Doing One Thing at a Time | with Eckhart Tolle

All the little things. So that means most of your life you can actually use them in this way so that they become a help. All those things that don't require that much of your attention, they become use that spare attention to go within and another way of putting it, become aware of that field of attention itself as the consciousness. And this is why it was so pleasant when I put away the clothes this morning. Just it wasn't the putting away, it was something deeper. And you can practice that, practice it here and in the rest of your life with all the little things that make up most of your life. Whether you are a so called VIP in the eyes of the world, a totally meaningless concept or not, it's still little things that makes even and you become most effective when you give your attention to little things. If there's something that absorbs more of your attention, then some attention will move more into mind and thinking and you will have less than the being. Awareness, so to speak, goes a little bit into the background if you have to work something out or write something. But it's vital that it's still there or you're engaged in a discussion that can very quickly pull you completely out of the being awareness. When you're getting your viewpoint, you need to defend your viewpoint. Now, now there are two ways of defending your viewpoint. One is losing yourself in your viewpoint and one is remaining in connection with the being awareness. And then just put forward your viewpoint and why you have it and then allow the other person to forward their viewpoint and don't make them into an enemy, which is much easier now when you have not. You're no longer seeking your identity to derive your identity from your opinions and viewpoints. That's a dreadful state to be in because then you're surrounded by enemies or those who don't share your viewpoints or have opposite ones. They are awful. These people are evil. The same thing happens with collective viewpoints. You have a collective belief system. It's the same mechanism. Our belief is the only one. Obviously that's one. That's true. All other beliefs are fallacy. They are lies spread by the devil. They are not our beliefs. So these people are less than human who don't share our beliefs. It's insane, but normal. And what kind of a world does that produce if millions of people are trapped in that dysfunctional belief system, Egoic belief structures. And so when I talk about the little things. Another Zen there. I love these Zen people. There was a Zen master who was asked what's the essence of Zen? And now There are many different kinds of answers the masters give. None of them are answers that you would expect. And he said, zen, the disciple, of course. Please explain to me again. I've only been here for 10 years and I don't get it yet. What is it? I need a fuller explanation. You haven't said enough. And what is Zen? And the master said, zen is doing one thing at a time. Is that it? Yeah. Okay, thank you. I'm going to look for another master who gives me a better explanation. But if he had really listened, that's all you need to know. Doing one thing at a time. Attention. So attention on what you're doing and attention on attention. Then you're no longer an egoic doer. If you don't have attention on attention, the doing becomes egoic seeking. And it's not empowered. It comes out of the conditioning of your mind. So attention on what you're doing and attention on attention. Then you are in touch again. That's another aspect of what we called yesterday. One foot in one dimension, the other foot in that dimension, and then you are both a human and a being, a full human being. And until you are able to live like that, you are not a full human being yet, as Confucius already said over 2,000 years ago, and many humans are still not. Evolution has not come to an end of humanity or anything. We are still evolving. Obviously, this is not the end product. Where we are at, I don't know. Not that advanced. So the most important thing to get here. Get. Get it. Get. The most important thing to get here is to be able to be aware of yourself as consciousness or attention on attention. This means, oh, this is another Zen story that just came to me. The disciple said, I'm going to take my leave now because I'm going to look for another monastery and another master, because you actually haven't given me the full answer. Can you just write something down so that it's just something for me to remember that is important, some explanation. And the Zen master just give me paper, pen. He wrote there, and he said, it's an attention. Okay, Is that all? Yes, please add a little bit more. Just another few more words. Okay, give to me. And then the disciple reads it. Attention. Attention. What does that mean? He said attention. Attention. What does it mean? The master said, attention means attention. So the disciple was seeking to pursue Zen through mental concepts, and the master was attempting to help him break through mental concepts. Because the answer to all to who you are, the answer to the secrets of the universe, which are all in you, of course, you are a microcosm of the macrocosm, as above, so below. As the ancient philosophers already said, the all the secrets of the universe are not to be found through conceptual thinking. What conceptual thinking can do is relatively little. And the human evolution which has now reached a critical stage, does not mean that we are going to improve conceptual thinking. It's been helpful, it's done interesting things, it's created. Of course it has a downside, lots of huge problems, especially if it's not connected with wisdom which comes from the being. But you cannot further develop more refined conceptual thinking. We've come to the kind of end of the road of conceptual thinking. What else is just putting words together in a different way? So we've tried so many ways of putting words together. How many words? There are a limited number of letters in the Alphabet, not to mention sounds. I talked about that already. There are limited number of letters in the Alphabet and a limited number of words that you can put together. Every book in the library or nowadays on the computer, anything you read, any text you read is words put together in a certain order and then you jumble them and then you have another text and you put different order, but the number of words is limited and they're just words. So the answer is not in further development of conceptual thinking or another way of putting it. More information is more information because we are living the so called information age and you can get all the information on the computer that you. It is quite amazing. Of course it is on that level that before you had to buy the Encyclopedia Britannica and it was quickly out of date and now you can Google and Wikipedia and all those things and it's all, whatever, all the human knowledge is there. But human evolution does not consist in finding, getting more and more information. You don't evolve by getting more and more information. In fact, the more you stop getting information, the more confused you get if you're not connected with being. So much stuff accumulates in the head and all the devices, more stuff comes into your mind, you absorb more and more stuff and you get completely scattered. Human attention deficit disorder, all these things can't focus on anything for longer than 20 seconds. Dreadful state to be in. Of course, yes, you know more than Jesus did 2,000 years ago. Of course you do. On the level of information, you know hundred thousand times more than the Buddha did. But that's not vital. It's knowledge, but it's not knowing. So human evolution is not to completely abandon conceptual thinking. No, to be able to use conceptual thinking without being trapped in conceptual thinking. So it's to transcend conceptual thinking. Transcend means it doesn't. You don't remove it, you go beyond it. But it's still there for you to use, but not for you to be used by. 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.