How to Stop Overthinking and Start Living | Eckhart Tolle

Thank you. Hello. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is very mind dominated. And it's tough. There seems to be two forces in my mind that build up energy and it's very strong and it keeps me from getting in touch with my true self into creating more space and cultivating that space. One of them is that it's not that interesting. I'd rather go along with interesting thoughts and do interesting activities. And also I have this fear that if I don't analyze and constantly think about like solutions and things in my life, that everything's going to fall apart. So it's hard. Those two forces that build, especially where I live, it makes it even increases it more.

So the energy field there is kind of nervous.

Yes. Actually I work in a casino too.

That's a wonderful challenge to stay conscious there.

Yes, it is. Lots of discipline.

That's your spiritual practice, right? I've been there. I've walked through some of the casinos in amazement. And it's quite a place that seems to come out of some kind of dream when you walk around Las Vegas. But it's actually quite interesting when the mind doesn't label it. It's actually quite amazing. Wow. All these different. All these strange life forms and what they have created. It's quite amazing. There's an intense aliveness there. Would I want to live there? I don't know. There have been some spiritual teachers who moved there. I know of at least two. I think it was Andrew Harvey who was spiritual teacher, moved to Las Vegas. And there was a spiritual teacher called Vernon Howard who lived near Las Vegas, maybe one or two others. Why they moved there, I'm not sure. Perhaps maybe they loved it or perhaps to pay less tax, perhaps, who knows? Well, the challenge of course is to stay present and have stillness inside you. What you mentioned. Now you need to think about your. Your life problems or your life. This is a very, very common assumption, unconscious assumption in humans that if I don't think about my problems, my life is going to fall apart. I have to think about my life and what's going to happen in Transkevonza. Of course nothing is going to fall apart if you stop thinking. Things will get better if you stop thinking with the exception of thought, focused thinking in case there's a specific problem that needs to be addressed. Then focused thinking and then step even there, stepping back into stillness. So it's a wonderful thing if you're able to be present and still in Las Vegas, then of course you're a master. Many people are able to be present and still out in nature, beautiful forest or the seashore or on top of a mountain, and you watch the sunrise.

Wow.

Very still. So still. Let's move here, says the mind. Let's move here where it's so still. And then wherever it is. And if you do move there for a while, it'll be wonderful. Oh, it's so still. And then, of course, the mind becomes restless. After a while, there's nothing happening, and you're not challenged by anything anymore. If you have a meditation practice, then you can, of course, convince yourself that you have finally achieved. And you meditate five hours a day. And let's say somehow food is brought to you. As I remember a monk I knew, Buddhist monk, telling me that story that he meditated in a hut up a mountain in Thailand for half a year, and he attained complete peacefulness, peace, nirvana, he thought. And every day somebody would bring him a bowl of food. Nothing to worry about, nothing to do, just be present and still. The only challenge were mosquitoes. He said, bzz. But he learned to deal with that. In other words, to just completely accept and not mentally label it and just being used by them for food. So he came with that. That was one challenge. Then he had to go back into the city to renew his visa because he was in Thailand and he was a Westerner. And at the visa office, they kept him waiting for one hour, two hours, and then he was in the wrong lineup for two hours. And then he had to start lining up somewhere else. And when he finally got to the window, the man said, oh, no, you haven't filled this out. You do that again. And he started Raoul shouting. So that was. He then suddenly realized he had not attained nirvana. So you're much better off in Las Vegas. The thing is to use whatever environment you are in as part of their spiritual practice, which does not mean that you have to be stuck. It may be that a deep sense of that you need to remove yourself suddenly comes to you, and then you go somewhere else that could happen.

Because it seems like it's more of a challenge there.

Yes, yes. So it's probably in many ways a better place to practice than a monastery.

I never thought of it that way.

And worrying about your life or your problems is a very common belief that that is necessary to hold things together, but it's not. You have to recognize the futility of worrying and realize your life is already together. You're breathing, you're eating. When you need food, you sleep. When you sleep, you go to work. You do what you do.

You.

You look around, contemplate. Look at the sky, look away. NASA is very much a man made or human made environment. Everything is kind of artificial, not to say fake. So everything is fake. That's fine.

It's not everybody that much I'm doing.

But there are trees. There are some trees in there. There is the sky, there's the light, there's the desert. You can easily get out. And you're out in the. In the stillness. So you can take advantage of that when you need to. And so be happy with where you are and accept where you are. And then while you do what you do in the casino, what do you do there?

I'm a dealer at nighttime. With the trunks. Yeah, yeah.

Place your bets. And then. Yeah. And then you can observe human nature there around you.

Definitely, yes. Every facet.

You observe human nature in its unconscious state mostly, but that's fine. That's where they're at. You can be the presence for them.

Yeah. It's hard not to judge them.

Oh, yes. That's your practice, not to judge. Because they are expressions of life, of aliveness in their form. They're beautiful too.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you so much.