Stop Chasing Possessions: Go beyond Material Wealth | Eckhart Tolle

The new possession, nice and shiny, whatever it is. And there you look at it. Got it. Now it's mine. And after a few days or a week or two, it wears off. You can actually enjoy all manifestations of life, from the tree to the store display at Tiffany's if you want. It's just life. You don't necessarily need to. You don't. At that stage, you don't need to have anything because you're already enjoying all that. And that is a wonderful feeling of abundance already. But you have to be in the background. There needs to be the connectedness. So there is a certain powerful field of stillness as you walk around Fifth Avenue, looking at everything. You need to have a stronger connection on Fifth Avenue than you need in the middle of the forest. But it's not that you can't be in that place on Fifth Avenue. You can. So if you walk out in the middle of a big city, of course you get all kinds of attention is pulled this way and that. And staying rooted in that field. So that you're not dependent on your environment to feel peaceful. If you're dependent on your environment to feel peaceful. And, oh, I can't be peaceful here. I need to go out somewhere else. Yes, I often mention, of course, that nature is helpful. It is wonderful to go out to nature. But if you are dependent on nature to become still and peaceful, then your life becomes restricted and there is a lack of depth. Still, you are dependent on a certain environment. Fine. Nature is. You love nature. That's beautiful. You love being in nature. That's wonderful. But you are then dependent on that. And you cannot take that state of aliveness into the city. So it requires greater depth and intensity, alertness, so that you can enjoy the aliveness everywhere, wherever you are, in all manifestations of life, see them as temporary play, the temporary play of forms. Because that's what it is. There's nothing permanent here. Nothing permanent. If you take a movie picture of Fifth Avenue. Let's just stay with Fifth Avenue. That stands for all cities and all streets. If you took a movie camera to Fifth Avenue and film all the people running around the street, and then a few years later, say 50 years, you watch the film, then most of the people running around Fifth Avenue will have disappeared already. Not only from Fifth Avenue, but from the planet. So you bought ultimately insubstantial life forms going about their business or their play. They call it business, but it is play. And to them it's serious, but it's not. It's a play of life. Includes Wall street, if you know it's play, it's fine. But you can only know its play through being connected to that which is deeper than the forms in yourself. Then you recognize the forms as the play of form. But if you are not connected with the depths of being in yourself, you don't recognize the movement of form as the play of forms. Because to you then that's all there is. And then there comes a neediness. I need these forms to make me happy. And there comes a concern and seriousness about forms because that's all you seem to have. So you get unduly anxious about the forms of life and everything is very serious. Most people in big cities are serious, going about their business. And there's fear underlying the seriousness. They're serious because they are ultimately in a state of concealed to themselves fear. And they're trying to get somewhere. They never get there. But they always on the way somewhere very important to get this done. They never get it done because they do this. And then there's something else. Lack of. That's not abundance. There can be no true feeling of abundance if you don't recognize the playful nature of the world. If you are dependent for your sense of fullness on the forms, there is no abundance. You are just seeking more forms to fill your life up with. So here we have then at the most fundamental level, abundance is being in touch with the source of life within yourself and recognizing it as the essence of who you are, of course. And then look around and experience the sensory world and then participate in the play without completely losing yourself in it and enjoy the play of form. And then you experience, as you do that, you experience another level of abundance. That is the abundance of experiences of experiencing life in various ways through where you go, what you do, relationships, sensory experience even. And even there you don't get lost in it. You can even enjoy food tastes good without the addictive enjoyment. That is very different. That goes I need more of this. And then just come you want to, you need to take it in to more drink another one sex need more. And it draws you out of is you, where's the next. The next sex object. And of course it draws you out there. You can enjoy sensory experience without becoming addicted to sensory experience. And that is to be able to enjoy sensory experience. And whatever you do is also abundance. It's part of the fullness of life. And then it's possible that also things come into your life. And then you can enjoy things also for what they are without getting worked up about owning them or fear of Loss. Enjoy something beautiful. Why not? But not obsessively accumulating one thing after another pointlessly. But. But to honour the world of things also is part of being here. So as things come to you, so you're not really. You don't need to seek abundance for the sake of abundance. You have to go to the place of abundance from there. Different levels of abundance manifest in your life. They may include the outermost level, things coming to you all being said already in the New Testament by Jesus. Seek only that connectedness with the source within yourself, which he