The Little Things in Life

Now what you neglect then, and what you continuously overlook is all the small things that actually make up a vast percentage of your life, is all the little things that before are relegated to the periphery of your life. What are those little things? Well, whatever, for example, things that you handle in your life, things that you pick up and put there, and objects around you, the world around you. Walking, breathing, looking at the sky, looking at a tree, seeing, breathing in the air, looking at another human being, sensing their deeper aliveness. All the little things that constitute life. Even if you are a so called VIP in the eyes of the world, which is pretty meaningless, it's just a narrative and you go from one significant thing to another. But all the steps that you take, even if you get picked up in a limo, as I sometimes do when I go for a talk, the organizers send a limo. What a big car? Big, plenty of room in the back. That's a limo. And you can stretch your legs. So then it's just very little things. You walk to the car and you breathe and then you get in and you sit. Okay, well it's just you're sitting somewhere and breathing and looking, you're looking out of the window. And then you arrive at a venue and you take a few steps into the car and you sit again and then you walk onto the stage. It's all little things. And even whoever, if you are the Pope or the president of a huge corporation, or the president of a country, it's still the same. Life consists of small things, all the things that look at just your relationship with objects. This is usually overlooked because every object is treated as a means to an end. But if you live in a way that is more present, then the objects may still be a means to an end, but they are also giving just short attention. Just picking up a glass. There is pleasure in enjoyment in even just looking at a glass and the water and drinking. And to realize that most people realize that for the first time, if ever, when they take certain types of drug like acid, because it amplifies your sense perceptions and it shuts off your thinking mind. And then for the first time, you pick up a glass of water and you go, oh wow, so amazing, so amazing. I can't believe it. And it is. And then you drink and the taste is so incredible. It's water. It's amazing. It's liquid, alive. It's alive, it's liquid. No, I haven't taken acid before coming here. It's just giving it your fullest attention without interference of thinking, just awareness and all this, the. The background, then to that state of inner peace or contentment is all the aliveness of everything around you. When you pick up something, put it in your suitcase, pick up something else, fold it. That's a nice thing to do. Taking a fruit, maybe peeling it or biting into it. The present moment in its richness that is usually overlooked because you're looking for something more significant. But even the most significant thing, let's say you got the Nobel Prize can come to Oslo. I think there's one Nobel Prize that goes from. People come to Norway for the peace. So. And then you stand on the balcony of that hotel that overlooks the square, where the Parliament is. I think apparently that's where they go. And there you are. I've made it. You're just standing on a balcony, looking and breathing. Unless you live through and for a narrative in your mind that you completely believe in. And that becomes a conceptual sense of identity. I am such and such a person who has achieved this and that. And this is all the story, and that's me. And there's a big narrative that gives you your sense of identity, thought, movement. And then you feel bigger while you stand on this balcony. And then you feel deflated when you step off the balcony. Or let's say you're a pop star. What's the word that use? A rock star. That's. Millions of people say, wow, wouldn't it be great? Especially youngsters, wouldn't it be great to be a rock star? You can do anything. And people. And of course they experience this in a magnified way. They go on stage and energy moves through them and then they walk off stage and they are regarded as gods by all these. By the audience. And they go, let me only touch you. I hope nobody does that to me, but let me only just touch you, they say to the rock star. And the rock star then having, in most cases not that much awareness, they feel they are more and more like a God because they believe in the narrative that all these unconscious people have mentally manufactured for them. And then they begin to believe in it and that then there comes the huge conflict or discrepancy when they go off the stage and they sit in the green room or somewhere. Where am I now? And then they have to take drugs because what happens, There's a sense of lack, returns much more strongly than ever before, a sense of lack and insufficiency. So I need another fix, a drug, or I need to smash up my hotel suite. That's what they do, rock stars, apparently. And that enhances their sense of self a little bit more. So people live for. Many people live for something that's going to happen in the future. Of course, you may succeed in your endeavors. This is a nice thing, but it's not going to give you long lasting and ultimate fulfillment or tell you who you actually are. It's fine to achieve things, especially if they are beneficial, but for humanity and the totality on the planet, it's lovely to have that, but they don't even. That doesn't make up your identity.