Honoring the Present Moment | Eckhart Tolle Explains

But the more grateful you are for what is, the more things will come to you, what really have chosen for yourself as your life purpose. Perhaps it's not even that great a job, but nevertheless, you honor it in this moment. You give it attention, you do your best, and then it will evolve into something else.

Hello.

Hello.

So unlike you with Oprah, I am bursting with excitement right now. So thank you so much for having me. And I also just want to give you a giant virtual hug.

Oh, thank you.

As I'm sure so many in the room would like to do as well.

Thank you.

And my question is around manifesting. I get twisted in my head about that because all my life I have felt I have a purpose. And the purpose is connected with joining and being of service and support and expansion of consciousness. And I know it's out there. I know that that's going to be something I'm very involved with at some point. And I am familiar with manifesting and the deep knowing of, you know, what that is. And at the same time, there are a lot of spiritual teachers that talk about being very specific when you manifest something. And I have no idea what it's going to look like. And I most of the time, when there is something related to my deeper purpose, if I try to go, you know, left and make that happen, usually I go right, though, like it's the invisible hand guiding me. Right. And I feel like, well, I'm not man. You know what I mean? So I don't really feel like I know I'm the right one to manifest my purpose because I don't know. As high as my deepest self.

Yes. So are you manifesting your purpose in your life?

Well, I know that it's going to be there. I In the sense that I've always had the sense, you know, once I retire in five or 10 years or something, that I'll be doing something else that has to do with that. And. But I don't know if it's here. I don't know if it's there. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know if it's working for Eckhart teachings or whether it's, you know, working at a wellness center or participating in something. I have no idea what it looks like. I just know that that is my purpose.

Yes. Can you summarize?

My question is, do I need to be specific? Because that's so much of what the spiritual teachers that I was just listening to one recently.

Right.

Be specific when you manifest your purpose.

Yes. For some People that works, but it can also limit it. If I had been specific, I would probably have limited it. Sometimes the universe had bigger plans than you have. So my first experience of manifestation, which is a form of spirituality to manifest, it's important. It's not the deepest. The deepest is to realize the essence of who you are. Then you can still manifest if you want to, and you'll be quite good at it, but it's secondary. So for me, there was a kind of spiritual awakening when I was 17 years old. In the sense that I'd always been very, very negative. And always one of the mind patterns, thoughts that could go through my head was bad things always happen to me. Of course, they always do. They always. And they did. And then I accidentally came across some books that at the time I was living in Spain with my dad and a German woman had gone back to Germany. And he left some books with us. They were spiritual teacher who is not well known anymore. German spiritual teacher, but Chinese name. And I started reading these books and they were about. There's a relationship between your external life and your inner state. And if you change your inner state, you change your external life. That was such a revelation to me. I'd never heard that before. And at the time I was learning to type, teaching myself on a typewriter. They don't exist anymore to type. And I remember I copied, practicing typing. I copied many pages of those books. And then I started practicing changing my thoughts and becoming. Feeling good things were going to happen to me. I was not very specific because I didn't know what exactly would happen. I attract good things into my life. I attract whatever. And then a few months later, shift happened. I was longing to get away from where I was living with my dad and his second wife that was as dysfunctional as his first wife, my mother with the. The living together. I need to get out of here. Please take me out of here. And finally I got a job offer in England without an interview. It was a miracle. And it was a good job and had virtually no qualifications. It was an absolute miracle. And the. And I knew that I had created. I had manifested that to just amazing. And one of the happiest moments of my early life was saying, goodbye, I'm off. It was so wonderful. And in England, many things developed, miraculous things that could never have expected. So I don't think you need to be too specific unless there's something that you desperately want or need. But hopefully, since you've gone deep enough into yourself, there's nothing that you desperately want or need because whatever happens on the horizontal dimension is an adding on. As Jesus said, whatever you manifest in this external life is lovely. But seek first the. The kingdom of heaven, that all the things that you think that you need will be added on to you. So what he's saying is the world of external manifestation. Yes, you have to deal with this world and it can be a lovely practice, but it's an adding on. And there may come a time when you don't need to manifest anything anymore. Think I've acquired a certain momentum and it's growing. I've asked some successful people, did you practice manifestation before you achieved your sex? And one or two said, yes, yes I did. One specifically said, I think he's probably told about it publicly, so I probably don't need to keep his name a secret, but I will anyway, just in case. Well, he said he had put a. He had wrote himself a check for. I think it was. I can't remember how much it was $10 million something. And put it in his wallet and he always poked at it. And three years later he got a check for $10 million for movie role. And he got it. Then I asked Oprah, did you ever practice Manitoba? He said, no, it just came. What he does practice is gratitude book. Every day she writes something to be grateful for or several things to be grateful. It's a very powerful tool also it's a tool to help you be present. To be grateful means an appreciation, an alignment with what is. So that's a powerful thing that is non specific. But the more grateful you are for what is, the more things will come to you. If you honor this moment, what is this moment then? The future, the so called future which never comes except as the present moment will reflect that mindset. So there are others. Sometimes people just start an activity which they enjoy and then enthusiasm comes in in and they do more of it and more of it. First on a small scale and they continue. Perhaps they're musicians like the Beatles. I don't think they ever thought we are going to be the greatest in the world. The greatest group that ever lived. They just enjoyed the music. And then they played and played and played and they have the famous 10,000 hours of practice. At some point somebody wrote about in a book he observed that people, many people who achieve mastery in one field, they have 10,000 hours of practice. And then at that point an additional element comes in that energizes and amplifies what they do. And enormous inspiration can suddenly flow in. So that is a good preparation too. To enjoy what you do is in itself a tool for manifesting good things. And even if whatever you do is not what you would really have chosen for yourself as your life purpose, perhaps it's not even that great a job, but nevertheless, you honor it in this moment. You give it attention, you do your best, and then it will evolve into something else. But the gratitude journal is another thing that would recommend to everybody. But gratitude, do you do that or have you done that?

I've done it, but I haven't been doing it.

Yeah, gratitude, right? It's good. Yes. It doesn't have to be a journal, but it's helpful. However, gratitude can also be misunderstood. People say, okay, I'm grateful because my life is. I have so much that other people don't have and I should really be look at other people and I have so much more in whatever better looks or more things, look at these poor people. I really should be grateful for what I have. That's not. That's not it. If you're only grateful when you compare yourself to others who have less or one way or another, that's not real gratitude. It's not really even gratitude for some life situation. The more powerful thing is gratitude for whatever is this moment, the little things of this moment, for this beautiful flower, you appreciate it, you give it a taste. Tension, that's all. Gratitude, an appreciation of the aliveness of the world around you in the present moment. That's so on the whole, I would advocate for less, not necessarily too specific. In most cases it would limit you. There may be exceptions to that, but non specific does work very well. And often, as you know, the camel driver has his plans, the camel has so the camel much bigger plans than you and I have found the same. I could not quite have imagined the growth of the teaching. I had some vision it would grow, but not that much. So don't limit yourself. And you're doing fine. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Sa.