Most People Never Realize This About Life | Eckhart Tolle

There is no future. It does not actually exist. That is perhaps a statement that you may not immediately agree with, but if you look at it experientially, you have never experienced the future. The thing that most of the time people, or many people, not you perhaps, try to get away from almost habitually and not consciously. They're not consciously telling themselves, I need to get away from the present moment. No, but the present moment is rarely acknowledged in its fullness, and usually it's at best a stepping stone to the next moment, which unconsciously— again, not because you're telling yourself that— the next moment is is somehow, or next, or the one after that, is somehow regarded as more important, potentially more fulfilling than this moment. That's a mind pattern that we inherit from the surrounding culture. And that's a strange way to live if you consider that The present moment is all there ever is. Your entire life unfolds in and as this moment. And although I could say we are going to be here for perhaps 2 hours— who knows, it might go on and on, I don't know— But 2 hours, perhaps again, that is a mental concept. Unless you start thinking about the 2 hours, the future, it's always the present moment. So you don't actually experience this event or this talk as 2 hours unless you understand nothing, and then it's, it's time becomes heavy. But even then, really, you don't— all you ever experience is this moment. So the 2 hours is a mental formation called the future. And this future doesn't actually— in actuality, there is no future. It does not actually exist. That is perhaps a statement that you may not immediately agree with, but if you look at it experientially, you have never experienced the future. Well, you could say, well, this moment was the future a minute ago, so is there no future? Well, A minute ago, that was the present moment, and it's now the present moment. Nobody has ever experienced the future. The moment it comes alive, other than a mental projection, it's the present moment. That can be a conceptual thing. You can say, yeah, well, that's true. But is it possible to realize that at a deeper level, to actually, with every fiber of your being, that this is it? This is your life. This, your life, is now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Yes, yesterday and tomorrow, I call that your life situation. Yesterday is— that's the past. Tomorrow is the so-called future. Your life— everybody has a life situation. You have a past and you have what we conventionally call future. And normally people, when people say my life, what they refer to is a narrative in their minds, an accumulation of thought patterns, memories, together with emotions. And so there is, after a few years of life, a narrative forms in your mind that you call my life. And that narrative consists of the movement of thought, and then the thought emotions reflect the types of thoughts that go through your mind habitually. And there's a certain heaviness about, for most humans, perhaps the older you get, the heavier it gets to derive your identity from that narrative that you call my life. That's your past, all the things that have happened, good things, bad things, habitual mind patterns. So you've formed— there is a mental entity forms And that entity consists of thought plus emotion that differs from person to person. This entity you feel, that's me, I. When you use the word 'I,' you refer to this, usually you refer to this entity, but it is a conditioned mind mental-emotional pattern that lives in you. So the word 'I' usually refers to that entity. 'I' is one of the favorite words for everybody in the English language. In some other languages, the 'I' is used less frequently because it's like Spanish, it's built into the verb form. You don't unless you want to stress 'I,' you actually have to say 'I,' but that doesn't matter. I, I, I. And so there we have this entity that is in you, this mental structure. Is that actually who you are? Essentially are, or is there a deeper identity in you that perhaps has not fully revealed itself? Is there a potential in every human being for this deeper identity to awaken and to reveal itself. And that deeper identity that in many humans is just a potential, in others it is in the process of emerging or awakening. That deeper identity is inseparable from what we might call the spiritual dimension, what we might call the transcendent dimension, what we might call— although I'm very reluctant to use the word God, maybe we'll talk about God later, I don't know yet— that deeper identity far transcends who or what you are as this person, the person is the accumulation, the mental-emotional accumulation. And what is that? It's thought plus emotion. What is thought? Thought is an energy form at a particular vibrational frequency, as is emotion. They are energy formations at a particular frequency. Oh, by the way, As you probably know, scientists— science does not really know what a thought is. Nobody really knows what a thought is. There is a certain association between thinking and the neural activity in the brain, neurons firing, brain cells. There is a certain correlation between the two. But what is a thought? What is its nature? Could you identify a thought by cutting open the brain, your brain? Brain surgeon cuts open your thought. Could he find a thought? No, he sees the activity of neurons. But what is all the stuff that you carry in your memory banks, so to speak, that does not exist on the level of visibility? You cannot find it by using a microscope or anything. It already exists in the realm of the invisible. All the things that in your— all your million, hundreds of thousands, million memories that you carry that you could access at any moment. How does that live in you? So the thought, thought is a mystery, but we can experience it and we can see that undoubtedly it is an energy form, as is emotion. Everything is energy. So it is invisible energy form, every thought. Now, what does that mean? What does it actually consist of? It requires consciousness for a thought to be It requires consciousness. In fact, there is not thought and consciousness. Thought is a form that consciousness takes temporarily. It assumes a form. Emotion is a form that consciousness assumes, like a disguise. It is born into form.