Inner-Body Awareness Practice with Eckhart Tolle

Just a quick reminder of very easy access to the present moment dimension. Easy access is sensory perception, a large sensory perception.

Breathing.

Inner body awareness. Inner body, I sometimes call it a portal into presence. And of course.

Breathing and inner body.

Awareness are closely related almost they merge into one.

As you may know. I often recommend to start with the hands for people who have never experienced inner body awareness. And you can do that with people that you know who are not, especially not open to anything else that's so.

Called to do with so called consciousness, spiritual, whatever.

Can you feel your hands?

Oh, that's not too spiritual.

Nobody should be object to that and say I'm not into that spiritual stuff. Well, your hands, just your hands and.

That works with people who don't otherwise.

Have no idea what it is that you're talking about.

You ask them to close their eyes.

Are your hands still there?

Yes.

How do you know you're not touching anything?

Well, I can feel them.

It might take a while before they.

Can because they may be so much stuck in their head that they can't.

Get their attention down there. And then at some point they might.

Say children can probably do it fairly.

Quickly, can feel them. Oh well, if you can feel your.

Hands, then perhaps you can feel your feet too.

Yeah.

Okay, well then, then gradually the rest of the body.

That's one entry point. Another one is you start with breathing. As you know, I don't give many techniques. This is the closest we are getting to technique. You start with breathing, conscious breathing. Now you may know that apart from that, I sometimes recommend in your daily.

Life.

To occasionally take a conscious breath so that you break the incessant stream of thinking, if only for 5 seconds. And 2 conscious breaths. Even better. But that's not where I'm going right now. This is now entering the inner body awareness, starting with the breath rather than starting with your hands.

And you breathe consciously without overdoing it.

It'll be a little deeper than your normal breath. And the quickest way is to do abdominal breathing. So as you breathe in, you feel that the air is going all the way into your abdomen. It isn't really, but because I don't think when you breathe in, the air will actually go into the abdomen. But what goes into the abdomen is your conscious attention because your conscious attention is following the breath. And as it goes, when it is in the abdomen it rises slightly because now the abdomen is full of air. Not really, but that's what it feels like. Hopefully it's not full of air. It feels like that, but it's Actually, an energy suddenly is there that you didn't notice before because your attention is moved there. So you write, so to speak. Your attention rides on your breath as you breathe in. And then as when it's in the abdomen, it's good to. When you feel it's full, then you hold it just for a few seconds. It could be three seconds, it could.

Be up to five.

Before you start breathing out again. When you reach the end of the out breath, a short cessation before you start breathing in again. That's also a very calm point.

The end of the out breath is basically, you've died.

It's a miniature, miniature death. Every out breath is a miniature death. And then the start of the in breath, you're born again and you grow up, reach maturity, belly is full, and then you start declining again. So the end of the out breath is also just a short portion, just.

To notice the end of the out breath.

There's a still point when the in breath hasn't started yet. And then again you breathe in.

Hold it and out.

Now the next thing is, while you hold it in the abdomen, you can feel the energy spreading from there into other parts of the body.

There's an energetic point. I believe in Japanese and sometimes used.

In Zen, it's called hara.

Which must.

Be where the word hara kiri comes from.

But we're not going there.

Hara is the belly. And so if you feel that, then from there it's easy to feel the energy spreading into your legs and into the rest of your body. So this is the energetic point. And so a few times, a few abdominal breaths, and you are in the body and out of your mind. In a good sense, you're out of your mind. Thank you.

I am.

I take it as a compliment.

And particularly when you're being plagued by thoughts that are futile, perhaps even destructive, negative, unhappiness inducing. And you realize that, that these thoughts are futile, destructive and unhappiness inducing. So they fulfill no purpose whatsoever, which applies to most thoughts that occur to you. When you're lying in bed between midnight and six or seven in the morning and you wake up and one could.

Say almost any thought that happens to.

Them is futile, unless you have a.

Wonderful, incredible insight suddenly, which happens on rare occasions too, particularly if you go into the first.

