Don't Let Anticipation Rob You of the Present Moment | Eckhart Tolle

Of course, we are not denying pleasurable anticipation. There's nothing wrong with pleasurable anticipation as long as it doesn't detract from the way in which you experience the present moment. But if the present moment is reduced to something of little value in your mind because your anticipation has such gravitational pull that it completely takes you out of the present moment in your mind and you into the future and you're expecting some kind of fulfillment there, Then of course, if you say, I'm looking forward to my vacation there, and in the meantime I completely lose awareness of this present moment and my surroundings. It's only just peripheral awareness, but not really there. So that's a different matter if it. If the anticipation absorb so much of your attention that you miss this. And that's. Perhaps we use this as an entry point, this meaning here. Now, if you miss this, you miss the whole thing. Because there's never anything but this here and now. That's. Some people find that if you really grasp that, not just intellectually. Intellectually you could say, yeah, of course, it's. That's all. There's always now. But if you really sense the importance of that, what is of primary importance here now, if you disregard that, are always mentally somewhere else only. Yes, sufficiently. Sufficiently here not to bump into furniture or got run over by a car, you still have some. Just a minimum of awareness in the present moment. Yes. Okay. Okay. And. But your main occupation is to do with past and future. And in the meantime, you live here now, but you're not really here now. Because you're looking here, there. You're here, but you don't want to be here. I want to be there. Never want to be here. And when you finally arrive there, perhaps for one very brief moment, it's nice, I'm there. But then the same mind pattern arises again. Because there, when it becomes here, turns out not to be all that fulfilling. It's there because the next thing comes up, it comes there. You cannot, you can never deeply penetrate into the here now. You are prevented by deeply ingrained mind patterns from really embracing and penetrating into the present moment with your attention. And so millions of humans on the planet live almost exclusively through anticipation and memory. The older you get, the more you live through memory. Because you have more and more past behind you to remember. And you can sense you have less and less future. So the future is shrinking. So you don't think when you reach a certain age, maybe you don't think that much anymore. Some people still do. When I retire, then I'll be Happy? I'm just looking forward to retirement. Only another 15 years and then I will have. And then I can really enjoy myself. In 15 years I will start really living my life. And then retirement comes and there you sit on a chair. What do I do now? Who am I now? Without my job title, I'm not important anymore. Weird. What do you look for? Okay, now you go into the past. Think about it. There's a lot to think about. So you miss. There's always the mind pattern of this. And this is the entry point into what we might call the spiritual dimension of life or the transcendent dimension of life. It is the entry point into a certain state of consciousness that is quite different from the habitual, prevalent egoic state of consciousness that most humans are still trapped in. And the egoic state of consciousness needs pass. It lives through past and future. It doesn't know what to do with the present moment or when it faces the present moment. It interprets it according to its conditioning. In other words, it doesn't see it as it is because it sees it through the veil of its conditioning, its judgments. That has been inherited judgments over many years. So the ego has been conditioned to interpret the world, every experience in a certain way. So when you are seemingly in the present moment because something is happening that requires your attention, then of course, because then you come for more. There's a person that says something to you, it's challenging, or situation is challenging. And then, even then, you are not really in the egoic state. You're not really present. You are reacting according to the conditioning of your mind. So in the past, it's still interfering even there. When you seemingly are facing the present moment, it's still facing it through the sometimes very dense veil of the past in you. So people carrying, carry all that around with them. Their past, which becomes their personality, becomes the person that it makes up who you are or who you think you are. So you, you carry the past around with you. And many elements go into that make up your personality. That consists of the accumulated past in your mental emotional field, the accumulation of past experiences in your mental emotional field. This accumulation is what you usually identify with as you. That's me. That's what people refer to when they use everybody's favorite pronoun. There are all kinds of pronouns these days, but everybody's favorite pronoun is I because they use it all the time. I. I think I know I. I don't like I like I want, I must have I. I. So what is that I? What is it that they refer to. Each person says I. And the I refers to this accumulation of past experiences and past all things that you have happened to you, things that you have done, things that you have experienced, acquired. And that has left traces in your mind as memory and forms of conditioning. And so that it becomes the person. And that is what humans refer to when they say I. Now, there is a. There is a deeper I, another I which still most humans, except many of you, are awakening. So you know what I'm talking about. There is a deeper I that is that transcends who or what you are as a person.