Easy Technique for Cultivating Presence: Breath Awareness | Eckhart Tolle

So the, the most simple, direct practice is to be aware of your breath, to be aware of your breathing, for example. Now, to be aware of it, your breathing. Now, before I just said that it's very, very likely that you were not aware of your breathing unless you knew already what this great practice is. But the moment I said it, your awareness went to your breath. And you can feel the air moving into the body and out of the body. And you, so to speak, you follow it with your attention. You follow the air with your attention as it goes in and out. That is the most direct and simplest practice for being present. I'm not the first person to come up with that. Somebody called the Buddha already talked about it 2500 years ago. It was called Anapanasati. Yoga is the practice of the ingoing and outgoing breath. Ingoing and outgoing breath. Awareness. Now, the breathing is always there. Most of the time you're not conscious of it. When you direct consciousness to your breathing, something very interesting happens. It slows down or completely eliminates your thinking. And there's only an awareness of your breath. So if you want to, if you're being tortured by your thoughts, as many people are, and many people don't even know that they're tortured by your thoughts. They think they're being tortured by life, whatever their life sitting at. This is so dreadful. My life. My life is so difficult and complicated, and I can't. Just can't stand it anymore. This is trouble. And then the narrative continues and continues, continues. And you think that's your life, not knowing that it's a narrative in your mind, it's not your life. To confuse a narrative in your mind with your life is a fundamental, very dreadful error, but very, very common. Has anybody taught you that at school or university? Probably not. The most fundamental knowledge, not to confuse a narrative in your mind with your life, because your life isn't a narrative in your mind. It's always now. It is never not now. This is most fundamentally, your life is now. Not the narrative of past and future. That is helpful for practical purposes, but no more than that. Not to give you an identity that's a fictitious identity. Your true identity is rooted in the power of the present moment, the power of now. Be aware of your breathing. You don't even have to control it. There are certain meditation practices that have a very structured way of approaching your breath. And you can change the length of your breath. You can count your breaths, you can do all kinds of things. That's fine for meditation practices, but the simplest Thing is, no matter where you are, and you don't even have to say, okay, I'm going to meditate now. It's fine. I love meditation, but I sometimes make fun of it a little bit. And he said, then you enter totally different. Okay, now it's time to meditate for 10 minutes. Throughout your life, wherever you are, be aware of your breathing whenever you can. It creates an inner spaciousness because when you're aware of your breathing, you can't do much thinking. And most of the thinking, as you may know, or maybe it's news to you, most of your thinking is not only unnecessary, but actually very harmful. It creates all kinds of pseudo problems. Well, the mind is telling you it's working on solving your problems. It's actually regurgitating old narratives, not real problem. There is such a thing as focused application of the mind that's of thinking. Thinking ability becomes enhanced when there is a presence behind it. So when you have an actual real problem to solve in your life, approach it not only with your thinking mind, but also with the sensational thinking. You can continue step back from thinking into stillness. And you, if you want to use your breath to access the stillness, it's a good portal. Be aware of your breathing. So first, these are the problems. When I have something to think about, I usually, because I'm old fashioned, I have a notepad and a pen. And if I have to think about some, what are the, what can I do in the situation? What are the solutions? I start writing down possibilities. For example, these people, modern humans like you, you probably use some device, I don't know what you do on keyboard, whatever. So you write, write down, what is it that I can do in this? What can I do to solve this if it's an actual problem? Because many things that humans come up with in your mind are not actual problems, they imaginary constructs. If there's an actual problem, okay, action needs to be taken. What is it that I can do? Write down this, this, this, and then you run out of ideas and then it's time to become still be aware of your breathing. You don't need to close your eyes. You can, but it's not necessary to be aware of your breathing because you can be aware of your breathing and there's still enough awareness left to be aware of your surroundings. If you want to focus more deeply on your breathing, you can close your eyes and then really focus on your breathing. But I say even one conscious breath makes a difference in your life. If you take that one conscious breath several times during the day. What do I mean by one conscious breath? It's one conscious in and out breaths. How long does that take? I don't know. Maybe. Let's see. I'm doing it. Conscious breath goes like this. That was it. In and out. 10 seconds maybe. Doesn't matter. And that's one conscious breath. What does it do? It creates a gap in your stream of thinking, a stillness, a presence arises that's has always been there, is always there underneath all the thinking. So presence doesn't is not something that you need to achieve or attain. It's something that you discover because it's already there. So you can't really work hard to become present because it's already there. This is why in some traditions, people say, well, you are already enlightened and the person is. What are you talking about? My life is a complete mess. How can I be enlightened? All my relationships are in shambles. How can I'm not enlightened? Well, underneath all that mental noise and emotional turmoil, there is a presence, there is a deeper consciousness. So the simplest practice is to be aware of your breath. And even if it's only one conscious breath, but taken many times during the day, whenever you remember. And you might want to take two or three instead of one. Even better, two or three conscious breaths while you're on your computer, on your keyboard. Okay, stop for a moment. One or two or three conscious breaths. Or just, just observe that you're breathing. Just, just direct your attention there. It's your breathing. You are breathing. There's no doubt about it, you're breathing. So just observe that you're breathing. Breathing happens to you. You're not doing it. But for most people, thinking is the same. Thinking happens to them. They're not doing it. They have no control at all what their mind does. They have no awareness. So thinking happens to them in the same way that breathing happens to them. But this doesn't have to breathing, that. Yes, that always happens. Something in you want to live, and it's breathing. It wants you to live in this incarnation. And that's why you're breathing. And no matter how unhappy you are, you cannot kill yourself by stopping breathing. You won't be able. Nobody's ever committed suicide by stopping your breath, holding their breath. Something in you does not want to commit suicide. It wants to come to the end of your incarnation naturally. And only the silly person wants to commit suicide. So get in touch with that in you that does not want to commit. It is not unhappy. The presence is not unhappy. The Awareness is not unhappy. So the simplest practice, be aware of your breathing. Now that can lead you into the next practice that they closely connected. The other practice is to be aware of the inner energy field of your body when you're breathing. That connects you almost inevitably with the inner energy field of your body, because you breathe into. And if you can feel that you're breathing into as deep as the abdomen without doing no effort, it's just happening. Don't make an effort, it's just happening. You're breathing and your attention follows the breath as deep as the abdomen belly. Although the air probably doesn't go there, but your attention goes with the breath. And from there you can sense an energy spreading out throughout your body. An inner energy field. It pervades the body. I call it inner body awareness. That's also an ancient meditation practice, if done in a more structured way. Here it's called vipassana, or going back. Also probably taught by the Buddha too, and by Jesus. We only have fragments of his teachings. He talks about the possibility that your. Your whole body can be full, full of light. That's what he's talking about. So in our body awareness, to sense the inner energy field of your body and breath awareness are closely related. And sometimes breath awareness inevitably could connect you to the inner energy field of the body. And then they merge into one practice. You're aware of your breathing and you're aware of that. Your body is pervaded by a sense of aliveness. That is the intelligence that inhabits your body. It transcends who or what you are as a person. You feel intensely alive, not in an excited way, in a calm way. So there's breath awareness and inner body awareness. They merge into one.