calls the kingdom of heaven. And all the other things that you thought you needed for your happiness will be added unto you you thought you needed. You don't need them anymore for your happiness, but they will be added. So to appreciate beautiful things is also part of abundance. And you don't always need to own what you appreciate. You can appreciate beautiful things for a while that you see that somebody else has. You can say, oh, that's a beautiful thing you have, without the compulsion to say, I need to have that too. Appreciate it. You can look. When I lived in London, I would sometimes enjoy walking along Regent street and Bond street where the expensive shops are, and look in the windows. I couldn't afford a single item that I saw in these windows, but I didn't really want it. Just enjoying some of the beautiful things and two minutes is enough. Okay, I've enjoyed it now. I couldn't have bought it, but I didn't really need it. Even if I'd had the money, I don't believe I would have bought it. Maybe one or two things I might have bought, but not more. So you can visit somebody's home and say, oh, this is so beautiful, without mentioning, oh, his thing is much more expensive than mine. It used to be the custom in. In Spain it's probably no longer the custom because the country has become modernized. When you visited somebody's home and you said, oh, isn't this beautiful? The host would immediately say, take it, it's yours, it's yours. Of course you are not supposed to take it. He would have been shocked. Some foreigners did made that mistake. So to go about wanting to manifest material abundance in your life is perhaps not the right way to go about it because you're concentrating on the outermost layer of abundance. And even if you manage to manifest abundance on the outer level, it's not going to give you the true feeling of abundance. It's not. In other words, it's not going to make you happy. It's not Going to fulfill you, except for a few days, the new possession, nice and shiny, whatever it is. And there you look at it, Got it. Now it's mine. And after a few days or a week or two, or give it a month, it wears off. It's no longer that fulfilling to be driving the Ferrari or whatever it is. There's nothing wrong with the Ferrari, but if you're looking to the Ferrari for happiness and fulfillment and to give you the feeling of it's not going to work for that long, if you're just driving it because you enjoy that experience, that's a different matter. There is a difference here. So don't condemn the world of things. This has been done traditionally by many religious people. They were afraid of it and so don't go there. You must not have any possessions in many religious orders and so on. Not just Christian, but also other religions, monks, nuns. No, you must not have any possessions. In some traditions, Buddhist monks are not allowed to touch money. Of course, I can see the reason behind it. But it would be even greater, of course, if you could touch money and you're free of attachment to the money that you touch. I'm not attached to it. And then you can touch it. It's fine. Rather than being. Oh, and of course they're not allowed to touch a woman. It's dangerous. Because of course the reasoning behind is it will take you into complete unconsciousness. The sexual urge will rise up in you and will make you totally unconscious. Maybe that's the reason why in some cultures women are covered scared it could be chaos. And yet if you are connected with the source, then all that is not a problem. So manifesting abundance is not really the right way. Go to the source and allow from the source for abundance if it wishes to manifest in your life. You start with the source, then you go into enjoying all the forms of life. Next level of abundance. Then you enjoy relating with the forms of life. The play of whatever you do in life, you enjoy that. And then that is how. And out of that enjoyment of what you do. That energy most likely also brings things into your life forms that before you thought you needed desperately to feel abundance. So they come as an icing on the cake and you might give them away again. If they come, you have them for a while. Oh, I've had this for long enough. Now you have it. And so the flow is there beautifully as you give things away, new things come. And if they're all taken away from you, that's fine too. You're quite happy with that. So manifest abundance from the inside out, not from the outside, as hoping that you find some inner state through external things. That is a dilemma of many people who practice manifesting, which, of course, manifesting is something that you can use, and it works if it's done rightly. But the dilemma, or the fallacy is the belief that whatever you manifest is going to make you happy. It's to seek the fullness of life through what you manifest through things. And that doesn't really work. So when people manifest something in that way in their lives, a material thing, initially they're quite elated. I've got it now, I've got the house, or whatever it is that I wanted to manifest. And then that manifestation wears off. And after a while brings about its own problems and a new level of problems. And the feeling of fullness does not stay. It doesn't stay with them. Nothing can give it to you, can give you the true feeling of abundance. And that's the amazing thing which implies nothing that you achieve in the future can get you there. You have to start with that. And you don't need to ask for things to be different in your life. You start here, now, where you are, and here now. You go within and see if you can find that place within where life is born continuously, but which itself in itself is unborn, timeless consciousness itself.