How to Stop Your Mind from Racing | Eckhart Tolle

To relinquish waiting can be a wonderful thing. Just as an experiment. So let's. Just as an experiment, let's assume that the next moment is not going to be more important than this one. And let's assume that this moment is the most important moment. Because obviously it's the only moment there ever is. So it must be the most important. It's always now. The mind, the thinking mind, makes something else more important. It's usually the next moment or the one after or after. Whether the next moment means a minute from now when Eckhart is finally going to say something meaningful. Or the next moment could be tonight, it's going to happen tomorrow, the rest of my life. That's a big next moment. So you become present as you relinquish, give up waiting. But that may have to begin with yourself noticing that you are actually still waiting. You may be waiting for your ability to give up waiting. I'm working on it, on giving up waiting. Just give me some more time. So waiting is a state of consciousness, the normal state of consciousness. And as you give up waiting to become present, that's an enormous shift in consciousness. The main characteristic of being present is the thinking mind slows down or dissipates completely or recedes. Thinking is replaced with awareness. Before, they were thinking one thought after another, always to do with future and past and more future. Future for most people is more important. But other people carry so much past in their. In their mind that the past is more important than the future. That happens also a terrible burden to carry. If the past to you obscures the present, just as the future can obscure the present. For some people, the past has such a heaviness to it that it obscures the present. And whatever they experience, they experience through the heavy, dense veil of the past in there that they carry in their mental emotional field that makes up their identity. That's me. So as you become present, awareness comes to the forefront. Awareness is conscious without thought or very little thought. Occasional fragments, like you have a blue sky, and occasionally you say little, little clouds floating by. But you allow the clouds, the thoughts to flow, to float past instead of becoming interested. When you practice presence, instead of becoming interested in the little cloud thought that arises. And if you become interested and you think that's more important than being present, then the little thought, the little cloud, suddenly becomes a big cloud. It grows because you give it your conscious attention. You give your conscious attention to the thought. And then where before there was a little cloud that could have just passed by, now you. You Energize it with your attention. And it becomes a huge, big, very often a dark cloud. And then other clouds appear that are attracted by it. And before you know it, where before there was a clear blue sky, there's now a heavy layer of clouds and you can't even see the sky anymore. You become immersed again in mental noise. So we are here right now to practice this. We are not here to figure out mentally, conceptually, what it is that I'm talking about. Please don't try to understand what it is that I'm talking about. You can't understand it because it's non conceptual and it's too simple to even try to understand. There's nothing there to understand. It's not complex. Being present is not complex. It's simplicity itself. So you don't understand it, but you can know it in your own realization. Then, while I'm talking, you know what it is that I'm talking about. Because you are realizing it in this very moment. And as a little help, become very alert, very conscious of the gaps between the words as I'm speaking now. The silent spaces. Be aware of the silent spaces. Why is that important? Every time you are aware of a silent space, your mind becomes still and silent. Sa.