Eckhart Tolle explains how moments of pure awareness, without thinking, keep us sane. When you look at a flower or a dog's eyes without labeling what you see, you step into presence. He teaches a practice: sit and observe sights and sounds without naming them, noticing the subtle aliveness in everything around you.
Even if you have no idea, have never heard of this before, if you are able to appreciate beauty anywhere, whether in, let's say, a flower, in the moment of appreciation of beauty, there is a connection with that. You're not thinking. To recognize beauty, you need for a moment— and this, some people have it naturally, it doesn't free them from their ego, but these are brief moments of presence that some people have naturally, but they never realized that that's what it is. So the appreciation of beauty can only happen to somebody who has some access to that space of pure awareness without thinking, which is presence. Some access— in fact, all humans who are not totally— all those normal humans who are not totally burdened by their minds and almost going crazy, if you still have a relatively normal life, and you're not completely crazy, you have some access to that dimension for brief moments, but you don't even know it. That keeps you sane. Maybe you have access in a moment when you pet your dog, "Ah, ah, ah," and for a moment you're not thinking, or you look into the eyes of a dog and say, "Oh, oh." There's 3 seconds you feel the being of the dog And by— the dog doesn't have an ego, so you look at the dog and you connect with the consciousness of the dog, and you can sense for a moment, not thinking for 2 or 3 seconds, in that moment you feel a kind of love. For some humans, it's easier to love a dog than a human, you might have noticed. And I must admit It probably is often easier to love a dog than— because you only have all the layers of the personality to get through to get to the deepest part, which is your function. Let's come back, however, first to sensory perception without labeling. So, and then you prolong it a bit, make it a spiritual practice to be sit wherever you are and look at things around you or listen and just be with it. An alertness is required, but there's no tension in it. Just, it's a relaxed alertness in that presence. See, really, this is the present moment, and then you— oh, the world is alive. Even inanimate objects have a certain beingness or presence here. And you honor what is around you, and that's a— that's the first step in becoming present. And that's already very beautiful to— if you have that more in your life, to really be present to your surroundings, which is the present moment. It's good, very good. But now we go a bit deeper, and here and now. So we have this room here, we can acknowledge the space, the lights, there's a man on the chair, he's talking, and you are perceiving. Question is— oh, by the way, you don't really need to do much thinking here. What's the point? You can just sit here. There's nothing to analyze because what I'm saying is too simple. So you don't need to think, what does he mean? Just be present. Let me— what do you mean? No, just— there's nothing to think about. Just be. Listen. I am listening to the words that I'm speaking, so you can listen to them too. We're both listening to the words. They just come. There's nothing prepared, nothing, say, "Now I'm going to say this." No, it's just the flow that comes from some level of the deep I and using my limited mind and the limited words and talking. So this moment here, this is what is. Now go more deeply. Is— what else is there in this moment other than sense perception? Is there anything else? You could ask yourself, for example, to use an analogy, if you wanted to figure out what this room consists of, you can say this room consists of the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the furniture in it, the chairs, the people, that's this, that's what makes up this room. So in this analogy, that's your sensory perception, whatever it is that you perceive with your senses. Question arises, is there more to this room? Is there something more essential than what is in the room? Yes. There is something more essential to this room, and that is the space. The essence of this room is the space that enables everything to be here. Easily overlooked. And so, now you go within and ask— other than sense perceptions, all the things that I perceive in this present moment, is there something, perhaps something deeper? Yes. And that thing, what is that thing? I, because I am perceiving that. Yeah, but what kind of an— what I is that? That is not your historical person. That is not You're— it's not the person that's perceiving because you're not thinking, you're completely just perceiving. You're not perceiving through the screen of mental conditioning, which is a normal way of doing it. Most humans perceive the world through the conditioning of their mind, and already the perception is already an interpretation. You perceive every other human through that screen, and you already have some interpretation. No, but here's no screen, just this. And who is doing the perceiving, or who is perceiving? It's not a doing. I am. I. But who are you? Or directly, who am I? Not my history. It's not— I'm not perceiving it through my history. Oh, there is a presence that's in which the perceptions arise. Consciousness. There's a consciousness in which this world is being perceived.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
