This is a YouTube video titled "How to Cultivate Presence in Big and Small Life Events | Spirituality for Beginners - Eckhart Tolle" created in May 2023. The content features a monologue by Eckhart Tolle discussing spiritual teachings on overcoming and transcending obstacles, the importance of presence, acceptance, and consciousness in daily life challenges, illustrated with examples such as Demosthenes and Stephen Hawking. The talk emphasizes mindfulness and spiritual awakening through acceptance of suffering and difficulties.
This line is so low. I'm going to be here for at least another two hours. That's a thought. It's future. Not now. There's no two hours now. The body gains in strength because you made life difficult for your body. Don't go so far as to make life so difficult for your body that it collapses completely. That's another story. You find the middle way. The middle way in everything. So. But again, there was a famous orator in ancient Greece. What is it called? Demosthenes. I don't remember the name. He had a speech defect. He could not talk well as a young man. And in Greece, to be a great speaker was one of the most highly regarded things, to be an orator. And he. He wanted to go beyond his speech defect. And they say in order to get beyond it, he put little pebbles in his mouth and started delivering speeches to the ocean, the sea. And he was there with pebbles and was shouting and talking to the ocean, to the sea for several years. And in the end the speech defect disappeared and he became one of the greatest orators in ancient Greece. And again there was a demand for it. So if the obstacle hadn't been there, there was a philosopher, probably it was Nietzsche, who said, everything important happens in spite of. Everything important happens in spite of. Don't add anything in spite of something. What. In other words, something was holding it back. And then it had to. The energy was. So when you face tribulation in this life, then there's an opportunity for generating more consciousness. When you encounter life's difficulties, there's an opportunity for developing more consciousness. And as you rise in consciousness, the transcendent dimension of awakened consciousness comes in. You begin to transcend these very problems that before seemed unsurmountable. You transcend them or you live with them, and they are no longer that important, so you can transcend them internally. Let's say you have a body that is disabled in one way or another. And the problem then, as you awaken spiritually, sometimes it happens that the body gets healed, and at other times it happens that the transcendent consciousness arises and the disability of the body is no longer a source of suffering for you. But it was a source of suffering for probably for quite a long time, until a very deep surrender happened. And in this deep surrender, you transcended this source of suffering, and then you still have the same body, and yet you're no longer psychologically suffering because you have transcended so many things in this life. You can overcome an obstacle, or you can transcend an Obstacle. If you overcome an obstacle when external things, you do external things in order to remove the obstacle, to get beyond it. If that is not possible, then internally you transcend. So it no longer the obstacle, the so called obstacle is still there, but it doesn't matter anymore to you. It is no longer so. In fact, you may be grateful for it. I describe in I Believe in the New Earth. When I was a student, I learned something from observing the famous scientist Stephen Hawkins, who happened to be at the same college as me in England. And every time in lunchtime I would see him next to the table that I was at with friends. He was not famous at the time. It was a long time ago. He was in a wheelchair, unable to move his arms, already unable to put food in his mouth, unable to speak except make croaking sounds. Later he had a machine that he could use for communication. At that time he just could make croaking. He was already a professor and at first I didn't know who he was. I asked him, who is this person he was being fed by? His graduate students would feed him food and he would sit there and go, horrible fate. If you are unhappy, think of a fate like that. To be burdened with a body like that, I can't imagine anything worse. And then a great lesson was when I saw him once or twice, especially the first occasion I opened the door for him. He came in at the same time he came in with his wheelchair. I opened the door and I looked into his eyes and he looked up at me and I saw he was not suffering anymore. There wasn't a psychological suffering entity. There was just an acceptance. So although he may not have gone deep into spiritual awakening, there was an enhanced ability to use his mind. I believe he had some spiritual. He had some spiritual awakening, but he used his mind a lot. His mind was still active. If he had reacted against his condition, he would not have achieved anything. His ability to think creatively would have diminished. But through his acceptance he was in touch with that deep power out of which intelligence arises. And so he was free of. There was not a suffering personality there. He would have been totally justified in being very unhappy and miserable. So that again is an example of transcendence, transcending something that before was the seemingly impossible obstacle. I believe that the entire all this is contained in the story of even which can be appreciated even if you're not a Christian. Perhaps you can appreciate it more actually if you're not a Christian. There's a deep truth that is hidden in the image of Jesus. On the cross. It's an image that's very strange. I think if somebody from an outer planet, an alien from another planet came here and they saw that humans are worshipping a man nailed to a cross, they might think, what is that all about? And if you look more deeply, there is a teaching in there. Whether you regard it as a historical fact or a mythological, deep mythological truth, it's up to you. But there is a deep teaching there that the cross is a torture instrument. And this man, who I would regard perhaps the archetypal human, is suffering. He is nailed to the cross, he is in deep suffering. There's the torture instrument. The cross then leads to death and leads to death, and then is resurrection. And then the cross itself, you often see it without the suffering human. And it's a symbol of the divine. The torture instrument is also a symbol of the divine. And that is contained in the story of the torture instrument. And the symbol of the divine is the cross is both. There's a very deep truth embedded in there that perhaps humans would not have been able to understand if one had explained it conceptually. But they can see that this archetypal human surrenders and the suffering brings about the rebirth and the transcendent state. And so torture instrument and the symbol of the divine are merging to one. That's a very deep, very deep teaching. So when things happen in your life, you face it and you look at it and you become the alertness is required when you are faced with a difficult person or situation. You become alert so that you don't react out of the conditioned mind. Even little things when people get irritated. Airports these days. Airports these days are wonderful places for spiritual practice. There have always been places for spiritual practice, but much more so now because there's many. This is a small scale thing. But if you don't practice with small scale, you will not practice with big things. Relatively small things. Yes, your flight is cancelled again, Nobody can give you any information and the luggage is lost long ago. And there you are. You can either react out of the conditioned mind or can say, this is what is, that's what is. And if you have been irritated, you could use any situation being irritated or angry. I said I recommend this spiritual practice and you do it like this. How would I experience this situation if I didn't add any thought to it? Now you can't answer that unless you actually do it. So how would I experience this irritating moment? And these awful people who are working for the airline and they're completely uninterested in their job anymore. And so on and so on and so on. How would I experience this moment if I didn't add any thought to it while I'm just standing here in this line? And any thought would be, for example, well, this line is so low, I'm going to be here for at least another two hours. That's a thought. It's future, not now. There's no two hours now. How would I experience this moment if I didn't add any thought to it? Okay, let's try it. We might as well. Nothing else to do. So there you are. And here you are. Okay, I'm not adding any thought to it. I'm not. In other words, I'm not interpreting it either favorably or unfavorably. I'm not trying to convince myself this is really good. That's another thought. And it would be not really true in that here it just don't let any. And there you are. And you look around and here we come back to sensory perception. That's the first thing you notice is, oh, lights. There are lights. There's people everywhere. Or movement of people standing. But you don't even call it that. You just artificial lights, lamps. Add to your breathing of yours as I'm breathing, breathing, breathing. And if you become aware that you're breathing, it's part of this moment. When you don't add thought to it, you may suddenly become aware that you're actually breathing. And then when you become aware that you're breathing, you might also sense that there is an aliveness that pervades your entire body as you stand there. That.
