Eckhart Tolle explains how your inner voice creates suffering by pulling you away from the present moment. He shows how animals like ducks naturally let go of the past, while humans stay trapped in it, and describes how presence briefly returns during meals, sex, or substances.
For many humans, the voice in the head is a daily torture. Daily torture because it creates misery in people's lives. It creates an enormous amount of unhappiness because it has things to say about you that you are not good enough. You should have done that. You should do that. It complains. If your attention is fully in the present moment, then you are awake spiritually. But what does it mean to have your attention fully in the present moment? The normal way of being in the present moment is not to be fully there. You are there physically, but your mind is somewhere else. Your mind is either in the past or in the future. For many people, the present moment exists only as a peripheral phenomenon in their lives. They know there's something there, that's the present moment. But the underlying belief is there's something much more important that I need to be concerned about. And that's not the present moment. But what I need to be concerned about is how to get from here to there. Because there is more important than here always. That's a normal way of being in the world. It's unconscious. People don't know. Nobody actually says there is more important than here. But they live as if always the next moment, the there in time, it could also be the there spatially, they live. Most humans still, especially those who are not awakening yet, as always, as if they needed to get away from this moment. Brief interludes when you're okay in the present moment. Brief interludes, like sensory pleasure. Can you enjoy a meal? It's good to be present, but you can't do it for too long. Then you get ill. Another thing, of course, that takes you into the present. Having sex also, of course, takes you into the present moment. So. But that doesn't last that long either. And then, of course, another thing that takes you into the present moment is certain substances that you can take. You can smoke something, and that takes you into the present moment. But there's something. I'll talk a bit more about that in a second. This is. You can drink also. You can have a stiff drink, as they say. And what happens then? The voice in your head, especially the smoke, the voice in your head is not as frantic anymore. It doesn't. Because, as you probably know, people have a voice in their head that talks all the time. And I don't mean the people who are mentally ill who actually hear a booming voice that talks to them. But there's always something going on that comments on your life and has things to say. And that's the normal, compulsive, involuntary Thought processes that go through your head all the time and that it tells you stuff, it has a commentary, it's a running commentary on your life. And that's thinking. It's fine. Thinking is an incredibly wonderful evolutionary step forward. It was an amazing development, the ability to think. But over time, over millennia, a considerable downside developed of thinking. A great evolutionary attainment. But for everything, there's a price to pay. So a great evolutionary attainment. It enabled humans to do the most incredible things, to create cultures and philosophy and science and so on. But thinking gradually took over their lives more and more. Some anthropologists have put forward the theory that when thinking first started happening in humans, of course it coincided with words, where people started to use language. So the words existed first. They existed in the head as thought, and they existed spoken as sounds. So as they started to use language, then thinking grew, developed. And some anthropologists have put forward the theory that they have some evidence for it. I don't remember what the evidence is that when humans first started to think, they believed that gods were talking to them in their head. Because it was so such a new thing that suddenly there was a voice, that there was words forming in their minds. And they had. Then suddenly they knew who they were. They had. Suddenly they had names, Things had names. They had names. Who are you? Me? John, You. Oh. And you begin to believe that there's some ultimate reality in the sound that you create for yourself. And that was the beginning of gradually, very gradually becoming identified with the voice in the head. And that took thousands and thousands of years. And now we've reached a stage where or almost every human is identified with the narrative, the story in their head. It talks to them sometimes in the first person, I sometimes in the second person, which means you talk to yourself. Why can't you get anything right? Why did you do that? Why? You can have a monologue, you can have a dialogue, even be a third person. And so now you might remember that from the time when you were completely identified with, you're not anymore, because that's why you're here. If you were 100% identified with the voice in your head, the compulsive thinking, you would not have come here. There would be no reason to come here, because what I'm talking about would be totally and utterly incomprehensible to you. So the fact that you are here means there is something has arisen in you that is deeper than thought, that the new consciousness, presence, a new dimension of consciousness there. For many humans, it's not there yet. And for many humans, the voice in the head is a daily torture. Daily torture. Because it creates misery in people's lives. It creates an enormous amount of unhappiness because it has things to say about you that you are not good enough. You should have done that, you should do that. It complains about yourself, it complains about others, it complains about situations you are in. It tends to dwell on negative things rather than positive things. Because negative things, it can really get in there and become active with good things. It's harder. I can think for hours about yesterday when somebody was offended me. And after it's happened, I start thinking, I should have said that. Why didn't I say that? Next time I meet this person, this is what I'm to say. How dare he not respect me? I just. I don't. The people like that shouldn't be allowed to exist. Why does it. This is just. You can go on for hours thinking about and you feel more and more angry. And this is only one relatively insignificant incident. Something that happened yesterday. But the mind, even there, can get in there and amplify that. Rather, instead of saying, okay, it's finished, gone, just be present. It disappears immediately. The animals don't do that because they cannot keep alive things mentally in their head. So I described in the Power of Now. I was watching, I was writing the Power of Now. And I would go every day for a walk in the park and I saw two ducks getting into a fight. And they get quite angry, it seems, when they are fighting. And then I was surprised. That was the teaching of the ducks. They were teaching me the next. Something to add to the next chapter in the book. They got into fight, and immediately, when the fight only lasted 30 seconds or less, and suddenly it was over. And they swam off in opposite directions. And both ducks, and they always do that. They kind of get up on the surface of the water, they almost stand up, and they flap their wings violently. And when they've done that, nothing ever happened. They swing on. There's no mind that keeps alive what happened just now. And they have dissipated the energy of it. A great teaching. But humans do the opposite. Sa.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
