Pathways to Presence, with Eckhart Tolle

It's important not to continuously, not only here, but in your daily life, not to have your consciousness continuously absorbed in the various challenges of your life situation, which is always on past and future, but to return your attention as much as possible every day during your daily activities, return your attention to the present moment, which is where your life is. It unfolds in the present moment. So there are many opportunities for doing that. So, and that's a little art that you can develop when you are engaged in waiting or moving from here to there or taking a break, doesn't matter for how long, returning your attention to the present moment, and that usually means the stream of thinking slows down and then it may subside for a while, doesn't matter for how long. And awareness remains. And then you. And as I said before, the personality of the person also recedes. And instead of being a person, you are conscious presence. Now, some of you may be able to just decide to enter the present. Let's say you've been involved in talking on the phone or zoom calls. That's what people do these days. Even I do it sometimes. Now another question is, were you completely lost in the whatever discussion was happening on Zoom? Were you completely in your mind or were you able to have some of your attention on the inner energy field? A good thing, if it sounds a little bit too vague to say, have your attention on awareness or feel the awareness. The inner body is a good portal into awareness. So while you are watching people on zoom and feel the inner body while you listen and even while you speak, that keeps some of your attention within. Being present usually involves the entire body, if you can, especially if you're sitting somewhere in your present. Being present is not a head phenomenon, it's an entire body phenomenon. So when you feel, when you become present, almost inevitably you will feel the entire inner body being alive in a very subtle way. You feel the aliveness from head to toe. You feel your body is alive and that is part of being present. And it happens naturally. So when you become present, you automatically become present within the entire energy field of the body. Or if you can also use it the other way around, you can direct your attention into the body and use that to become present. And that is you can verify that in your own experience here and now. Be completely attentive to the present moment. This is what is feel. You're obviously aware of sense perceptions, but deeper than that, you're aware of yourself, but not the usual historical self, but the deeper sense of beingness that's yourself at a deeper level, which the Buddha calls the no self. So that is be aware of yourself in any situation. Not the narrative of you, which is the historical self, but something much more immediate and much more direct. That is the sense of beingness or presence that pervades the entire body, not just in the head. And so one could almost say every cell of the body becomes present a little bit more alive. It feels alive. Breathing helps too. If you don't feel it very strongly yet a few deep breaths, conscious breaths into the body, let the the flow of the breath reach the abdomen. Although the air doesn't reach the abdomen, your attention can go as you breathe in into the body and your tension then moves down into the. It rides on the intake of the air, so to speak. Your attention rides on the air and it goes. And then you're into the belly, the abdomen. And that is also a good starting point for body awareness. You feel as you breathe in and out a few times with each in breath, the abdomen expands slightly and then with the out breath it deflates. Is that word slightly shrinks? That's a good thing. I have to shrink. My belly doesn't shrink for very long. The belly is very important in then also the hora as an energy center. So you feel sense of aliveness. It starts here and then it spreads throughout the body. Another good thing is when you do it. These are all little. You can call it meditations or practices or something that just happens almost naturally after a while, when you want to. We're talking about returning to the present moment, or even better, staying in the background. Continue to stay present even while you're engaged in doing things in the world. But if you. Until you reach that stage where you're able to stay present even while you're engaged in daily activities, then at least if you are not able to do that yet, do is not a doing. But it's just language. If you're not able to do that yet, then return to presence, to the present moment as much as frequently as possible in your daily life. So until there's always some presence awareness of yourself, which is another way of speaking of presence. It's the awareness of yourself. Now when I talk about it, I formulate a sentence with words and immediately a duality arises. Awareness of yourself, I say, because I'm talking about it. But these are not two things. There isn't the awareness that is aware of yourself. The awareness is the self that is self aware. So when we break it up into language, inevitably we create a duality that's just how language operates. A sentence has a subject and an object. So then you can say I can. I am aware of the awareness. It has broken it up into two. But it's one, its awareness becoming self aware. One could say so. But when we talk about it, duality immediately arises. But there is no duality there. So the as you gradually move towards living more and more consciously at first, as I said, you may need a 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. Sam.