How Continuous Resistance Causes Stress and Low Quality of Life | Eckhart Tolle

First thing then, as I just mentioned, you may detect that very often you may be engaged in doing something and yet there's something in the background that would rather not be doing it. Or there could be a complaining voice in your head in the background that says something about this situation that you are involved in that you'd rather. Because it might involve other people when they are. They are not doing their best. And what am I doing here? All kinds of self talk can come into resistance, can manifest in many ways. It also manifests, we'll come to that in a minute. It also can manifest in the body. So you may find in any given situation your ability, as your ability grows, your ability to your inner observation, witnessing in a state, you may find that you detect subtle forms of resistance. That's often to do with what you're doing, but you're not totally in what you're doing. Another way of not being totally in what you're doing, of having continuous resistance running in the background, is already wanting to be at the end of this particular activity. Already wanting to be at the end of whatever it is that you're doing. Let's see, a simple thing. You go shopping, you're going. You're going to the supermarket. But you have so many other things to do today. So that the shopping in the supermarket is just an unpleasant obstacle because you're trying to get to the end of it as quickly as possible. There's only one example. But there are all kinds of activities that can become unconsciously are regarded as unpleasant obstacles on the way. Obstacles towards where you really want to be or what you really want to be doing, which is in some future moment. So you want to arrive more at the end of this particular activity than be engaged in this particular activity. Now, many people live like their whole life. Every. Almost every activity they do is of that kind in their daily life. Maybe when they're on vacation, if they're lucky, they're for short amounts of time. Perhaps they are free of that, but perhaps not even then. So this dysfunctional state greatly diminishes what we could call the quality of your life, the quality of the present moment. Because your life is the present moment. So instead of fully acknowledging the doing of this moment, you would rather be at the end of the doing of this now. What happens then as a result? Very often the result is what we call stress. That's what our stress arises. You are here, but you want to be there, either in space or time. You're here now, but you really want to be in the later, when this now is over, that's where you want to be, or you're here physically, but you'd rather want to be somewhere else. Physically, you're doing your shopping, but you'd rather be at home. But when you're at home, something else arises where you would rather be, or what you would rather be doing, because then you're preparing your dinner, but you would rather be already done with it. And finally we're able to relax. And when you're finally able to relax, some thoughts arise about what's going to happen tomorrow. Problematic things never, never really aligned with the present moment. These are normal ways of living, and they are not usually recognized as dysfunctional because everybody, almost everybody, lives like when you watch movies. That's how they all live, with some exceptions and exception. Being, of course, humans who are beginning to awaken or are awakening or awake whatever, you begin to live in a way that is more harmonious, more and more aligned with the isness of the present moment. And that is to not to resist the isness of the present moment, what arises in the present moment. So ultimately, since the present moment is all there ever is, since your entire life unfolds in and as the present moment. So therefore, when you resist the present moment, you are living in an antagonistic relationship with life. That is, no matter then what you achieve, if that is your conditioned mind pattern, you will never arrive at a place of real joy or happiness or inner peace, except when you are moving towards unconsciousness. After a few drinks, you might become more into the present moment, but you're moving towards sleep, you're moving, falling below, thinking. People are trying to get away from themselves because who they are is experienced as unpleasant because of that dysfunction. So people are trying to get away from themselves in all kinds of ways. Drugs and so on and sometimes dangerous activities could help you to get away from yourself temporarily. When you're climbing a rock wall, or even when you're surfing, perhaps, you can't be thinking about your problems and you won't be then. And you, you can't be in a state of resistance. You have to be fully there, otherwise you will not succeed in whatever activity it is. You have to be fully there. They have to be free of yourself, the resistant self, the egoic self, so that can temporarily free you too. But then you went, once the activity is over, you go back into your normal resistance state, and then you have to do it again. And then people then say, well, these people are addicted to the adrenaline rush they get when they're engaged in these activities, which is a physical, physical thing that happens in the body. But there's more to it than that. They are free of themselves. For that there's only the presence. There's no longer the person. The person cannot be there. The person ultimately survives the personal sense of self in the absence of awareness. When there's only the personal sense of self. That's the ego. And that cannot survive without resistance. It needs that.