Eckhart Tolle argues that modern life disconnects us from seeing everything as alive and sacred. Scientific materialism and constant thinking have made us lose touch with what he calls animistic spirituality. Staying present and recognizing the aliveness in all things is how we address the current crisis.
All there ever is in your life, I think everybody must admit, be able to admit that all there ever is is the present moment. That's how you experience life, as the present moment. And if you disregard that and reduce it to a means to an end, or actively dislike it, then your life is dysfunctional and extremely unconscious. And. And you are a trouble to yourself. You create problems, you create conflict continuously. It's insane. So the acknowledgment of the present moment is absolutely vital. So it begins with acknowledging whatever arises in the present moment, not internally resisting whatever arises in the present moment. And that's another practice here. As you let go of your habitual, the habits of your personality, they gradually recede, subside, and you no longer argue with the present moment. Because for many people there's a habit of discontent. They're not rooted in being so, they're discontent. There's always a discontent somewhere, floating around. And then they seek explanations for the underlying feeling of discontent. Easy to find explanations why you're not happy in the external, even here. Various obstacles can arise here to the deepening of your consciousness. Which? One of the obstacles is the patterns of your mind that travel with you, that are part of your personality, the patterns of your mind and the same thing. They create a reactivity to things or to people. But another obstacle is it's too nice here, it's too pleasant. How can you awaken in paradise? Nobody would awaken in paradise. You're much more likely to awaken in hell. But don't worry, even here you will be challenged either by external events, seen significant things. But they'll bring up some kind of complaint. I'm not talking about complaint. When something needs to be rectified, something can be done about it, but the other kind of complaining. So watch your mind. Observe patterns of reactivity and useless complaining if they arise. Because complaining is an important part of many egos. For many egos, complaining is a very important part of their sustenance. They thrive on it. Criticizing, complaining, finding fault here and there. It's all part of the underlying discontent of something. Always a sense of something, not something, not being right. Something not right, something is missing, don't know what. Something missing. Sense of not enough. Even this is not enough. This wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting something else. There are too many people here. I was expecting something smaller. I can't do it here. Just too many. This isn't right. It's too touristy. I don't like it here now. Including, and especially the small things in the present moment, you begin to enjoy just walking from here to there, a few steps. Conscious of taking one step at a time, handling an object, putting on your shoes or your sandals, making a cup of tea. You come to acknowledge the aliveness of everything, even so called inanimate objects. Because ultimately nothing is inanimate. I want to go more deeply into that. During this retreat, all the ancient cultures, ancient civilizations, including Polynesian civilization here, but going back everywhere, they all had the primordial spirituality of all ancient cultures, was what is called, we sometimes called in anthropology, animism. Animism means not just the belief, but the feeling or the sensing that everything in this world has a spirit, has a soul, anima from a soul, Latin from soul. Animism underlies all ancient spirituality. Everywhere the sensing that the world is intensely alive, there is a hidden presence in all things. Not just alive things, but also so called inanimate things. There is a hidden presence. And that is. We are returning to that realization now at a deeper level. Sometimes in ancient civilizations, they interpret it as everything has a little spirit. There's this little spirit here and a spirit there. But it goes. It's deeper than that. Everything is a manifestation of consciousness. Consciousness is the intelligence that underlies the universe. There is a vast intelligence that is the organizing principle behind the manifestation of all life forms. There is a vast intelligence at work beyond sense perceptions. And so everything has. The Romans believed it, Polynesians believed it, the ancient Europeans believed it in Africa, everywhere in China, in Daoism, all that. In Roman times, every house, they believed, had an energy field that they called the spirit of the house. And of course in China, in Japan, you have feng shui, a similar thing that still has survived from those times. Since there is an. There's an energy field. Whereas for contemporary humans, the advanced humans, the world has become lifeless. That started with scientific materialism in the 19th century. And the world has become. It's not really perceived as being alive. And even the natural world was regarded as a. They began to regard the natural world as a commodity. So they lost that sense of the aliveness and ultimately the sacredness of all things that is hiding beyond the appearance. And that is a terrible loss. And this is why we have arrived at such a crisis point now. But that is a loss within the human because they. Through excessive conceptualization, the ego has grown and grown and grown. And the. The. This excessive conceptualization deadens the world around you, because everything is filtered through concepts. Every human that you made is. Is called something. It's filtered through conceptualization. As you can no longer. There's no longer the sense of connectedness. Neither from human to another, nor from human to nature. And even the connectedness with an object I've had. For many years, I've had this. People. When I mention it, people think I'm a little weird. Well, I suppose I am a little weird. But always that sense of that certain objects that I live with, they are kind of my friends. It's not an attachment, not an egoic attachment. Just an acknowledgment, Sam.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
