Taking a Moment to Be Present | Eckhart Tolle Rebroadcast of Live Q&A

Let's just take a moment, become aware of the present moment. Vitally important in any endeavor that you undertake, no matter what it is, is not to lose your connectedness with the present moment. So before you start a new enterprise, a new activity, always go to take a moment for awareness. Basically, that's what it is. Sometimes people ask, well, what is the present moment? How do you be, where is it? What does it even mean to become aware of the present moment? And the first thing of course, is that you become aware of whatever surrounds you. That's the entry point into the present moment. A very easy entry point into present moment awareness, some people may call it mindfulness, is to become more aware of whatever surrounds you here and now. Sense perceptions just be with what is, give it attention, some attention. The room you're sitting in, maybe there's a window, you can look out of the window, you can see trees behind me, I can't see them, I know they're there. This is the enter the present moment by becoming more aware of sense perceptions, auditory, visual, and perhaps others. And of course what that does, you might notice, is there is less mental noise. The voice in the head that speaks and speaks, that talks to you, that you have a dialogue with, a monologue that comments and interprets and takes positions, mental positions, identifies with, likes, dislikes, never stops talking. That's the mind, the, the voice in the head that most people are completely identified with. And that means they are not present. So the first step is take some attention away from that by simply becoming aware of sense perceptions. And if you can look at something natural, that's even better. Because a natural thing, a tree, a flower, a plant, the sky, a natural thing, lends itself to present moment awareness more than a man made, human made thing. So anything natural that you can look at for a moment, focus on and give it attention, acknowledge it, you don't need to think about it. So it's just come aware of the present moment through sensory perception. And already, if you can do that, if perhaps a few minutes before, you were very much immersed in the problem making mind, it wasn't actually solving any problem. Because this continuous mind activity actually creates more problem than it solves. If it's not focused, it's unconscious. So already suddenly there's a certain amount of peace that descends upon this, the world, your world, it becomes a bit more peaceful. You become aware of the aliveness of it.