The Most Important Thing in Our Lives | Eckhart Tolle

Reality itself as you perceive it, goes through the filter of your mental emotional conditioning from the past. Now, the non conceptual dimension of consciousness, as we could call it, is already emerging in most of you. And that is about the most important thing that could happen in a person's life, which is the emergence of a deeper dimension of consciousness. I would say that this is what Jesus referred to when he was talking to Mary in the parable of Mary and Martha. And just to quote one brief sentence of just a few words, he said to Martha, only one thing is needed. Only one thing is needed. My translation of that is there's only one thing in life that is of absolute importance. And everything else may also be important, but it is of relative importance. So all the things that happen in your life and in the world may all be important, some more important than others. Your entire life situation, everybody has one and everybody's life situation is somewhat, if not very problematic. You know, you're not the only one. So there's that. There is all the things that happen. Your financial situation, your health situation, your relationship situation, your work situation, your living situation. Yes, these things matter, relatively speaking. But there's one thing that is more important that matters absolutely. And that is your state of consciousness and whether or not you have awakened to what we could call. It sounds a little abstract, but it's not. We could call the transcendent dimension of consciousness in you. The transcendent dimension of consciousness. Now, now, I'm not going to immediately define what that means because actually it cannot be defined. It can be pointed to. This is what these words are for, but these words are not a substitute for it. The words point, famous phrase in Buddhism, it's the finger pointing to the moon. But the finger is not the moon. So there's nothing that I say tonight that you need to believe on a conceptual level. I'm not asking you to believe anything whatsoever. There is what I sometimes call the two levels of consciousness, the conceptual. I sometimes call that object consciousness. These are all the things that happen in your perceptual field and in your mental field. Thinking, emotions, sense perceptions, things arise, things pass away, things come and go. Sense perceptions, ideas, thoughts, opinions, feelings, emotions, all belong to object consciousness. One object after another happens. You perceive things. Ah, there and then thought objects arise continuously, a stream of thoughts. Now, for most people, the stream of thoughts has such a gravitational pull that they get completely dragged along by this continuously proliferating stream of mental activity. I sometimes call it the voice in the head. It never stops speaking. It continuously comments on where you are what you're doing, or takes you somewhere completely different in the so called past or the so called future. One thing after another, one damn thing after another. To paraphrase Churchill, Churchill was talking about history. History is one damn thing after another. And that's true. But for many people, their conditioned mind, the experience of their conditioned mind is just one damn thing after another, because it never leaves you alone. So most humans who are not awakened, or even awakening are completely trapped in their object consciousness. They are confined by it. And not only that, they are completely identified with all the arising thoughts and emotions that continuously go through their mind. And there's no separation between the thoughts and the emotions that accompany the thoughts. And you, you're not even there when you're totally identified with the voice in the head. You are, spiritually speaking, asleep, or another word for it is unconscious. So an unconscious person. In ordinary usage, unconscious means, of course, you've completely lost, you don't know what's going on. And this is unconscious. In conventional usage, unconscious means. In spiritual usage, unconscious means completely and continuously identified with the stream of thinking and the emotions that go with the stream of thinking. What does it mean to be identified? It means you derive your sense of who you are from every, from the stream thinking. Every thought is imbued with a sense of self. So you're identified, it gets, has you in its grasp. And therefore, if you people conventionally say I think, I think, what do you think? As if thinking for most people wear a voluntary activity, whereas for most, not you, but those who are not awakening yet, which is a majority of the population still on the planet, for most, that is, they are completely identified with a stream of thinking. They are, spiritually speaking, unconscious. And that is a terrible thing, because then everything that you perceive, reality itself as you perceive it, goes through the filter of your mental emotional conditioning from the past. So you never see anything as it is, perceive anything clearly. And most importantly, there is never a sense of inner, true inner peace, spaciousness, joy, sense of aliveness, sense of connectedness with something that is deeper than your historical person. You are always at the mercy of what goes on out there and the reactive patterns of your mind. So you are completely unaware of the possibility of realizing the other dimension of consciousness, which is not object consciousness, but space consciousness. I call it sometimes space consciousness. Realizing the other dimension of consciousness, which is not object consciousness, but space consciousness. I call it sometimes space consciousness. Now, what is space consciousness? You cannot define it because it's beyond concepts. You can know what space consciousness is in this very moment, by becoming aware of the gaps between words, when I speak, I'm just slowing down a little bit. So instead of being totally interested in the words, you're also interested in, although that's probably not the right word, you're also giving attention to the empty spaces between the words because they are needed. Without the spaces, there could be no sounds. The sound needs the space to exist. Oh, that's interesting. To be aware of the gaps between words. Or in this room, in this hall, to be aware not only of the objects in this room, the objects that make up this room, what's in it, the bodies, the objects, that which confines and defines the room. The ceiling, the walls, the floor. This is the room. You're not only aware of that. That would be, in this analogy, object consciousness. You're also aware of the space in this room. Now, the space isn't something that you say, oh, it's there, or it's there, but it is. The most important part about. Of this room is the space. And it's a wonderful space, but you cannot define it. It has no actual. You can't even say that space exists because exist means to manifest, to stand out. Exist ex means out, from Latin. Exist means to be manifested. But space doesn't manifest. It enables everything to manifest in the physical realm. Without space, these things could not be here. So space is prior to existence. Space is prior to manifestation. And that's very interesting. So there is something in you, something which I sometimes call space consciousness. That is prior to who you are as a person, your personality. And you can know it, not conceptually, but immediately and experientially. By becoming aware either of the spaciousness outside of you or becoming aware of spaces between sounds, spaces between words. Now, how do you do that? How do you become aware of a space between two words? There is no how because it's too simple for how. Quite simply, there's an attention in you, a field of alert attention. And this field of alert attention is aware of the space between words. You notice that silent space. What does it mean to notice that silent space? It means in this brief moment of noticing or noticing the space in this room, in this brief moment, you're not thinking. You're just aware, thinking through thinking. You cannot be aware of those spaces between words because thinking is object consciousness. The space between words takes you to space consciousness. So the entire secret of our gathering here, of all spirituality, is just one thing. Now, amazingly, I'm going to talk about this one thing for hours. It.