Practice Presence Wherever You Are | Q&A Eckhart Tolle

I've been working for 13 years in an office, and I feel that my job is boring and useless. I learned to surrender, but I'd like to change my job, but don't know where to apply. How can I find out what will give me joy and happiness and a feeling of meaningfulness? Well, start with where you are rather than trying to get away from where you are. You start with always the present moment. And you say you have surrendered. But have you surrendered enough? Have you truly surrendered? So I suggest when you travel to work every morning, enter the state of presence rather than drifting off into thinking, so that you're present every moment, whether you're driving or taking public transportation or walk to work, be there, absolute presence. And when you're at work, do one thing at a time and bring in spacious moments as much as possible. It can only be a few seconds, one spacious breath after you made a phone call, two spacious breaths. And then when you go to have lunch, wherever it is, either you eat the lunch that you brought with you or you go to the restaurant or the canteen. Again, present with every movement. So you use what otherwise would be a boring situation and just use it as the background for presence. So you're not. Ultimately, you're not looking for some satisfaction in the work, but you bring a different state of consciousness to it. So in a way, your work situation becomes like a canvas. It's just an excuse for practicing presence. So that is. And you're lucky that you have a relatively boring job gives you great opportunity for practice. If you had a very stressful job that kept you in a state of excitement all day long would be more difficult. So be thankful that life has given you something relatively boring. And then you. You make it interesting. Not in the conventional sense of interesting, but you. You bring that, the alertness to it. So you're not working at the. You're not working at the stock exchange shouting like a mad person, sell, sell, buy. Be on the computer. No, if you. If there's any stockbroker wanting to ask me a question, please do. That will be a different answer. I don't know what I'll say. There's a way there too. What it is, I don't know until you ask the question. But yes, use the situation. And so that as you do, that discontent disappears. And that is true. Surrender. You say you practice surrender. The questioner says, but if there is discontent, of course there's still not complete surrender. Still, I'd rather be somewhere else or the mind telling you, been 13 years, how many more Years to retirement. And then you start counting the years to retirement. So you're losing yourself in past and future. And you're carrying the burden in your mind of past and future, missing the opportunity of the present moment because it's not interesting enough, says the mind. So that's good practice. And you may find if you come into such an alignment with the present moment, you feel more alive. Even within the routine activities. There is then an added dimension of aliveness that comes in. And you perform even the routine activities with a greater sense of aliveness. And it is often then that change comes into your life when you align with the present moment. Instead of trying to get away from it internally, align yourself with it. So that any kind of no to the present moment dissolves an inner no. And so you're so aligned that actually power begins to flow through. That's why I call that the power of now. It's the power of life itself begins to flow through you. At first, it flows into your routine activities. And the way in which you relate to your colleagues at work becomes more present, different, somewhat different. Some people may notice it, others may not. And so. And gradually the universe or life notices that you are in a different state of consciousness. And often it is then that change comes into your life. Either through a chance event or a chance encounter, or a sudden idea or realization that comes into your head one morning in whatever form it comes, or some drastic thing like you, suddenly your company goes bust. The company that you worked for for so long. Suddenly they close down, everybody loses their job. Wow, you're free. But you were free already, because internally you already became free. So in what way change comes into your life, we don't know. It is much more likely to come in. But you no longer depend on external change for your inner state. That's the main thing, that you don't depend on it anymore. You're already. And even if nothing else came into your life, you would continue practice until your last breath. And your last breath would be a conscious breath. And you would have fulfilled your purpose on this planet in this form, which is to be a vehicle for consciousness to come into this world. So you don't need to depend, you don't depend on anything. Change is more likely to come, yes, but the presence practice is not a means to an end. You're not practicing. You say, okay, I'll practice, but if nothing happens within six weeks, I'll stop practicing. Or the lady, do you know the lady who. A church going lady who saw. She lived in a house and Outside her window there was a hill that blocked the view of the ocean solicitor a little hill. And of course if that hill hadn't been there, her house would have been worth much more. So because of that hill, her house wasn't worth that much. But in church she heard if you only have face of grow big as a mustard seed. You can sail to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move for you. She heard that in church Jesus said and then she said oh okay, I only have a hill there, so I can, let's see. And said okay, I'm going to believe that this hill is going to move and then tomorrow morning I'll open the curtains and see what happens. So she in the morning she got up and opened the curtains and the hill was still there. And she said, oh, I knew it wasn't going to work. That's the face. So to all of you who are bored at work, there may be quite a few make it into a spiritual practice, a consciousness practice. Bored at work also means you're not particularly challenged at work. And in the absence of life challenges, there's always the danger that you fall below thought and you come into a routine where you what you think it's acceptance, but you're really falling below thought. And you go to work and there's a decrease in your sense of alertness and aliveness and you become dull and ego. And sometimes you see people who've been working in the same place for a long time, they can, they have not, it doesn't, that's not surrender or presence. They just gone below thought, not risen above. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation. It.