The Importance of Attention Practice | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

So we are moving beyond thought, not back. We step beyond thought. This is humanity's destiny. And it's urgent now, not in the sense of, oh, we must get there. It's urgent in the sense that there is an intensity now to the arising consciousness. Because the madness that is the dysfunction of the old consciousness is also getting accelerating. It gets worse. And at the same time, the new is already arising, the two movements, the old still not even having reached yet the end of its madness, and the new arising at the same time. The old is still much more visible in this world. The madness of the old state of consciousness, with its need for conflict and problems and the violence that arises out of that state and the immeasurable suffering that humans inflict on each other and on themselves out of that state. That madness is continuing on the planet. You only need to watch the news on TV or read the paper. That's a continuation of what we have seen in the 20th century and before that. And the new is arising, not so much visible on the surface of things, yet rarely mentioned in the media. Occasionally it is mentioned already here and there. This is why we are here simply, not to make it happen, but to allow it to happen. We are simply opening the door wider so that less and less we not offering resistance to that anymore. So your practice here is continuous. But don't make impossible demands upon yourself. Of course, you will get drawn even here back into mind streams. Yes, you may reincarnate into a reactive mind stream. And then a moment comes when suddenly there's an awakening out of that. Oh, and you can see how clear, how obvious the difference between the states of the awakened state. A moment ago you were in that heaviness, that dense energy, and suddenly you step out. And it's also like having left when the plane, you're on the plane, it goes through the clouds, and suddenly the clouds are underneath you and there's vast, clear space, infinite. And so. And the clouds are still there, but you're not in them anymore. Oh, and so, as you walk here through the gardens, along the river, see if you can be in that state where the sense perception does not absorb your attention entirely, nor the mental labels that arise to do with those sense perceptions or to do with something totally different. They don't absorb your attention totally. Attention remains free as the field of attention. In other words, you perceive in and through stillness without needing to label everything immediately through the mind, of course, you know you're looking at this flower, you know it's a flower without having to tell yourself that this is a flower. You know it's beautiful without having to tell yourself that it's beautiful. So you realize that there is vast knowing beyond mental labels and concepts. And then you know far more than you could ever know through labels or concepts, because you sense there is a depth to that which we call flower and an aliveness to that which we call flower. That mystery that is not explained by the label flower at all, that mystery that is covered up by the label flower, and gives you the delusion that now you know what it is just a sound you made, a sound that has come out of your mouth or you have uttered the sound in your mind, and that gives you the delusion that you know what that is. Children are told that when they learn a language, the delusion is reinforced every time you tell a child that's called such and such, I have forgotten the names of flowers. What's that? Gladioli. This is a gladioli, if that's what it is. And the child will believe you. Dreadful. So what can you do to do? You tell a child, don't call it anything. That doesn't work either. But you might say to a child, well, look at it, smell it, touch it, look. And then as an afterthought, after thought, you can say, oh, by the way, we call it such and such. Instead of saying it is such and such, Then that creates some distance from the label so that the child doesn't totally believe in that label. Because then you get more and more trapped in concepts and labels until you reach the age of. Then finally, at 18, you're totally imprisoned. You've been through the system that has done it even more to you, and you're totally imprisoned in a conceptualized reality of mental labels that concern both the world around you. And they're all conditioning. All the surrounding culture has conditioned you with whatever mental labels they've put into you. And you inhabit a conceptualized reality, not knowing how dead your universe has become, how dead and deadened your reality has become. And you live equally in a conceptualized sense of self. You make yourself into mental concepts. And so this is the essence of not knowing who you are. That's the essence of this false self. Once you have a false self, nothing is seen as it is, and everything is misinterpreted through that conditioning. Everything is distorted and deadened through that conditioning. And that's how people live. And that is our entire civilization has come out of that. And is it surprising how mad the civilization is? Of course it's not surprising, considering the state of consciousness out of which it has come. So we are stepping out of the that the compulsion to label continuously. And so you move here, you walk through the gardens and along the river, and what arises is the state that is free of the need to label. And should a label arise in you as you walk, which is a thought, you recognize it as just a thought and not it. And then it arises and passes and you're back in just. And then perhaps another compulsive label comes, okay? And then somebody comes towards you on the path, walking, and some mental judgment comes in concerning the form of this being, and you recognize it as a thought no more. You no longer completely believe in it. You're not completely in it anymore. You allow that to be also. And then so gaps arise in which there are no labels, in which seemingly you no longer know anything. And that's why it's a little bit frightening for some people to enter that realm, because it seems at first as if you no longer knew. And how can I need to know what's going on here? I need to judge it in some way, classify it in some way. No. And you see how beautiful, powerful, intelligent and deep that state is of not labelling. And great intelligence operates here. But it is not the limited intelligence of the human mind. It's only a small aspect of the vastness of intelligence that ultimately you are. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation.