This is a YouTube video titled "The Dangers of Narrative Thinking | Eckhart Tolle Teachings" featuring Eckhart Tolle delivering a spiritual teaching on the nature of narrative thinking, presence, and consciousness. The content primarily consists of Eckhart Tolle's monologue explaining how living without mental narratives enhances quality of life and presence, with a brief interjection from another speaker expanding on spiritual realization and the ego. The video was created in July 2021 and focuses on mindfulness and spiritual awareness.
And that's a. That's an amazing way to live when. But you can only. You don't need the narratives anymore. Only when you are. When you live in connectedness with the deeper level of your being, with the. Only when you know that you are. And the sense of already being complete on that level, not needing anything on that level, already being fully yourself on that level you're not perhaps fully yourself on the level of form, you can still achieve things, you can still learn new things, master new things, try out new things. Why not? There you are not complete, but on the level of. The depth, level of being, you are at the deepest level. You are already fully yourself in the timeless present moment of being. You only need to sense that in yourself. Then you can operate on the two levels. And then you don't need the. Then these narratives spin these narratives anymore in order to continuously enhance your mind made sense of self. And then you can be with situations, allow them to be as they are without imposing any unnecessary story on it. So people behave the way they behave. People don't always do what they're supposed to do. They just act according to their level of consciousness. And you just accept that they act or whatever they do, that's what they do. The situations are as they are already. So you no longer. Because many narratives have this element of deep resentment to them too. You might notice that when the mind constructs narrative as they do in the collective too, these people don't believe what we believe, and therefore they are actually bad, evil people. How can they not believe the truth? They believe that this event happened a hundred years in the year so and so. But in Christianity it happened too, in the past, more than now. When was Jesus born? I'm telling you, it was then. What? You don't believe he was not born on the 24th of December? That's totally wrong. And people killed each other for that. So be careful of narratives. But the only. I cannot. I'm not saying don't have narratives anymore. First get in touch with the stillness within. Then you'll notice from there that when the narratives still arise, you can smile. When you can. Before you know it, you might have been talking to somebody about your story and then you notice it and you can smile. And then you realize you don't really need that story anymore. And then it could be that you are not as popular anymore at dinner parties because you don't have these interesting narratives about what happened or these gay people did. Do you know what he did? You'll never believe it. That's what he did. Wow. I thought he was a. I. I knew he was like that. I. I had my suspicions. So the, the. There are many Zen stories like that where the essence of Zen is, of course, to live without a narrative in that simplicity of awareness. And then the simplicity is the famous saying that you probably know from Zen. Chopping wood, carrying water is a Zen saying, which is what you do in the Zen monastery. Every day you chop the wood for the fire, and you carry water for washing or cleaning. And every day you chop wood. And so there's a Zen saying, chopping wood, carrying water, which means you go about your life without adding anything to. To it. There's not the story of, I can't stand this anymore. I've been chopping wood now for three years. Why doesn't somebody else do it? Why we should employ somebody. We must get. And this carrying water just is getting too much for me. Why should I have to do that? I'd rather be somewhere else. I'd rather be playing golf than carrying water. These are all stories that go through people's minds, that stop them from being giving their fullest attention to whatever they're doing in the present moment. Doing with resentment. You do what you do it, but there's resentment behind the doing. You're doing it, but you don't really want to be doing it because I shouldn't be doing that. Or whatever the narrative is why you shouldn't be doing that or don't want to be. Would rather be doing something else. Famous bumper stickers on cars. I'd rather be fishing. I'd rather be golfing. I'd rather be in Hawaii. Or as Ram Dass's bumper sticker that I saw on his car, I'd rather be here now. So that's a good one. I'd rather be here now. So then you have then always fully in whatever activity you are doing, it's not being obstructed by some kind of story in your mind. Then you can give your fullest attention to whatever you are doing without interference of some entity up here that doesn't really want to be doing it for some reason. And so many people have continuously some stuff going on there that is in conflict with whatever is happening or with whatever they are doing in the present. Not perhaps permanent conflict, but a lot of conflict with whatever they are doing that prevents a high quality of activity. Because one can look at activity in terms of quality. Quality in doing something is intrinsically connected with the degree of presence or consciousness that flows into the doing so when you buy something that is of quality, whether it's a work of art or somebody has made it, then that sense of quality derives from the consciousness of the maker of that thing, whatever it may be, because it shows there is attention in it. There is complete attention to the present moment. It wasn't. Somebody said, oh, we must finish that as soon as possible so that we can make as many things as we can today. Let's make it as quickly as possible. So every doing is a means to an end, to the next moment. Let's make this. And you're already looking to the next one while you're making this. So in other words, you'd rather be there than here. That's low quality doing. You're not present in the doing because there's mental interference that creates the thought of the next moment where you would rather be. Because the next moment is always a thought. The next moment has no actual existence except as a thought. Isn't that interesting? There is no next moment unless you think about the next moment. I have to think about that now. You can't. Is that true? You have to start thinking, is there no next moment unless I. Unless I think about the next. Let me think about that. I'm getting very confused. It's actually quite simple. It's so obvious. It's like saying, here's an apple. Yeah, it's an apple. It's true. That's what we call it, an apple. There it is. There is no next moment. There's only ever this moment obviously away from your thoughts. So if you continuously live as if the next moment were more important than this one, you cannot give your fullest attention to this one. That diminishes the quality of your doing. It decreases, increases your connectedness with true intelligence. Where creativity comes from, inspiration comes from, which can then not flow into what you are doing, or only trickles, little trickles might still flow, but perhaps not even that, because you're always. You're looking to the next thing. You're not fully with this thing. And the next thing is mental stuff. It's a thought. So that's another aspect of the interference of narrative. Because even the next thing is a small narrative in your head. And that tells you, I need to get there. I'd rather be there already. Therefore I need to get this out of the way quickly. And then whatever you are doing here is not. You're not fully present with it, which is reflected in the quality of the doing, which has infinite repercussions because other people are affected by it also. And so your life, then continuously is experienced as unsatisfying. Because you never arrive at the next thing. Because when the next thing comes, it's the next thing. You're trapped in a mind pattern that says you live for the next thing.
So if you discover within yourself that a lot of the time you are in a state of lack of insufficiency, of not enough, and you feel that the answer to the remedy is to be active in this world and achieve and do as much as possible, then you'll probably find that ultimately that is not the answer to your state of lack. In order to transcend, to go beyond your state of lack of neediness, of not enough spiritual practice and spiritual realization is necessary. Focus on the realization of being. It's only there that you can go beyond that state of lack, which is ego. Go within and discover who or what you are beyond the person.
And you know that you are at the sense of already being complete on that level, not needing anything on that level, already being fully yourself. On that level, you're not perhaps fully yourself. On the level of form, you can still achieve things, you can still learn new things, master new things, try out new things. Why not? There you are not complete, but on the level of the depth, level of being.