But mostly people are plagued by thoughts in their mind. First of all, you need to know, and that's already. You need that minimum of awareness to know that you don't want those thoughts. If you don't know that, you don't want those thoughts. That means you're so identified with the.

Thoughts that you aren't even there.

So spiritually speaking, you are asleep or unconscious as we call it. So when you are so completely identified that your thoughts become your reality and there's nothing else, your thoughts become your reality, then you are not there. Your thoughts occupy the place where you should be. And this is like a state of being possessed by mental formations. Like little gremlins, they live in you. So you need a minimum of awareness to know that these thoughts are useless and that you don't want them. But you can't push against them because by pushing against them or try to suppress them, you you actually would strengthen them. And you might even create another set of thoughts. Their mind creates another set of thoughts.

That fights the set of thoughts that you don't want. And all that doesn't work very well.

Also, to eliminate thoughts through willpower is also not a good idea because it doesn't work except work for short period.

Of time.

By holding your breath. Let's say you have a strong yang energy in your body. I'm going to make it and I'm going to stop thinking now it's happening, it's happening. I'm not thinking. But at some point you have to let go again.

And that's like.

You take the lid off the pressure cooker and then you think even more than before. And then you have to do it again. And it will damage your body if.

You do it too often. So that doesn't work.

So instead of fighting, the swords just take your attention away from the thoughts. But then initially you need to put your attention somewhere else and that is the inner body.

So you don't fight the thoughts.

You recognize them as not useful, that.

You don't want them, then you simply remove attention. You don't feed them with your attention, with your consciousness.

So you break this cycle of compulsive. Not only compulsive, but actually addictive thinking.

One of the greatest addictions for most humans probably on the planet is the addiction to overthinking, excessive thinking, unhappiness inducing thinking. And you won't believe, or maybe you.

Do, how many millions make their lives miserable by unnecessary, addictive and destructive, deeply negative thinking. Millions. It's an enormous amount of unconsciousness is generated. Not only people do it to themselves.

It'S also when you are deeply identified.

With obsessive and negative thinking. It also of course influences the way.

In which you act.

So if habitually.

The thoughts that go.

Through your head are destructive and you.

Have enemies up there that you're fighting, not realizing that your greatest enemy lives between your two ears. So you have enemies that you're fighting, and then you get actual enemies in life.

So you externalize this and this becomes.

The world that you create.

And this becomes a way, through the.

Screen of thinking, you experience so called reality. That becomes your reality. And it's not a pleasant reality.

And if, let's now imagine millions of.

People living in such an unconscious state, then they create their collective reality.

A lot of that is on the.

World news every night and on the Internet.

So once you know you don't want.

Them, then you have a choice.

This is where freedom comes in.

One could say you have a choice. Now.

Without awareness, you have no choice. You are on automatic, you run on.

Auto, you are pre programmed. And what is running through your mind.

Is the programming, which is the conditioning.

Of your mind since childhood, created by your environment, your personal environment and your cultural environment. So just a program.

Then you are a walking program. And you have no choice because you're so identified with the program, you are asleep. So as you become aware, the element.

Of choice comes in.

And this is an interesting topic of.

Free will of sometimes people ask philosophical questions.

Is there such a thing as free will?

Well, yes and no. We can see that when you are.

Totally conditioned, your mind is totally programmed and conditioned. There's no free will.

Then it seems that there is free will because you can make choices.

But you don't exist as an independent autonomous entity.

You just seem to. You're connected to the totality of consciousness. So when it seems to you that.

You are making choices for the first.

Time, you're making intelligent choices.

When awareness comes in, it's good to.

Believe that you are making the choice.

But if you look more deeply, the consciousness moves through you and is making the choice.

And you realize that you are an inseparable part of it.

So even there it seems to be.

Free will, especially compared to what was before. But even that free will would only.

Make sense if you are a totally.

Autonomous entity, totally separate from the rest of the world and other people and the universal consciousness. But that's not the case. So you're connected to the totality. And so the universal consciousness, really, when.

You begin to awaken, then there's an intelligence that is greater than the accumulated knowledge of the mind, which is borrowed. It also uses universal intelligence, but it becomes trapped and limited. It forms an illusory entity.

