Eckhart Tolle explains how unobserved thoughts create suffering and shows how to break free by returning to presence and sense perception. When you stop complaining mentally about problems, you can think clearly about solutions like a mortgage issue without becoming a victim. Aligning with what is brings synchronistic help.
Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, I believe, said there are three types of garbage that the mind can create when it's not being observed, and that is chicken shed bullshit and elephant she. So if you can, if you know, if you can access this thought in any situation, especially when you feel the arising of unhappiness in whatever form, access the. This is not suppression. It has nothing to do with suppressing a feeling. Suppressing a feeling requires willpower and requires you to go tense. And you go, I'm not going to feel that. I'm too present to feel that I'm spiritual. I don't feel things like that anymore. Sometimes you get, especially Westerners, but maybe also some Japanese who practice, who are Zen practitioners, they look extremely stern, but there's something vital missing. They're mistaking willpower for realization, for presence. The true Zen master may look also stern, but behind that sternness there is something else. The high quality drawings of ancient Zen masters, you can see both dimensions. You can see the sternness in their facial expression, but the softness behind it, so that the Zen master might look at you go, but there's something else behind it. This is not willpower. It's a sort of presence that cuts through time. So whenever you feel any kind of dysfunction arising in your life externally, any form of unhappiness, and I'm using this generic term, could mean all kinds of things, any form of suffering or unhappiness. First, of course, you need to recognize that it's suffering, that all it implies. There is some awareness there. To get irritated somewhere is already a mild form of suffering. To get irritated by somebody or by some situation. The ego loves the irritation because irritation makes something or somebody wrong. The thing that irritates you is wrong. The person that irritates you is wrong. Oh, he's so irritating. He may not. What does it mean? It means I get irritated when I look at him. He's not irritating. I irritate myself when I listen to him, and when I look at him, I irritate myself. That's more true to say than he is irritating. That's a ridiculous protection. So you do it to yourself. And as awareness grows, you realize that. That these are inner states that you do to yourself. And then whenever any irrit, upset or unhappiness in whatever form arises, you go, okay, I lost the present moment. Where is the present moment? Oh, it's here. And the first thing, then quick two steps. First thing, sense perceptions. Suddenly you come to your senses. That's part of being Present and. And then you go deeper. You become aware of yourself as the presence. That's the thought. And there can be no unhappiness can survive in the state of presence. No problem can survive when you're totally present. A challenge, yes, but not a problem. Do you have a problem? I ask that in the power of now. Do you have a problem at this moment? Even if you have a toothache, it's a toothache, it's not a problem. Yeah, but I need to go to the bathroom and I'm sitting here in the middle. I can't get up. It's not a problem. No matter what happens, it's not a problem. Yeah, but I don't know. I can't pay my mortgage at the end. The mortgage on my house at the end of this month. I asked, do you have a problem now? Yeah, I have a problem now. I can't pay the mortgage at the end of the month. Now means now. So you have to come into the now. At this moment, there is no mortgage anywhere. I can't see it. There's neither mortgage nor missing payment or anything of that kind. There's none of that at this moment. A time may come when I sit down in front of at a table and a piece of paper and I focus attention on the situation that may require action. And then I apply focused, thinking money. Where is it coming from? What action can I do? Then you become still for 3, 4, 5 seconds and alert. And so you're still present even while you're thinking about how to solve the problem of how you're going to pay the mortgage at the end of the month, you're still. You go into stillness, alertness. Then you think again. Then you come to the end. What else is there that I can do? I don't know. You go back and you might have another thought and you write down the possibility, possible causes of action. And in the meantime you don't complain about the situation and feel sorry for yourself. Mental image of poor me Victim identity why is this happening to me? What have I done wrong? Why is this always happening to me? If that hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened. Why did I allow that to happen? I should not have allowed that to happen. Then I would be able to pay the mortgage. Why am I so stupid? Why am I always so stupid? It goes on. It goes on and on. It's all mental constructions. So. And then the amazing thing is something almost magical happens when you become aligned with the isness of things and live more and more in the present first. Not only are you able to apply focused thought much more powerfully, which you might need to solve that particular situation, which is no longer a problem, it's a situation to be solved. Problem means your mind is thinking about it without any possibility of action right now. And it's wild thinking, wild, imagining even worse things. What happens if I can't pay it? I have to move out. I'll be in the street or I'll be in some crummy little place or I have to buy a tent and I'll be living in a tent and I'll get. Winter will come and I'll be really cold and I'll catch a cold and I'll be ill and then I can't pay the hospital bills. You apply focused thought to a situation and there's no longer a complaining entity, somebody who feels sorry for themselves. There's no victim anymore. You're not a victim of life or anybody. Not even a victim of yourself, of your dysfunctional behavior in the past. Many people consider themselves victims of their own dysfunctional behavior. I should never have done that. Why did I do that? I wouldn't be in this mess now if I. All that falls away when you approach the now with. You have this sort of presence it brings you. But not only that, some magic comes in when you are aligned with the isness of things instead of internally resisting the isness of what is circumstances. I've experienced it many times in my life and other people have confirmed it. Circumstances have a tendency of becoming more helpful, even though there may not be a direct correlation between an action that you take and a particular circumstance that is arising. In other words, it could be considered as a synchronistic event that suddenly arises that is helpful in your situation, but you don't know how it arose because there seem to be no connecting connection between anything that you did and suddenly that thing arising. It could be a person you suddenly meet or some information that you suddenly receive that opens a new way forward for you, an event, whatever it is. This is why it does not seem to be. Carl Jung called it a. An acausal, which means a non causal connecting principle, which means under the surface of this external sense, perceived reality, there is a deep connectedness of all things and all people. Sam.
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