me unhappy, it has no point whatsoever. And then a decision comes to not to think because you realize there is another dimension in you that is deeper than thinking. So you okay, I'd rather be there than up there in the mind. And how can I get there? Because the mind will have its momentum. So unless you already, your presence power, so to speak, is already quite developed, you may find it very hard to stop the momentum once it started to stop. The momentum of thinking has this enormous pull, a gravitational pull behind it. And for some, if presence power is not yet that developed, you can say I need to stop thinking, but I can't because it goes on and on and I can't stop it. It's like a river. You can't get out of this raging river. It drags you along. Just try. Especially when you're stuck in a train of negative thinking or fearful thinking or angry thinking. You don't even want to get out because you're so identified with the stream of thinking that your sense of self is in it. And you don't want to lose that sense of self. It's a fictitious sense of self, but it's a sense of self. And so you don't want to stop your train of angry thinking, you want more angry thinking. And if possible, you get looking for more feedback from others to reinforce your angry thinking. I need another argument. And after you've walked back out of the room after a one hour argument, you walk back into the room because you haven't had enough. You need to talk to that person again. Oh, one more thing I want to tell you. And even when that person is no longer there, you're still thinking. And then you need to pick up the phone and tell your friend about it. And then you repeat the whole argument you just had and how right you are and how wrong the other person was. And then when you hang up the phone, it still goes on in your head. So you can enormous that moment. To tell somebody you need to stop thinking would be futile. The person doesn't even want to stop thinking because that person is the thinking. Total identification with thought. So there needs to be a realization. Some awareness needs to be there. It's totally pointless to talk to anybody about stopping thinking without having at least some access to awareness. Maybe not in the moment of enormously empowered thinking. Empowered, not in a good way, but. But the awareness needs to bear what's going on inside me right now. And then at some point you might be able to realize what's happening to you. It's happening to you. You didn't actually do it, it just happened to you because you're being possessed by your mind. And then at some point you realize that there is a choice. You can actually, perhaps not when you're in the middle of it. At some point a very strong mind stream subsides. You might get tired of it. And then it goes. And then finally go, oops, oh. And then do I choose to carry on? Does it make me feel happy? No, it doesn't. I thought it did because it felt so good to me. Angry about that. But it doesn't make you feel. The body doesn't really feel. If you asked your body, it would tell you this feels horrible. But of course, if you're not in touch with your body, you're only up here. You don't even know that. And then at some moment the choice comes in. And so at other moments, the choice may come much more quickly because it's just the usual stream of futile. In the middle of the night, you wake up the usual stream of futile thinking. And then awareness comes in. There's a choice, and then a decision comes. And that decision is just no willpower. It's just a decision. I'd rather be still than not be thinking. And once you know that, then you can take your attention into the inner energy field of the body. That's your choice. Instead of giving more attention to your thinking, you just take your attention into the inner energy field of the body. And suddenly you feel the aliveness that pervades the entire body. And so you have taken consciousness away from the mind and put it in here, and you can't think that much anymore. You can't feel the body and be engaged in a lot of thinking and if you really fully experience the aliveness in the inner body, the mind stops. And so that becomes an anchor for awareness, an anchor for presence. Even if you cannot feel the entire body, it would be enough to just go into your hands with your attention, Just take consciousness into your hands and feel the aliveness in your hands. That alone can take attention away from useless thinking. And can you continue to feel? Because that is part of experiencing the present moment, which actually feels quite good. It feels good to be alive. That's an amazing realization. So in our body, or even just a part of the body, the totality of the body is best if you can. It's not that difficult. You start with one part, hands. And you. Can I feel my feet also? Yeah, I can feel hands and feet. Can I feel my legs a little bit less? And then the totality of. Oh, okay, I got it. You might also notice that you're breathing then, which is the other way. It can be combined with body awareness. But breathing is the other way of taking attention away from the mind. The most ancient meditation method is breath awareness, because breath awareness takes attention away from thinking, but keeps you alert. And breath happens all the time. And breath is virtually formless. So it's easier to get in touch with a formless consciousness by placing attention on the formless breath. Other meditation objects are clearly defined in form. You can have an object that you focus on. You can have a mental object that you focus on. You can have a mantra that you focus on. Those can work too, but they are more clearly defined in form. The breath is a kind of, where's the breath? You can't say, here it is, it's semi formless or formless. So to place attention on that which can also automatically bring you in touch with the body, the in breath. It's so beautiful to have attention on your breath and the out breath, and immediately your mind becomes still. So you can either be thinking or can have your attention on your breathing, but you can't have both. The moment you think you're not aware of your breath anymore. And that also really applies to the inner body. To have full attention in the inner body, you can't be thinking. So those two things which are really closely linked, breath awareness, you can make it into a meditation. So you can sit in meditation and then you can observe the ingoing and outgoing breath. You can also observe the gaps between the ingoing and outgoing breaths. You breathe out brief gap of nothingness. And then you start breathing in again. A brief gap of neither in nor out. And the cycle continues. I read somewhere that the Buddha said, if you're aware of your breath for one hour. I don't know if they even had hours at the time. But if you are aware of your breath for one hour, you will be completely enlightened. But if you lose it, you have to start from the beginning again. Just one thought coming in. Okay. Start all over. Okay. I can see one or two of you saying, I'm going to do that. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation.