The Importance of Conscious Breathing | Eckhart Tolle

Just to remind you, as I'm sure everybody knows, a quick way of dropping out of thought is to take a conscious breath, which means in and out. Conscious breath means what? Conscious breath means you observe the inflow and the outflow not visually, but with your internal attention. Some people may put their point of observation the nostrils, but it's probably best to observe the inflow of the air, in other words, to feel it. So you feel yourself breathing, you're doing it anyway, but usually it's unconscious. If you had to remember to breathe, of course, you would die very quickly. Oh, I forgot. Too late. So conscious means your attention is there. Your attention then follows the breath as it moves into the body and you feel that and it follows the breath as it moves out. That is the one conscious breath, in and out. And immediately your attention has disentangled itself from thought consciousness. So that's how you can discover inner space immediately. Even one conscious breath myth means one in, one out. That's one breath takes about. Who knows how long it takes 15 seconds, whatever. 10 seconds? 10 depends on the length of your breath. You don't need to particularly make it very long or any different. The body is doing it anyway. You're just observing what's happening anyway. And you will find if you're really there, if you are there with your attention at the beginning of the breath and the middle of the breath and the end of the breath, and again the middle of the out breath and the end of the out breath, you're not thinking. So if you're real, if your attention is really there, you can't think at the same time. That's why it's such a wonderful meditation tool or method. Of course it's recommended as a meditation method. Some people practice it for an hour. I'm saying here you can intersperse your life with mini meditations consisting of one or two conscious breaths. Those are mini meditations you can do anywhere, wherever you are. And that means every time that you do that, you're not thinking. If you're thinking, you're not observing your breath. It's as simple as that. So, and it's an interesting thing to observe that in yourself. When you are. When there is breath awareness, there's no thinking. When there's thinking, there's no breath awareness. So it's a very simple way of. Especially at night, when your mind is telling me you absolutely need to think about your problems now. 3 o' clock in the morning. And if you don't think about your problems now, your life is going to collapse very soon. Don't believe every thought that comes into your head. Then say, okay, let's say, let's take a conscious breath. And then immediately you notice a shift in consciousness because you stepped out of thinking. And that will feel so good that you might want to take another one. And it's not a drug, it's not another fix. A drug usually quickly takes you below thinking, but the awareness that we talk about here takes you above thinking. It requires an alertness. There are certain similarities, of course, between the state below thinking and the state above thinking. But there are huge differences too. The state below thinking is the state of the. In human terms, a simpleton, a person who is so simple that his or her mind is not creating any problems yet, just enjoying things as they come just a little enjoy eating and drinking. And just like the hobbit in the. And they're lovely, lovable creatures. They haven't got an ego yet, or just a very rudimentary ego because they haven't been totally absorbed by thinking. So they are in a deeper state of connectedness with being than the mind absorbed person. That's why they can perform important tasks that the more intelligent people cannot perform. Because the fool, this is a traditional mythological figure of the fool, very important in different mythologies, has certain powers that the more advanced people don't have. So often the important task is given to the fool to perform. Because this of course, is not made explicit. I'm saying it now because there's an intuitive knowing that the fool is more deeply connected with the source of life and of being. He's not totally lost in thinking yet, but you don't want to become a fool again. We're here as the awareness of thought means there's an alertness. You rise above thinking. There are some similarities. One is that you're not creating unnecessary problems anymore like the fool, but you've risen above. There's a much deeper knowing there. There's the same state of connectedness. But Uma, you've been through thinking and you are still able to use the tool of thinking without being used by it. That's an enormous step forward in evolution. But to an external observer, sometimes the fool and the so called awakened human, they can't tell the difference because they both look very simple. They go and so there are stories about some Zen masters when they had visitors. Occasionally they mistook them for. There was one visitor arrived to see a famous den master, and there was a person working in the garden. And he said, where's your master? And said, in there, in that room. And when he got into that room, the same gardener was sitting on the chair of the master and said, what are you doing on his chair? You're the. And then it turned out that the garden looked so simple. He was the master. And often, a long time ago there was this TV series about kung fu with Karen D. What Karen? David Carrandine. That was very well done because the main character was often. That was part of the attraction of watching it. The main character was often mistaken for somebody weak and totally ineffective because he always had no ego. So he moved in very simple. He just had a bamboo flute or something he carried with him. And he always get. And then he met these huge egos. He would visit tech places like Texas, where they have. The egos are even bigger than can be. Not necessarily, but. And then the con. The meeting of this person with. Who took him to be a fool. And only in moments when suddenly action was required, this. This befell being would suddenly enormous energy would flow into him. And so to defeat the. The evil people, whoever they were, but the particular episode. And suddenly the energy would flow through his body and he would go. And then immediately would go. There's no. There's no ego that said I did it. Not immediately. No identification with this action. Immediately going back to your presence as if nothing had happened. So the person who did, the director or script writer must have had some insights into the state of egolessness. So unconscious breath out. Breath. And you rise above thinking. You don't become stupid. You don't need to fear that you don't become stupid when you're not thinking. You actually connect with a more powerful intelligence that can then use thought when it's needed. You only become stupid when you're not thinking. When you're drifting off into sleep or unconsciousness. It's a state of relative torpor, or whatever the word is. So when you get tired, a certain torpor, if that's the right word, comes over you and you go to. And you're not thinking anymore. That yes, there perhaps you're moving towards a certain state that could be called stupid. But this is very different. You rise above thinking and that is actually you're connecting with that deeper intelligence that is consciousness itself, the unconditioned consciousness. And then as you make that your habitual place where you dwell, your mind can actually work more effectively because it can be used by that. Because you have developed it already. You developed it, it became an ego and now you transcend it, which means you don't leave it behind completely. It's still there to be used effectively. But you cannot use the mind effectively as long as the mind is using you. Then you have an imposter pretending to be you and thinking all kinds of thoughts according to its conditioning, which have nothing to do with you. It's the conditioned thoughts. They're conditioned by your upbringing, by your environment, by the culture you grew up in, and so on. And so all this continuous stream of thinking that is invested with a sense of self takes over and pretends to be a person. Well, basically, that's what a so called person kind of is. Conditioned thought activity that is in that has a sense of self in it. As the Buddha already explained all these things. And that self is an illusion. It's the same self that Jesus tells us to deny. Deny thyself the illusory self that the Buddha said doesn't even exist. Anatta no self I'll take a so remember the breath many times during the day, and that may take you into also you begin to feel your body more easily. As you take a conscious breath or two, and you feel the inner aliveness in the body, you can take your attention also directly into the body. It's another way related to breath, because breath takes your attention into the body, but you can focus on the body more. So that's another way of taking attention out of thought. So if you think you can't, your mind won't leave you alone. I just cannot stop thinking. I must. This is not true. That's just another thought that tells you you can't do it. So if you believe that thought, then that becomes true for you. But if you realize that thought that I can't do it, I have too much on my mind, or whatever expression you use, I have too much on my plate. Which means your mind can't do it now, maybe a little later. Oh, of course, it never comes with a moment when your mind tells you, okay, now you can stop thinking, but you can so attention in the body, immediately you step out. It can be a choice. There's enough awareness in you to have the choice. There are still millions on the planet whose awareness is not developed enough to even have a choice as far as their inner state is concerned. So they are totally, totally run by their conditioning, total, totally conditioned entities. So to tell them that they have a choice would be wrong. They don't. You need to come to a place where there's already a certain degree of awareness. There's already, to a limited degree, you have separated from thinking and realize there's an aware space and there's my thoughts. Then you begin to have a choice. And ultimately, of course, everything you express in language is a limited perspective. It's never the entire truth. So whenever anything, anybody says anything, it can never be the complete truth. You always have to look at other perspectives too. When I say you have a choice, this is what it appears to be, and it's a useful and helpful perspective. Ultimately, you are not separate from the totality of consciousness. So I might as well say then consciousness chooses to express itself through you. But to you it looks as if you had a choice. But you are consciousness. Let's not confuse it too much, because language can complicate things excessively. And don't demand an ultimate explanation, some ultimate truth to be expressed through concepts. Concepts can only point. The famous finger pointing to the moon. The Buddhists talk about the finger pointing to the moon. Now, usually your dog will think when you point somewhere, the dog will usually look at your finger. I've heard there are some dogs who already are advanced enough to look beyond the finger. I haven't met any yet. So when there's spiritual teaching, when you take a statement and believe in the statement, rather than go to where the statement points, then that's mistaking the finger for the moon. There is still. For example, I say the stillness is already in you. It's just covered up by mental noise. And then somebody could come and say, I believe that the stillness is already in me. I believe that completely. Yes, but have you tasted it? No, I just believe it. It's not enough that it's mistaking the finger for the moon.