Eckhart Tolle guides a meditation on noticing small sensations like the breeze on your skin. He teaches how to step out of constant self-talk and move into present moment awareness, a shift he sees as part of human consciousness evolving.
Sa the next step, one could say in the evolution of human consciousness is stepping out of self talk, which is the conditioned mind, and realizing there is much more to who I am than this conditioned content of my mind. And that is the beginning of awakening. It's not those words, not that you need to believe that there is much more to who I am than the self talk in my head. Because that is still self talk in the head. I believe there's more to who I am, and you better believe it too. And suddenly you go, and your attention is suddenly in the present moment. The self talk is never in the present moment. And suddenly your attention is in the present moment, and you go. And the whole person right now is not there anymore. When you go, you're not a person at that moment anymore. You are an aware presence. So that shift in consciousness can happen very easily. Whether it stays with you for a few seconds or a few minutes or an hour or a day or longer, it doesn't matter that much. The important thing is that it arises, it arises. And suddenly the unhappy self talk entity is disappearing. And what has taken its place? Just a sense of presence. And that sense of presence is first of all aware of sense perceptions. So you look more consciously, you listen more consciously. Because there's so much to look at and so much to listen to. And it's not only looking and listening. It's also feeling the breeze on your skin, the air. You feel the warmth of the air. And there might be a scent in the air, and you become conscious of that. But feeling the air, the movement of air on your skin, requires a considerable degree of awareness. A person who is immersed in the self talk in the head, they cannot feel the breeze touching their skin. They can't feel that. It's a very subtle thing. And to feel subtle things, you need to have that aware presence, that alert, aware presence. You cannot be immersed in the self talk. To really honor and appreciate deeply the present moment, which is life. We could say honor, appreciate deeply life, because present moment and life are synonymous. There is no life away from the present moment. If you cannot appreciate the present moment means you are away from life. Instead of life, you have a substitute in your head, which is abstractions in the form of thoughts. So to notice the breeze on their skin, you need to be quite alert and basically still inside. And then you can go. It.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
