NOW Is Perfect for Spiritual Practice | Eckhart Tolle

We are entering the now with our attention. That's all there ever is. You might as well be there fully, because that's your life. Don't fall into the trap that some spiritual seekers have fallen into who are telling themselves, if I only had a life that's more undisturbed, that I could really practice being present and practice meditation, preferably in a lovely climate so that I'm not disturbed by unfavorable weather. So it's. Let's say you're in the tropics, there's a warm breeze. Then I could really practice and become present. Especially if I get massages every day. Oh, and the purest of foods cooked for me or not cooked. Better not cooked then I could really. But life. Why doesn't life give me an opportunity to. Well, if you have it, it's good. To go on a retreat is a wonderful thing, but to always look for some situation that's ideal for your spiritual practice. No, what works much better is to say this moment is ideal for my spiritual practice. In my spiritual practice, whatever it is that I'm facing at this moment, what is the state of consciousness that I'm bringing to this moment, which ultimately is all that ever is? There is nothing else other than your experience of this moment. There never has been anything else. Isn't that weird? And there never will be anything else. People think the future is incredibly important. And of course, on a practical level, it has its place. You can't do without it. But on a deeper level, the future, of course you might have noticed. You have never yet experienced the future, but you've thought about it a lot for years thinking about the future, but never arrived. You cannot arrive at the future because ultimately, on a deeper level, because these are. It doesn't exist. Is that true? Let me think. Well, that's easy. If the future existed, you could have experienced it. When it comes, it's the present, the past. Nothing happened. I said in the Power of Now. Nothing ever happened in the past. It happened in the now. And when you remember the past, you remember it now. There is only now. Now. The Power of Now came out for the first time 20 years ago. How is that? Well, that was the paradoxical. But in your time is something so weird on one level. It's everywhere. It's all consuming it. It ultimately eats you up. It burns you up. The fire of time burns you up. The body. I don't if you have noticed. Haven't noticed it already. You will in a few years. One morning you look in the mirror, you say, what's this? Who is this? And then you remember the apple you left on a windowsill three weeks ago. That's what happened to the apple in three weeks. Happens to you in 30, 30 years. Sweet time does that to you. Everything is consumed by time. Everything is consumed by time. Jesus calls it where moss and rust consume. Now he uses that as an analogy, really, for time. Rust, even the hardest of substances, metal, is ultimately consumed by rust, moss, they eat up your clothes. But really it means time is eating up. Everything in this material universe is being eaten up by time. So it's everywhere. Time is. You can't get away from it. And yet you have never experienced time. You can only experience this moment, but you can think about time. So future exists as a thought in your head. The past exists as a thought in your head. So future and past are necessary in order to cope with life in this dimension. Undoubtedly we could not have met here without future, where it said at such and such a time, on such and such a day, Eckhart is going to talk here. We could. It would have been difficult to say one day in the now, Eckhart is going to talk in Calgary. Let's hope, let's hope you'll be there. So you need time on the practical level also. But losing yourself on that level is losing yourself on the level of the mind, the thinking mind. To be able to use time doesn't matter that you have to be used by time. And so the transcendent dimension of consciousness that I started with when I talked is encountered when you enter the now with your attention. Okay, the now means now. So as I'm speaking, we are entering the now with our attention. That's all there ever is. You might as well be there fully, because that's your life. So you might as well. And here we are in this moment. You are perceiving visually. You are perceiving auditory, auditory perception, visual perception, perhaps other senses involved. And you are perceiving the totality of this room. When this is the beginning of becoming more conscious of the present moment is to come to your senses. In order to come to your senses, you have to take some attention away from this stream of thinking. A lot of that is useless anyway. You have to take some attention away from the stream of. You cannot be totally absorbed in your mind as many people are throughout the day. The go through their day, like sleepwalking, they are so absorbed in their minds, which means they are not present. And they go through. Like when you look at them, you can see they are not there. They might see a vague outline of you. Or when they talk to you, they talk through the screen of their. What they think of you in the mind. So to come to your senses, take attention away from. You have to take attention away from thinking. You then become more aware of your surroundings. Visual, auditory. You might breathe. Scent might be in the air or feel the breeze on your skin. This tactile. But the predominant senses are listening, hearing and seeing. And that already takes you out of the trap of your mind. And then there is a moment right now, when you are aware of your surroundings. Or one single. Sometimes it's a single thing, like a flower, the table, your hand. Or it's the totality of your surroundings. At any given time, you're aware of your surroundings. And you might notice when you come to your senses, there's a momentary cessation of mental noise, which means thinking. There's a momentary cessation. It could just be for a few seconds at first, for. For a moment you are aware. You are perceiving, you are aware, but you are not thinking. You are not labeling your perceptions. That's an amazing way, amazing shift in consciousness. Another way of putting it is you become still. And then the perception happens against the background of stillness. It's a beautiful way to perceive things. There's a background of. And that stillness that, in other words, spaciousness, is not the stillness that you find when you are moving. When you get tired and you're moving towards sleep. And then you're halfway asleep, but you're too tired to do any more thinking. That can be a beautiful moment. When you catch it, you're half asleep and it feels so good. You're moving now towards sleep. It feels so good. And you can't remember your problems anymore. Can't think about your problems anymore. You don't remember anything anymore. And there's a moment of deliciousness. And then you go into sleep. But this is not it that has its place. Of course you go to sleep. Nor is it what you encounter when you have a few drinks. This is empty. I'm just demonstrating. So you go, you're unhappy. Your mind, the thoughts of your mind. And you wait a few moments, feel a little bit better. Why? Because probably your mind slows down a bit, have another one. And gradually you go. Life is great, isn't it? You're not thinking that much anymore. Isn't that great? So for a little while you get free of the torture. The daily torture of your mind is useless. But then you're moving towards eventual collapse. That's Another matter. We're not going that way here, because that way, what I just described, going towards sleep, taking alcohol or some other substance. Not that I don't totally condemn anything. I love a glass of wine or two occasionally. It's nice, no? But to desensitize yourself, you are falling below thought when you do that, and that's okay. When you're going to sleep, you fall below thought. When you take excess alcohol, you begin to fall below thought. But here, thought, the practice of being able to come to your senses. To look around, to listen to sense, to feel, perhaps to be aware of your breathing, perhaps to be aware of the aliveness in your body. Every cell is alive, but your attention is never there. Because you live in the upper part of the building of your body. You live under the roof, no. Unaware of what's going on in the rest of the building. So your attention goes into. You might feel the body at the same time. It's all part of becoming present. You look around and there is a stillness arising. That is not the stillness. That is the stillness below thought. It is the stillness that is above thought. And that is spiritual awakening. To encounter in yourself right now. So that I'm not just talking about it right now. Encounter in yourself the possibility of accessing that dimension where for initially brief moments, you are free of thinking but totally conscious. That's delicious. And at first, it may not last for very long, but that doesn't matter. And you may find that even without practicing it consciously as a spiritual practice, you may find that it can also happen spontaneously in your life. For example, during certain activities that require your total presence. Because these activities have a certain element of danger to them. Such as climbing up a rock wall or race driving racing car or surfing, probably skiing downhill. All these kinds of things require your complete presence. So they stop the mind and you're totally there. And you. It.