The Choice to Be Present | Eckhart Tolle

When you think you have a choice and suddenly you become present, that means presence has chosen to come through you. So I sometimes say that you can choose. A certain level of presence is in you. You can choose to be present. Like now I can choose to go into my mind and start thinking about my life. Where am I coming from, where am I going? Or I can choose. Or I can choose to be reactive when things happen. Well, it looks as if I didn't have a choice. But many people still don't have a choice. The reaction comes, they are taken over by the reaction. But when there's a certain degree of presence in you, you have a choice. You might forget that you have a choice, but you have a choice. This is how it looks like looked at it from the outside, that you have a choice. It's true. But if you look at it from the inside, when you think you have a choice to be present, presence is choosing to come through you. When you think you have a choice and suddenly you become present, that means presence has chosen to come through you. Nevertheless, it is helpful to feel that you have a choice. From this, from this perspective, the outside perspective, that's what presence wants you to feel, that you have a choice. Ultimately you are presence. You are the one consciousness. So it's not that you don't choose presence, it's just a helpful perspective, a temporary perspective. So when you are dealing with a difficult person or an unconscious person, which is the same thing, an obnoxious person, unconscious person, angry person, unconscious person, then you have a choice. You can be drawn into their unconsciousness can easily slip. Any one person, one angry or upset or deeply negative unconscious person can pull an entire room full of people. Like let's say there's a committee meeting of 20 people and one of those 20 people attacks others. This one person can pull almost virtually every everybody into his or her deeply unconscious negative state. This is how contagious a negative state can be. One very unconscious person in a room can do that. You could almost also say that sometimes a few very unconscious people and this happened before, can create an entire war because they draw others in. This could. Perhaps it was how the first World War started. Nobody exactly knows what were they all fighting about. It started with one person killing somebody in what later became Yugoslavia. I don't know the details, it's just too much. Don't want to go into that. One so called terrorist, whatever killed somebody and that became the first World War. So one millions and millions killed in a room, the same thing. One unconscious person can pull Everybody into. And before you know it they're all fighting and shouting at each other. So there is a danger there because you need to know that. But if you remember that there you have a choice at that moment to be drawn into that or to be there as an aware presence. Then you can be aware as continue to be there as an aware presence. And then that could make all the difference to the energy field in the room. It could dissolve the unconsciousness of that one deeply unconscious person, just one person who remains present. And sometimes it's very helpful. You can have a group of people discussing things, an organization, whatever they're doing. And one person there who can be, as we could call it, an anchor for presence can help the entire group to remain relatively present while they are discussing whatever it is that they need to discuss. That is a wonderful thing. When you realize that possibility or if you are in a group of people and you are there as a non reactive presence and if the others in that group are so deeply unconscious that they go on and go off into violent conflict, mentally, emotionally violent, might even come to blows. Often you see in certain countries in parliaments, they discuss something and then suddenly they jump up and start hitting each other. And some countries it doesn't come doesn't. They don't quite hit each other, but they get close. There's a lot of shouting, can be quite amusing. But so if you. Often one person can make a lot of difference. So called person, it's not the person. And if it cannot, if you don't affect the energy field, then very quickly you will not remain where you are. If your state of consciousness is completely incompatible with your surroundings. Your surroundings are so deeply unconscious that there's no way it could affect those. Then a separation will happen like oil and water. You will find yourself being removed from there. That just happens. It can happen with yourself waking up one morning and saying, okay, I'm not going in, this is it. Or find yourself walking out, goodbye. Or they call you and say we don't need you. I'm afraid we'll have to let you go. You're too conscious for this organization. You don't fit in at all anymore. I don't know what happened to you. You're disrupting everything here. Although this is not a retreat as such, I suggest that you use your time here, make it into a kind of a retreat. And all that it means is your main interest is in consciousness. While you are walking in this lovely small town, looking at things, talking to people, be the presence rather than the person. That needs to interpret everything. Be the presence behind the awareness. Sorry. Be the awareness behind the sense perceptions. Like now. You cannot improve this moment by adding unnecessary thought to it. What thought would you want to add to this moment? It just detracts from the aliveness and beauty of this moment. The mind, of course, can't sense that. And it'll say, what do you mean? What's beautiful about this moment? Well, everything. The stillness in this room, the spaciousness, the lights, the beings, your being. And the consciousness that you are without, which none of this would be, could be sensing yourself as the conscious presence. Let's see. Ocean. Yes. You're also a person with a body and a personalized sense of self. That's the ripple. So you go from being a ripple to being ocean. And then you can be both so that you no longer have. Okay, you can be either meditating and very aware. And usually the people go, then I'm practicing mindfulness. Or they go about their daily life. Okay, I've done mindfulness for 20 minutes. Okay, what sort of do I have to do now? Oh my gosh. Gosh. Can't deal. All stupid. There are emails. I haven't answered all these emails. And then eight hours later. Time for more mindfulness. It's better than no mindfulness. Of course. At least you have it there. If you have it. Maybe you're just trying. But bring it into every moment so that you have whatever it is you're doing. And always a sense of yourself as the presence. And this is wonderful. When you can feel your presence, it's not yours, but I call it yours. Because the moment I say your presence, I've created duality. There's you and there's the presence. But there is no duality there. You are the presence. Language or language creates duality. So that's fine. So feel the presence. Right now you are both a person. But to be a person, you need to remember who you are. Of course, you need to think about me and my life. Then you are a person. Or at this very moment you can also be the presence. When there's little or no conceptualization in your mind, but just an arising of what before was. The background comes into the foreground and then you start thinking without losing a sense of presence in the background. Then thinking is actually not bad at all. It's only when thinking becomes self serving and you lose yourself in it, then it gets very problematic. It creates one problem after another. Pretending, wanting to solve problems. That's self serving thinking. So let's practice now here, being the presence, no thought and sensing how liberating that is. Not needing to know anything beyond that. No conceptual knowledge required for that at all. And if some concept is needed, somebody approaches you, you're just looking around. Somebody comes, oh, can you tell me how to get to such and such a street? Then the mind starts and it's fine.