Living in Balance: Eckhart Tolle on Achieving Harmony in Your Life

It does not mean that when you are, when you know your essence, you cannot enjoy form anymore, that you will say no more. Maybe some. Some humans might do that. But again, there's a possibility of living in balance with form. You can enjoy all the forms around you and even create new forms without any sense that this is mine or any sense of attachment or any identification with the form. And only then can there be true enjoyment of forms and beauty. But then the compulsive nature of your relationship with form will go. The compulsive running to shopping malls the day before Christmas and then running to shopping malls again the day after Christmas because they've reduced the prices even more or whatever. It's amazing. Before Christmas they're all running, and then after Christmas it's even cheaper. I need. I must have. That's not the true enjoyment of form. You can enjoy form by looking at a shop window and say, oh, beautiful. Well, what, do you want to buy it? No. Or you might buy it, and then it's in your house, beautiful, beautiful. And then maybe the next day you arrive and a burglar has been there and it's gone. And it may only be at that moment that you know whether you were attached or not, because you might have had it in your home and said, I'm not attached at all. But when you get home the next day and the burglar has taken it, then you'll know whether or not that was true, what you thought, that you were not attached. That's a good test. So we need to. Then doing and stillness need to be in balance. Now, it does not mean that you separate your life into one part of your life as you sit still. And in the other part of your life, you run around. That's not the balance. The balance is when the two are fused together. And even while you're walking around the shopping mall, not running around the shopping mall walking, you can be in stillness as you look around. You may, perhaps you go with the convention of buying Christmas presents, or maybe you don't. Doesn't matter if you do. Okay, let's see what I can find. Still, bring the stillness into the shopping mall. Let it come with you into the shopping mall. Just to give one example in the North American context, or the bazaar or whatever, if you're somewhere else, and see if you can, even while your attention flows out, have some attention within, feel the background of aliveness or stillness. As I always point out, the beginning of that is feeling the inner body, the aliveness within the body. That's the doorway into the formless. You're already moving into the formless. Feel the alive, the body is alive now it's alive, it must be alive. But can you feel that it is alive. And that's life energy. It's the bridge between formless and form. And there it is. And then if you can walk around a city, well here you don't walk but you drive around. If you drive around the city, can you drive with not too much thinking, just presents? Or walk around to the shopping mall and just look. You bring a stillness in wherever you go. And then when you have to think, you think you can pick up the phone and say, oh, I found something nice maybe should I get this for my mom or dad, whatever. Always the two dimensions, that's the most vital thing. And then you can also look into manifesting. But then the question is, what is it that wants to manifest through this form? It's no longer this is what I want, the surface I what is it that wants to manifest through this form? Very different. And you may not know that immediately. There may be a time period when you don't know exactly what to do with your so called life, which is not yours. Just a conventional way of speaking. There may be for a while you don't know what to do with your life. And so you just there being as still as possible, do your whatever activity you're already doing, but bring stillness into it, presence into it. And then at some point, either the realization of what it is that you need to do that wants to be done through you comes from the outside. Somebody tells you something, ah, or you wake up one morning and ah, this is what I have to do. And then you start taking action, always making sure you're not so attached to the outcome that you think it's more important than the present moment. An action can become egoic when you lose yourself, it becomes egoic when you lose yourself in the doing. And a good sign or good criterion is when something happens to that is against your seems to be an obstacle. A person or situation say I want to do this or achieve that. And suddenly somebody says no, you can't do that, no, they won't allow you to do that. Or situation becomes a challenge, it's difficult, it's blocked, you want to go. Somebody says no, you're not qualified to do that, you shouldn't do that, it's not allowed. Whatever you need this and that, which you don't have. Obstacles come all the time. If you get upset, that means the ego is back in the doing. When obstacles come, if you're not upset, you're still present. And you look at whatever the obstacle is, and you look at it with this penetrating gaze of presence, which is stillness. Also you look at whatever the obstacle arises, you bring this penetrating stillness to it. And that is like a light shines on it and then that dissolves the obstacle or it shows you a way around it. That's the power of consciousness. It always happens. Either it shows you how to get around it, or it shows you how to use the very force of the obstacle and you turn it around. If the obstacle is wanting to go this way and you go with it, for I'm just demonstrating now, something counteracts what you want to do. It's coming this way, you want to go that way. But you don't meet it head on and start complaining, no, this shouldn't be happening. No, perhaps you go with it for a little while and you go, and then you turn it around. And the very power that was against you then works for you. And you achieve your goal through that. It happens. And this is the wisdom that comes with non resistance. So whenever you go into this conscious doing, resistance always pulls you back into unconscious doing. Can easily happen because it's an old habit pattern, unconscious doing. Inner resistance to whatever arises in the present moment pulls you back. Inner resistance is some form of negativity, some form of complaining, some form, some form of fear, aggression, anger. And this is important because whenever you complain about what somebody else does, you're already beginning to fall into that trap of unconsciousness. And of course, yes, you meet lots of people who are still trapped in ego and they may not like what you do, but just no judgment. Just look at what the situation. They say this, they want that, you want that. And they don't say, oh, they're dreadful. I know what he wants. He wants to deceive me. And he always does that. He wants to go just clear. This is what he says he wants. This is where I want to go and see, okay, never any judgment of a person or situation. Just clear seeing, clear facing. This is the power. It's like a light beam of consciousness. It falls onto, illuminates that situation, that moment, that person. That's the power of consciousness.