This is a YouTube video titled "Peace in Stillness | A Guided Meditation by Eckhart Tolle" created in October 2023. The content features a guided meditation and spiritual teaching by Eckhart Tolle, focusing on presence, stillness, awakening, and detachment from egoic mind patterns. Eckhart Tolle shares insights on integrating spirituality into daily life, being rooted in presence during challenges, and appreciating the aliveness in all things, concluding with a peaceful reflection from his location in British Columbia, Canada.
So your task is not only to find moments in your life when you become still alert, present, to realize for yourself the possibility of stepping into no mind, not thinking, and yet being fully conscious. Until that. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. It's part of the awakening, essential part of the awakening. To be able to stop thinking, for example, now and now and now. Don't get scared. It's only the ego that might get scared because it says, I'm disappearing. There's just a nothingness. You're not disappearing. Who you are essentially is emerging more fully when the mind stops like now. And there is not just a nothingness. There is an intense field of alive presence. It has no form, it has no location. It is within and without. So it's wonderful to be able to step into that state of consciousness means you are awakening. The awakening process is happening. Even to say you are awakening isn't quite correct, but the awakening process is happening. But make sure that it's not confined to moments that you set aside to become still, to become present or to listen to this teaching. That's wonderful. You need that also until you don't need it anymore. But it's essential to have your daily life, your working life at work, your relationship life, relationships, both family relationships, other kinds of relationships at work, interspersed continuously with the presence of the stillness. So that the. So that you have. You don't spend, let's say you work in an office. You don't spend 9 to 5 getting lost in doing and in your mind and getting upset and getting angry and participating in all that. And then you get home, and then finally you. You sit when you've had your dinner, and finally you say, ah, now I'm going to meditate, or be present or practice stillness. And then you become still. Well, it's better than nothing, but it hasn't changed your life. Make sure there's not a separation between your spiritual life and your working life. Some people tell me, well, I can't be spiritual when I'm alone. I can be spiritual when I'm walking in nature, but I lose it when I start talking to people or I'm back at work. So you need to be aware of that, so that even while you are engaged in doing, you are still rooted in being. Be aware of your mind, of thoughts that arise, so that you don't become possessed by every thought that arises. It helps when the mind is very active and is being challenged by people or events. It helps to have some attention in the inner energy field of your body and feel the Presence that is in every cell of the body. It's al you need to know and decide for yourself that you don't want to be part of the madness of this world anymore. And when something challenges, happens, you lose something. Your bank manager calls about something, and then the assumption of the egoic mind is, this isn't the time to be spiritual. I have to deal with this first. What does it mean to be spiritual? It means to be aware of yourself as the presence. That's your prime responsibility in life. The very purpose of your life is that the very purpose of your life is not to succeed at this or that undertaking or endeavor or business activity or whatever. That is not the purpose. To succeed on that level is not your real purpose. It's a secondary purpose, perhaps, but your primary purpose is presence. To know yourself as the presence, as the alert presence, and then deal with things. And then you will notice what happens or does not happen. You recognize that as secondary. Whether some endeavor succeeds or doesn't succeed is also secondary. You still. You are very active, and yet you realize everything is secondary to something else that's primary. I've told the story before. I haven't mentioned it in a while. The spiritual teacher Krishnamurti, who passed away in the I believe in 85, he used to travel around the world giving talks for 50 years or more. And in one talk towards the end of his life, he said, people have often asked me what my secret is, and now I'm going to tell you what my secret is. Everybody got very alert suddenly, including the people who had been following him for 30 years without getting it. And then he said, my secret is this. I don't mind what happens. So the people listening, they thought something else was going to come, but that was it. I don't mind what happens. What does that mean? First of all, in the English language, I don't mind is very different from I don't care. If English is not your native language, you can look up the difference. If English is your native language, you know intuitively that I don't care is a negativity. And I don't care what happens. I don't care what happens to me anymore. I'm fed up with life. I don't care. You still do care. You're in a negative relationship to the world and to yourself. I don't mind is a detachment from what happens or doesn't happen. But you can only be detached because you are rooted in something deeper in being. And with that comes a detachment with which you not only observe things in other people and events around you, but also a detachment that comes into your doing, the way you relate and do things. First of all, important aspect of detachment is you are not attached to the result. You are not attached to the outcome. It creates a lot of fear and anxiety. If you are attached, you do your best, it works out fine. If it doesn't work out, it's also fine because you are rooted in being. And the strange paradox is it's more likely to turn out fine if you eroded in being and you're not anxious about the outcome because the anxiety about the outcome creates a lot of secondary negative energy. If the outcome is threatened, for example, you get angry. If the outcome is threatened, you get upset. Lost. Completely lost. So that is the secret of life, the rootedness in being. And then enjoy the spectacle of life around you every moment. There is beauty every moment. And you can even enjoy the doing. You might not be as hyperactive as somebody who is completely lost in doing, but that you're doing. Whatever you do do will be more effective because there will be an unconditioned intelligence behind it and a power flowing into it that is deeper than the merely personal realm of mental power. Not separate from it, but deeper. Every moment there is beauty and aliveness around you. You appreciate what. So I wish you Happy Christmas. And I'm here in British Columbia, Canada, just outside Vancouver. And. And the beauty here is the trees and the sky. You can perhaps see a little bit of that on the screen. And wherever you are, it will be something else. Just give it attention. Whatever is there, acknowledge its being. When you are rooted in being, you can acknowledge not only the being, you can sense the inherent aliveness of other humans, of animals, and even of inanimate objects of nature, of course, but even inanimate objects, Everything has a beingness to it. It is. I'll leave you with that. And the contemplation of the trees here that I can see from my place. I wish you well. Be at peace. Thank you, Sam.
