One Conscious Breath, with Eckhart Tolle

As you gradually move towards living more and more consciously at first, as I said, you may need to return to presence frequently. And you do that by. You can, as an entry point, use your breath or go immediately into the body, or allow the breath to take your attention into the body. And even one minute is fine. Sometimes I say even one conscious breath is a mini meditation. One conscious breath, that means one. It's the in breath and the out breath. One conscious breath, it takes about, I don't know, 15, 20 seconds. I haven't actually counted it. The length varies from person to person. When you take a conscious breath, automatically it becomes a little longer than it would normally be when you're breathing unconsciously, which is most of the time. So most of the time you're breathing, but you don't know you're breathing. You don't even have to remember to breathe because you would soon die. Oh, I forgot, sorry, gone. So breathing is something that happens to you. One can't. Yes, you can regulate your breathing, you can make it deeper, but it is something that there's no real beyond extending the length of your breath or regulating your breath. You don't have a choice in the matter. You don't have a choice. I don't believe anybody has ever committed suicide by deciding not to breathe anymore. So you, the little unhappy person wants to die, but something in you says, no, not yet. Something in you wants to continue to live for a while and you can't stop it. So breathing is an unconscious process, but it's always there. And spiritually speaking, to make this unconscious process conscious is one of the most, and one of the most ancient spiritual practices going back to the time of the Buddha and beyond the awareness of your breath. So you couple the breath with awareness, the awareness moves with the breast. So one conscious breath is already again in consciousness. Because while you are taking this one conscious breath, which goes like this, and notice at the end of the in breath, there's a slight cessation of breath for maybe one or two seconds. That's an important still point. And then the out breath happens. Let's do it one more time. And the point at the end of the in breath, your attention has reached the abdominal area. And it is there where you experience the cessation between the two breaths, between the in breath and the out breath in the abdominal area. There you can sense that the energy that is there at that still point at the end of the out, the end of the out breath and the in breath, the out breath hasn't happened yet. It Is that's all. And it feels so good that you would probably want to take another conscious breath after one. And you might even take three in the midst of your busy life. Three conscious. Can you make time for three conscious breaths? You could put it on your phone. When is my next conscious breath due? In six minutes. Okay, I can't wait. And then, of course, you have the famous excuse in the human mind that says, I can't do it now. Not now. I mean, just so much to deal with here. Leave me alone. I can't. All that spiritual thing comes later, but not now. I'm too busy. Can't you see it's a lie? Of course. Because everybody, unless you engage in an emergency situation, you need to get to the hospital, or you need to take someone to the hospital, or you administer first aid or something like that, then don't take three conscious breaths. But otherwise, many opportunities. The minimum is one. But as I said, you may like it so much because it's such a qualitative difference between your normal state of consciousness and that that you immediately, you can sense that difference and you can sense that power that you have touched. And so two or three would be good. And how long is three? I don't know. A minute and a half or a minute. I don't know. I haven't measured it. A very wonderful practice to do that several times a day is actually more powerful than one longer meditation period a day, although you can have both. But if you had a choice of either one long meditation period a day or two, or several times during the day, take three conscious breaths. The three conscious breaths several times a day would be more effective in changing your state of consciousness. Because then the important thing is you. Your daily life becomes interspersed with spaces of awareness, presence. Instead of having one compartment, when you meditate and the rest of your life, you are as unconscious as everybody else. And so then the famous example of the man who has a family and says, okay, I need to meditate now. I had a terrible day. I just need to. And then he goes in his study, and then the door opens and the little daughter comes in. Daddy, Daddy. And the spiritual daddy says, oh, forget sake. Can't you see I'm meditating? Not integrated awareness, not integrated into ordinary. With ordinary life. By the way, if you do meditate, and you probably know this because I'm sure there are many experienced meditators here, if you do have meditation periods in whatever technique you use, eventually every technique is designed to take you to the realization of being. And that's good. Maybe it works. As long as you don't give it the idea of needing to achieve something. Then you bring in time. And that will prevent you from the realization of being, which is now, can only be now. So that idea of, okay, I'm trying to get somewhere, don't try to get anywhere because you're there already. You are already. You are. I am. And so are you. So. And anything that disturbs you during the meditation must immediately be incorporated into the meditation. Any disturbing sound, any. Whatever it may be, or a sensation in the body that the little pain arising there, whatever, anything. Usually, when you meditate, all kinds of sounds happen around you, and immediately they're part of the meditation incorporated. Let's say there's a. You're meditating. There's a pneumatic drill. You know, these things. I don't know what they're called here. They're breaking up the surface of the street outside. One of the worst noises you can imagine. And if you're a good meditator, you'd immediately welcome that sound as part of your meditation. And it creates no resistance. Then you're the Buddha.