How to Adapt to the Present Moment | Eckhart Tolle Reads Thomas à Kempis

When wait for the next challenge. Do you completely. Does it completely draw you out of yourself? Now, let's look at a little bit from a different chapter. You can see that it doesn't really matter where you open the book. That's it. Ideal for meditative reading. He that knoweth how to walk interiorly and to make but little account of things exteriorly, does not look for places nor wait for seasons to perform exercises of devotion. The man of interior life soon recollects himself because he never wholly poures forth himself upon exterior things. Exterior labor is no prejudice to him, nor any employment necessary for the time. But as things happen, so he accommodates himself to them. Let's look at those two sentences. Very important. The man, the past, the human being of interior life soon recollects himself because he never wholly pours himself forth upon exterior things. Lovely way of putting it. The interior man. Again, we had that before. It means it points to the. Who you are at the level of awareness, the unconditioned being, the timeless in you, the essence of who you are. The interior being soon recollects himself. Never really. You never. The interior man never completely loses himself in the external. He or she soon recollects himself because he never wholly. I'll just put it into slightly more modern English. He never wholly force himself upon exterior things. To pour yourself into exterior things, to completely lose yourself in exterior things. You observe it all the time before you see it in yourself. Look at other humans around you, how they lose themselves. Or that the slightest challenge comes in the form of an unexpected setback, something going wrong here or there, some difficult situation, a person not. Not doing what I expect them to do, whatever it is. How quickly people pour themselves into exterior things. And so this thing suddenly becomes of absolute importance. That's what it means, pouring yourself out into things which ultimately, of course, you pour yourself into your thoughts. Every thought that arises takes complete possession of you. You pour all your attention into that. So you continuously lost a continuous loss. Amazing. You can see it in others. Just wait. People around you, how. What they do when challenges come. Okay, you've done that now. You've recognized in others. The next step is, oh, can you recognize in yourself? Do you do that also wait for the next challenge? Do you completely. Does it completely draw you out of yourself? And when it does, don't beat yourself up. But even just noticing that that's what's happening is a huge gain in consciousness. So you don't beat yourself up and say, oh, I can't do it. No, just notice it. Any pattern you notice in yourself means there is some consciousness. There is awareness there. It's when you don't know it that you're completely trapped in it. And if you don't know it, there's not much you can do. Except after the challenge has passed, perhaps you can look back and say, oh, I completely lost it there again. So awareness comes after the challenge, which is even. Which is still better than no awareness at all. Because if there's no awareness at all, even the most unconscious reaction you will justify afterwards to yourself and to others. The ego is good at finding excuses and justifications. The most absurd justifications will do. It's an automatic defense mechanism of the ego. So if you're very unconscious, of course you wouldn't even be listening to this. I'm not talking to people who are totally unconscious because they're not listening. They can't. There's no space in them to listen to this. Without a little bit of space, at least you can't listen to this. It would be dreadful. Completely meaningless or threatening. It.