How To Practice Presence On A Daily Basis | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

And so this is why we are here. And this is the meaning of retreat. It's a retreat from yourself in order to find what the Buddhists would call the no self, or what other teachings would call the deeper Self, or the Atman, or your Buddha nature, or the Christ within whatever term you want to use to point to it. And that's why we are here. So all the external things here are helpful. It's easier here to connect with the depths of who you are and realize the depth of who you are. Of course, when you leave here, then you get challenged again. It's not that you don't get challenged here too. And especially if you are still very much identified with the mind, you find many challenges wherever you go. This isn't right. Don't like that. He doesn't look very spiritual to me. Or the opposite. All these people are so much more spiritual than me. Do they know that I'm not spiritual? So the practice is to voluntarily, as much as possible, relinquish identification with the thinking mind and your usual self. And what very much helps with that is just bring just as much as you can. Don't walk around as a heavy personality and person, and no, walk around as a light, a field of conscious perception. And like a little child that goes and look at everything. In other words, presence. Presence practice. Here it's more easier than in your usual surroundings. Presence practice, present moment practice. There's a lot of nature here. I recommend taking walks in nature, looking at the trees, at the sky, there's a lake, the grass, flowers, many, many lovely things. Be as present as you can and alert. And as you walk around from one building to another, from here to there, really perceive that already is a liberation from the usual self because you're not thinking. You cannot really perceive your surroundings fully when your usual self is talking to you. And it's probably not talking about this present moment, it's talking about what you're going to encounter when you get back home or what happened last week. Or it's doubting that being here is actually a good thing. Or it's criticizing something that shouldn't really be here, but it's here you don't want to, because that's not a retreat. You haven't really retreated. You've retreated on an external level, but you have not used this opportunity to retreat from your usual self, your usual mind. So use the opportunity and retreat from the usual self, which is your usual mind. And the quickest way to that is alert presence. And you may notice, let's Say just you're walking from point A to point B somewhere on the campus here. And let's say you're walking on the way there from your room to the library. And you're walking, immersed in your usual self. Say it's a three minute walk. And then suddenly you wake up in the library. Perhaps you open a book that says be present. And then you walk back from the library and suddenly you go. Amazing shift. If your entire world has become the way in which you experience the world, or your reality has completely shifted into something different, you're suddenly a field of consciousness that is perceiving the multiplicity of life in the universe. In fact, it feels that you are a manifestation of this universe perceiving itself. And you see so much aliveness and beauty all around you. And other senses are part of that also. There's not just a visual. You listen, there's sounds. There may be birds, other sounds you breathe in the air you feel. You hear the sound of your steps on whatever it is, gravel. If there's a sound or you sense the softness of the grass and you look at the sky without labeling very much, you don't need to mentally call it what it is, what for? You know what it is without calling it what it is. You don't need to have a mental comment that says, oh, that's a lovely sky. I wonder if the weather is going to last. You don't need that. And this is the discovery that you don't need that. When you need it, you have it. But if you want to tell somebody the weather forecast, you have it, but you don't need it. You perceive more deeply by not labeling. And that is the retreat from the mind. And then it becomes a true retreat. So you walk from point A to point B, as in that sense of a sense of wonder. And then you sense there's not only then what you perceive through your senses, because after all, that is the surface reality. It's beautiful. But as you perceive the beautiful surface reality of multiplicity of life forms, you can also sense an underlying stillness or presence as yourself. I can sense it at this moment. At this moment, words come out of my mouth. But I can sense the place where these words originate. And they do not originate in my mind. My mind becomes an instrument for it. It formulates the words, but the words originate from a deeper place. And when you listen to these words, you can also listen to these words from that deeper place within yourself. And something within you responds. Not in words, but it's like a recognition of what it is that I'm talking about. And so you can, as I speak, from that deeper place of alert stillness. You can listen from that deeper place of alert stillness. And that, now that's a real retreat. Now it's become a retreat. So whether you are on a retreat depends, of course, on your state of consciousness. So use the opportunity of being here. And as much as possible, let go of the usual self, which includes your life situation that you've left behind temporarily. Everybody has one. You have a certain life situation that's to do with where you live, who you live with, the job you have, your financial situation, even your health situation. It's all to do with your life situation. But you don't want to carry, you don't want to be a walking life situation. Because then you have to juggle all these things in your mind to keep them going. What about this and what about that? And at least one area probably is problematic in your life. Whether it's your living situation, your home, whether it's your relationship situation or your marriage or whatever it is, or whether it's your financial situation or your job situation or your health situation. It's unlikely that there's not at least one that's quite problematic. And if for many of you it's more than one, there may be even some of you, if all these are problematic. But do you want to walk around as a problematic sense of self, not saying, I'm going to ignore all these problems and never take any more action for the rest of my life? No, it's not that. But when you don't need that, why be burdened by that? And right now there's nothing you can do about any of it. So why not step out, transcend your life situation? And I use those that term in the power of now. Instead of being immersed and carrying around with you that your life situation is a burden, a continuous burden, a burden, some sense of self instead of that, be the life you are life. You're not just a life situation. You are life. You are an expression of the one life that manifests as the universe. Underlying the universe. There is the oneness of life. You are that one life that was there before the Big Bang, if there was a Big Bang. You are the one life, the one out of which the whole universe came. And not only out of which the whole universe came, out of which the whole universe continuously comes, continuously brings forth life new forms. And you are that. And so isn't that a much more satisfying way of being in this world than a walking problematic life situation. You are life. So. And here on this retreat, it's the recognition that you are a manifestation of the universe, of the consciousness that underlies the universe. And you are that universe experiencing yourself or the universe experiencing itself. And you go, it's all so wonderful. 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. It.