The Best Place to Be Is Here and Now | 20 Minute Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

The purpose of our meditation, of course, is always getting in touch with that which transcends the person. To discover that there's more to you than the person. Person, meaning both the physical body and your mind, plus emotions and so on. So all your thinking is to do with the person, emotions, your history, successes, failures, so called. And even if you've reached a very high point in your life right now, you've just succeeded at something, just gained something, just fallen in love, you will find that it won't be long until that is no longer a real source of satisfaction for you. And it may even turn into its opposite. High becomes low. Now that's not a negative way, a gloomy, pessimistic way of looking at things. And it's not saying that you should not appreciate when good things happen to you or you achieve things. It's wonderful and it's to be enjoyed, so you can enjoy it knowing that of course, it's not going to last forever and it cannot be a source of continuous satisfaction forever. If you were suddenly transplanted to the most beautiful place, let's say you're not happy where you are living now. Maybe the climate isn't good enough, or, or the environment isn't good enough. There's nothing wrong with striving towards finding a better place. But even if you were suddenly transplanted to the most beautiful location you could imagine, perhaps for some people that would be an island where it's always warm and pleasant and there's the blue sea and there's white sand or whatever else you could imagine to be the ideal place. And suddenly you're there and you have nothing to worry about, all your needs are met. And of course you might say, well, then I could really get into the spiritual stuff because we wouldn't have to worry about all these other things anymore. Making a living or succeeding or helping my family members or whatever. So it's all ideal suddenly. And you would be happy for a while, and then gradually you would become dissatisfied. First boredom sets in, and after a while your energy level would go down too, because in the absence of challenges you would. The degree of alertness would diminish. So as far as your spiritual life is concerned, the best place is where you are right now. And discover the dimension, the transcendent dimension, here and now. And use whatever problems or difficulties you have as an encouragement or an incentive to go deeper into yourself. Not running away from problems. Of course, you still may have to take action. If action is possible or necessary or desirable. Take action to change situations, to improve situations in your life. But at the same time, see if you can discover a deeper dimension within that has nothing to do with what goes on in your external life. And that's why we are here to discover that this is not about managing your external life better. There's nothing wrong with that, but there are other teachings that can help you with that if you still need them. But it's discovering a deeper dimension within. And that also has a byproduct of discovering that is actually that it improves your external life immeasurably. Because you're no longer dependent on the ups and downs, the gains and losses, the good days and the bad days of your external life. You're not dependent on those things anymore for your sense of well being or fulfillment or inner peace. And isn't that an incredible thing? When you can enjoy things, deal with things? Yes, but you're no longer dependent on the ups and downs. So all of you already have some access to that dimension within, and we're just here to deepen it. Or if you're completely new to this, this may be an occasion when you have your first glimpse of that in you, that which transcends your person, the personal life, the personal dimension. So just like the universe, and the universe is whatever is around you, the room you are sitting in, or you look at the stars at night, or look out of the window, there's the universe with lots of things in it. And it's easily overlooked that the most essential thing is not the things, but the space in between things. Even the room that you're sitting in, there's stuff in it, furniture, there's a floor, a ceiling, walls. But the essence of every room is the space in the room. So there are two dimensions form, furniture, wall, ceilings, floor, ceiling, floor and space. Formlessness. Or you look into, up into sky at night, what you see countless stars, most of which are suns, just like our sun, many of them much bigger. Countless stars. And the vastness of space. Well, you can't actually see the vastness of space. You cannot see space. That's the strange thing. You can never say, ah, here is space. Because space is not something, everything else is something. And now the amazing thing is there's an equivalent in you of what we call outer space. Space, we could call it inner space. And that's the essence of who you are. Just as the space in this room is the essence of this room, or the space that allows billions of stars and galaxies to exist out there, is the essence. And yet you can never pinpoint it or Examine it under microscope. So the essence of you you also cannot pinpoint. Scientists can examine your brain, but they won't find you there. We know almost nothing about the brain. Of course, there's a connection between the brain and consciousness. But the brain is a kind of transmitter of consciousness or receiver. It does not actually generate consciousness. Most scientists haven't discovered that yet. They claim to know what the brain is all about. We don't even know what a thought is. No scientist knows what a thought. Does it exist as molecules? Nobody knows what a thought is. And that's still the level of form thought. So the essence of who you are cannot be defined. Just as the space around you cannot be defined. It has no boundary. It's absolutely mysterious. You cannot know it in the sense that you know something in this world. You can only become aware of it by unknowing, by letting go of all that you know for a moment. And just be conscious and realize you can be conscious of something which is normal for everybody. You're conscious of perceptions and so on. But you can also be conscious of being conscious. And that is the transcendent dimension. And that at first people may not understand what it is that these words are pointing to. Be conscious of being conscious sounds like some kind of duality. But that's only because we're using language. Now, as you know, as I've often pointed out, life or your life could be compared to a dream. Things happen and then they evaporate. When you get towards the end of your life, it may begin to look more and more like a dream when you think back. And of course, it's a real dream. When you wake up in the morning, it dissolves, and you say it was just a dream. Many philosophers have argued about whether what you experience as your life is real or it's a dream. It's a question of perspective, of course, but it does have a very strong dreamlike quality. Or if you want to use modern terminology, it's your movie, the movie of your life. Some movies are very dramatic, with lots of sound and fury, to use the words of Shakespeare. Full of sound and fury. And then Shakespeare adds signifying nothing or another expression of Shakespeare, is actually a play. Much ado about nothing. That's many people's lives. And it may not be until you reach the end of your life that you really realize that most of it was really. You got upset about nothing much. It's better not to wait until the end of your life to realize that you often still get upset about nothing much. The movie that's all. So is your life real? Yes and no. Is it a dream? Depends how you look at. Certainly. Is dreamlike? Is this moment really happening, or am I just imagining it? Am I imagining that I'm looking at the screen and somebody's talking to me and saying, are you dreaming? You just don't know. What you do know is that this is what you are experiencing at this moment. It is being experienced. And a prerequisite for this so that it can be experienced. Whether it's a dream or not is what we could call the light of consciousness. Without consciousness, there could be no dream or no experience. So the one thing you know without any doubt is that you are conscious. And even that is not absolutely right when we put it like that. Let's put it differently. The one thing that you know without any doubt is not that you are conscious. Because there's, again, a duality. I am conscious. As if we're conscious with something added onto you. No, the one thing that you know beyond any doubt is that you are consciousness.