How Do You Bring Presence into Everyday Life? | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

To bring in little moments of presence into a busy day. Nobody is so busy that they cannot have little moments of presence. And if you. I don't know if you have meetings or frequently or not. It's always good to start a meeting with a moment of presence. You can introduce that. You can explain to the people who work with you that it's important. Don't need more than half a minute to start with. Later on, you can build it up to one minute. People are not used to it, may feel a little bit uncomfortable. That's presence. And whenever you are having discussions, because probably part of your work is to discuss things, how things, what do we do now? You can bring in presence by becoming aware of the background of alertness when you listen to others. Because then you're accessing also a more creative part of your mind. Well, it's not your mind. It's deeper than your mind. You're accessing the deeper intelligence, and you'll come up with probably better answers and solutions. So you bring stillness into a discussion. Not by saying to anybody, telling anybody that you're doing it. You don't need that. You just become aware of, let's put it like this, you become aware of your own alertness as you listen. There's an alert presence through which you're listening that is very intelligent. You're not preparing mentally anything and not immediately judging what a person is saying. You give yourself a space, and there's a space of alertness. Sometimes people are too quick to react to what somebody else is saying, and they immediately say, I don't think that's going to work, or oh, yeah, that's a great idea. But they haven't really given it any space. So to become spacious in some areas of your work, you may not be able to sustain it all the time. But one area is when you are communicating with people. Normally, that would draw you completely into the mind and into thought. So you're accessing the higher intelligence that is within you, the deeper intelligence. And then there are other things that you do. As you know, I often recommend when you get into your car, maybe you do that already. You just mentioned something about the car. When you close the door of your car, give yourself 30 seconds to just be present, unless it's an emergency. Then you should go to the hospital or wherever you're going. So give yourself 30 seconds. But it has to be done in the right way. You're not saying, okay. Eckhart says 30 seconds, and then you say, okay, here we go. You're just straining to get out of the 30 seconds. So it has to be focused on your breath, for example. It helps all the inner body, the awareness of the inner body and practice the being. So you bring a little bit of being into the doing. At some point later, the two will merge completely. And then there are other moments when you can probably things that you do frequently every day there you can bring in awareness so that it's not a means to an end and perhaps create a little gap. So have a number of gaps during the day. During a busy day, you could say, for example, whenever you wash your hands in the bathroom, that can be an absolute presence. Come to your senses, feel the water, smell the soap. And that can be present, moment, whatever. You can probably make a list of things that you do every day. If there's a staircase somewhere in your building, then walking up and down the stairs can be a wonderful opportunity for being present at every step. So it's not a means to an end anymore. So I would suggest make a list of things that you do every day or very often and use these to bring in spaces. So you have these very brief practices of bringing in spaces. And then even while you're engaged in the doing there too, you can see if you can, as we mentioned, the discussions that you have, sense the presence that you are while you're listening, be alert that you're actually then much more alert than you were in a normal state. It increases your intelligence. And it's an intelligence that's deeper than the IQ intelligence. That something that I find in my life that arises because I also practice that, although I don't have discussions that often, but sometimes we meet and this alert listening out of that, what I find often comes is questions. You ask questions. One of the most creative ways of participating in a discussion group is to ask questions. Other people when they say something, the light of your awareness shines on it. Then a question arises, another question. This is in the creative process of finding solutions and answers, this is often overlooked, especially when you're very much identified with your mind, then the mind has certain preconceived notions and opinions and positions, and it'll just repeat those. So when somebody comes forward with an idea that's totally new, if you're very much identified with your mind, it could happen that you say, oh no, no, that's not going to work. But with this, you develop the ability to listen. And to the true listening means you are alert. And still that's true listening. It's not. The auditory aspect is a very small one. You're alert and still, and you may find that you may not have the answers, but you begin to ask questions. And then the other person who perhaps brought forward an idea is. Is then forced to reply. And it may drive him or her deeper to see, where can we go with this? So one of the most creative things and the very creative people in that kind of environment, they are the ones who ask the most questions. This is how the entire philosophy of Socrates developed. Because, you know, it's called the Socratic method, which is the somebody comes and asks Socrates a question, but he has other. He has questions to him. And so he goes from one question to another and another. When you read Plato's account of Socrates, I don't think Plato completely understood what Socrates was doing. Plato thought that he already knew the answer. But I don't think that's the case because Socrates said, I'm the only one who knows that he knows nothing. Which means he was comfortable with the state of not knowing that I mentioned earlier. And out of that state of not knowing, often questions arise. And in this question, then the answers suddenly come. It's a joint endeavor. The answer may not even necessarily come through you, but you ask the right questions and then the group suddenly comes up with an answer. And that is also spiritual practice. And it can be totally incorporated into what you're doing. So both setting aside little spaces when you become present during the day, and also then in many areas, maybe the hardest is on the being on the computer screen to be present there. But there you could practice as much as possible, have a little reminder next to the laptop, whatever it is, and have a little reminder to, for example, to be in your body, to have inner body awareness. Because computer draws your attention, out you go. It actually depletes you. If you, after a few hours, it depletes your energy, it flows out, it absorbs, because all your focus is on there. And so it's doubly important to. You may not sustain it continuously, but have a little reminder. So even while you are writing something or reading something, and this is something that you may not succeed immediately in this practice, but it is possible to be aware of your body, have some background awareness in the energy field of the inner body. And then you sit and you can still deal with whatever it is you're dealing with or because that is really to be totally present, affects the whole body. When you're present, you're present with your whole body. So that's something to do. Another thing where you lose energy. I notice it when you go into a place where this continuous stimulus for an exhibition hall or a big department store. And then you kind of. You look. And then after half an hour, you're already depleted. So. And then when you come home, then there's nothing wrong with a glass of wine and Netflix, but at least you will find you have not completely spent the whole day in complete unawareness. It.