Enjoyment vs Stress | Eckhart Tolle Teaching

So what in your life, as you pursue a goal, another way of putting of approaching it is to ask yourself if you are not really enjoying while you pursue the goal, whatever it is in your life, if you are not really enjoying the doing, because you are so focused on becoming and achieving and arriving at this future point, that the enjoyment of the doing is greatly diminished or disappears completely. Because all you want to do is arrive, but you're not there yet. That's the nature of stress, how stress arises. Stress means there is a continuous focus on the next moment. So you are torn away. And this is produced by the human mind through thinking. You are torn away internally from the present moment into a non existent. Because the future never exists except as a thought. You are torn into this so called future, which is in never never land because it can never arrive. You can never reach the future because the moment it becomes reality in your life, it's the present moment. So by having this mindset, an excessive focus on becoming or arriving or achieving, you lose completely the being dimension. And then your life is completely out of balance. Even if you achieve in the eyes of the world, fame or wealth or worldly success, and yet you are frustrated and unhappy human being, perhaps pretending that you are happy, but you're not. And then you have to take drugs or alcohol, or go from one relationship to another, or compulsively pursue the next thing and the next thing and the next thing accumulate more of this and this. And so it's. That's not a mastery of life. Even if you have your private debt does not mean you have achieved mastery of life. In fact, you may be completely deluded. Not necessarily. You could have a private debt and have achieved the master. Wouldn't that be great? So that is our purpose here, is to have that balance. And here the emphasis of course of this teaching is on finding the. The being dimension, awareness of being. Which is why I talk so much about the present moment. Because this is always the moment your attention goes fully into the present moment. You have withdrawal attention from becoming and doing. And what arises is the being dimension. So, and that is associated also with a sometimes brief but vitally important cessation of thinking in that moment. When you become completely aware of the present moment. And it starts with sense perception. You're suddenly aware of your surroundings. You may also suddenly be aware of the inner energy field that you feel you are alive in this present moment. There is aliveness all around you and you can perceive it through your senses. You become aware simultaneously in the present moment. So in addition to what you see with your senses. There is an underlying field of aliveness that you can be aware of in the present moment. And that's the being, dimension or presence. And that's who you are in essence. But that's not only who you are in essence, that is the essence of everything. So when you realize that for yourself, it's not the person who has that realization, the universe has that realization. The universe which for a moment, because your life is a moment on a cosmic scale, your life here as a person has a very short duration. It goes chup, chup. Well, was that it? Yeah. Then the element of continuous frustration and discontent and the feeling there's something not right here, or the feeling there's something vital missing in my life, but always looking to the next thing. To find the vital thing that's missing in my life, I have to find it. You don't realize it's already here. So there's something I don't feel complete. There's still something lacking, a sense of lack. Something is missing. Don't know what it is. You might even not verbally say that there's just a feeling that something is missing or something is not. Right. Of course not, because your life is completely out of balance. But you are. I'm not nothing personal. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking in general terms. If your life were completely out of bounds, you wouldn't be here. Or if you had accidentally stumbled upon this place, you would soon leave. So the being dimension is accessed obviously in the present moment. And the doing, of course, requires time. You cannot do anything without some dimension of time. Make a cup of tea. You need some time to make a cup of tea. Learn to become this or that. You need time to become a doctor, or to become a musician, or to become a dancer, or to become whatever. You need time. That's the time temporal dimension. And yet, although you need time, the paradox is that you never really. Not really that you never actually experience time or the passing of time except in your head as a thought, as an anticipation of the next moment or memory of the last or other moments from the past. That that's how you experience time. But never is a direct experience time you can never experience directly. Because whenever you ask yourself, where is time? All you ever get is the present moment. So on one level of your life, time seems vital to do things. Not on another side of that coin of time, where on one hand time seems useful because you can, on the level, surface level of reality, you can do things in time. And become, from being an ignorant person, become a very knowledgeable person in time. It takes time to acquire knowledge on that level. And yet that's a good aspect of time. But then there's something else aspect of time which you discover when you compare a photo of yourself taken at the age of 20, let's say you are now 40 or 50 or whatever, and you discover, oh, that's me 20 years ago. And then you look in the mirror or 30 years ago, what happened to me? Time. Who did this to me? Time. Oh my God. And if you're young and beautiful or strong and healthy, then you can still know that eventually time is going to erode your good looks. Now, this is not tragic unless you are very much identified. You derive your sense of identity from your physical body, which might look good right now, but won't in Time will. And then of course, what ultimately time, of course, what time does it kills you so fast. It enables you to do things and to become. But then at the same time you begin to wilt like a flower. Time does that do a flower too much more quickly than a human, but very similar. It does it to a fruit, a piece of fruit. You want to observe the passing of time. All you can do is to observe the effect that time has on things. But you cannot observe time because it's never there. It's a paradox. One could go into this or make it into a huge philosophical thing, which I won't do. It's enough for you to see in your personal immediate experience. Time is not something that you can ever experience directly. It only leaves behind evidence it's been there. A dead body, for example, or an apple that two weeks ago was very fresh and now it's all wrinkled and has gone. Two weeks before it was the apple. And it's the same with young humans. The strokes can be very radiant. And then gradually now the interesting thing happens for those humans who are not totally identified with that level of form, but who have accessed the being dimension as they grow older. The being dimension, as the physical vehicle gets gradually eroded by time. The physical, sorry, the being dimension is actually able to shine through more. As the body weakens and gets old. There is a light, the light of consciousness that can shine through. And then you find certain old people who, as the body weakens, the light increases of consciousness and the ego is completely gone and there's just a beautiful presence left. That's the. At the latest, as you grow old, that's still your last opportunity. But if you've missed it for the first 75 years of your life because you are too concerned with doing all the time and acquiring and becoming. I don't know whether you can still find it. I think if you fall ill or something like that happens to you, yes you can. It's preferable not to wait until you're close to death to look for the being dimension because you might not find it anymore because you're so absorbed in the doing and in time you won't even look for it. If you had no interest whatsoever throughout your life in any of this, it's a bit late. That's fine. The universe is abundant and patient and every life has a purpose. We'll talk about that some other time. Time, you see, can't get away from it. 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.