So free choice.

You do feel that for the first time you have free choice. In ultimate terms, you don't. But that doesn't.

You don't have to worry about that. So you have free choice for the first time.

And you can choose to.

You can become responsible for your state of consciousness.

And then, of course, you forget again. Then something happens.

You lose yourself again in the conditioning of the mind. And then you notice again.

The waking up is part of the.

Awakening process that you are going through.

Is that it's a process because you're not continuously at the same level of presence.

Sometimes you're very present, perhaps here, hopefully, I believe you are, can feel the.

Energy, the collective energy field here is.

An energy field of presence.

You may not be this present when you leave here and you arrive at the airport or whatever you do, or you arrive home and you're faced with your daily life again. All kinds of demands come up again. And you lose yourself in all the things that you have to do. And really, it means you lose yourself in your mind. And then suddenly you notice this has been happening. And then you wake up again and you take a conscious breath. And you don't believe your mind when it says, I don't have time for conscious breath. There's too much to do here. Now, conscious breath is five or six seconds. So it must be a lie if he says, unless you're in absolute emergency. Everybody has time for one conscious breath. And almost everybody has time for two conscious breaths, even the busiest person. And so conscious breath is just. If it's abdominal, then immediately it puts.

You in touch with the energy field of the inner body.

And short cessation as you breathe out, hold it for a few seconds.

Out.

And it's so lovely that you might even want to take a third conscious breath. You feel alive, the body is alive. But it's not just what you feel. It's not just the physical body. It's an energy field behind the physical body. And for a moment, you have transcended the person. The person, the personality, the ego, whatever you want to call it. For a moment, something has opened up within you. And then, okay, what's the next thing they have to do? This is being and doing. But some of this for a little while remains with you, some of the attention. Even if you start doing again, especially if you do this several, frequently during the day, two or three conscious breaths. As you see, I started with one. Now I'm saying two or three. Two or three conscious breaths many times during the day makes an enormous difference to your life. And gradually you learn not to completely lose yourself in the activities Whatever you do in your doing so that you can be, there is still a point of awareness, a point of stillness, a point of rest, a point of power within you that is not.

Disturbed by anything that happens out there.

And so you can still do things.

And then you do them by the.

Way you do them more intelligently then because this connects you to universal intelligence. It's also the seed of the source of creativity. When you use your mind to solve a problem and you think about it, the possibilities, this, that you might talk about it to somebody, or you do it by yourself and you think this is. And then you can't find a solution. Then is the time to take 2, 3, 4.

I've gone up to 4 now.

4 conscious breaths. So it's stillness. You become still and you feel this power that lives in you. And then when you then start thinking.

Again, very often you come up with.

A new insight or a solution to the problem. And if not immediately, you do it a few times.

And then at the moment that you.

Would least suspect, suddenly you have an.

Insight of this is the solution or.

This is what I have to do. That's what that frequently happens.

And another thing that happens, this is.

A little mysterious, or some people might call it weird. But.

When you are connected with this.

The point of power that is the entry point is the inner body. It does often bring about so called chance events or encounters or synchronistic events that happen that seem to be just the right thing for the right moment. Just helpful events happen more frequently.

Just.

Meeting the right person, a chance.

Encounter, nobody can predict in what way. And when you find this actually does happen, that's an amazing thing that life.

Becomes more helpful, cooperative than it was before. But I'm not implying that life will be free of challenges. No, challenges continue to come and you need them. Because now, as you undergo the awakening process, every challenge is a great help. Because the challenge forces you to be more present. And you will then begin to recognize the challenges as opportunities for being more present. Then you turn up the light, the inner light, and then suddenly there's an earthquake and everything is collapsing around you. And then you. Or it could be your own, your death instead of an earthquake, that's a kind of earthquake too. The awareness of death is a wonderful thing. And we talked about it before, die before you die. So whenever you take identification away from the egoic mind, it is a kind of death. But it's quite a nice death. If you resist it, it becomes painful. And this is when life is forcing you to, to experience the ego death. That can be quite painful, but that's ultimately good too.