How to Make a Big Decision Consciously? | Q&A Eckhart Tolle

So I have what I think is the coolest story to tell you about how your work is manifesting in Australia.

Oh yes.

And then I have a question. Okay, so the story is, in this crazy country of ours, we have a sport called the National Rugby League. Are there any fans here? See two, we're mutually exclusive, five, 10. And the teams are made up of. There are a whole bunch of teams with ferocious names. So there's the Tigers, the Eels, the Bulldogs, Warriors. Like they're ferocious, right. But the one team that I had the privilege of working with and introducing your work to this season is a team that has been on a losing streak for 43 years. And they are the Bunnies. They're rabbits, so they're called the Rabbitoes. And by some series of coincidences, you know how it works, Something just happens, this happens and this happens and this happens. And you end up working with 35, 110 kilo guys, 6 foot 2, muscles on muscles, tattoos, piercings, crazy. Like just loveliest, loveliest big athletes. And you've got them sitting there in a semicircle starting to watch their thoughts. And at the end of the first session, one of the guys comes up to me and says, I what is all this stuff? I don't have any thoughts. What are you talking about? And I'm like, okay, just keep showing up, it's going to be fine. Just see what happens. End of session three, the same guy comes up and goes, I saw my thoughts, I saw my thoughts. I'm like, woo hoo. And over the course of the season, what was very interesting was we were teaching them everything. It was like Eckhart distilled four football players. And it was about being present. And it was about forget that you just missed a tackle, that you just let a try in, that the ref has just done too bad ref calls. That's the sort of stuff that you just don't want in a game. That's the stuff that you resist and you say that shouldn't have happened and you start beating yourself up and you've got, you can lose 10 minutes out of an 80 minute game by going into that narrative. And so what they learned was I have to drop the story now and I have to get back and play the best game that I can. And I know how to play this game if I stop thinking. So that's what they did. And these guys aren't renowned for a lot of these skills. They're not renowned for reading a lot. One of them, I love them, don't get me wrong. I love them. One of them was reading Nelson Mandela's Long road to freedom. And then another guy came up to me at the end of the session and said, this is sounding really familiar. I'm reading a book by this guy called Eckhart Tolle and I'm like, what? Really? So it just is amazing how it's showing up in the world and where in Australia and that they happened to win after 43 years a month ago.

Very good. Wonderful. Thank you.

So I think you could personally take credit for the rabidos breaking the 43 year drought.

Okay, I'll have to find out more about them.

Absolutely. And then my question, the phone started ringing a little bit. After a little bit, the word got out that we'd worked with the Rabbitoes. And the question is, we've now been approached by a company and my business partner said to me, think of the company that you would never, ever, ever want to work for. And I ran through, okay, maybe Tony Abbott's office or the nuclear industry. And then he said, no, it's a tobacco company. I could just see my narrative going over my dead body. Are we going to work with the tobacco industry? They are peddling misery. And then on the other hand, I'm like, well, I've got a mortgage to pay. And so I posed the question to you, Eckhart, this awakening, am I just meant to go with the flow and just show up and see what happens, or am I actually needing to choose consciously so I don't enable dysfunctional systems on the planet?

What work are you supposed to do with them?

It's the same work. It's about helping them deal with stress. And we call it mind training because that's what works in the corporate sector. That's what gets us in the door about helping them perform better under pressure and under stress. So they will probably sell more cigarettes if we do our job well.

Or they may leave the company.

Exactly.

Only you, of course, can know whether this is the right thing for you to do or not. But helping human beings to become more conscious must be a good thing no matter where they are. And even if the initial, the reason why they want you is to become more efficient at what they do, they may not realize that you will take them beyond that. So sometimes people take up meditation. Companies might send their employees to meditate so that they can perform better, but often it changes the people and sometimes they don't want to perform better anymore and they leave the company. So only you can. I never actually or very rarely tell people what to do except our young man a while ago. So only you can know whether that feels right. But one consideration, I'll just repeat what I said is that helping any humans to become more conscious cannot be bad. And if they think you are there to help them become more efficient at what they do, that's at least that brings them to you. So let me know what you decide and who knows what happens to that company when you have finished with them. So it'll be interesting to see. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I just want to finish by saying the two things I most love about you are your facial expressions and that you laugh at your own jokes. Your jokes are funny, but it's even funnier that you like your jokes. It's just so beautiful. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation.