The Power of the Present Moment and Conscious Living | Eckhart Tolle

Ultimately, their opinion, they are beginning to defend their identity. Sense of identity is derived from the movement of thought. And so whenever somebody questions something that's connected with your thinking, it is regarded as an attack on your identity. Why not start with a good spiritual practice, especially for people in the back rows? And it may sound a little bit funny, but it's actually a very powerful spiritual practice. And that is to become aligned with the present moment. Obviously, this is. I'm Mr. Now, so I'm talking about the present moment. Become aligned with the present moment and refrain from complaining, for example, that you are too far away mentally. Very powerful spiritual practice. So then you become okay with the isness of things. And the isness of things happens always in the present moment. You might have noticed nothing ever happens that's not now. One could almost say the word happen must imply present moment. And most people completely underestimate the incredible importance of. Of the present moment and of living in a harmonious relationship with the present moment. And you would be surprised how many people in this world live almost constantly in an antagonistic relationship with the present moment. And that, of course, causes a lot of unnecessary suffering and unhappiness. So one of the most important things in life to be aware of is your relationship, so to speak, with the present moment. And this is now, of course, is the present moment welcomed or appreciated or at least accepted for the way it is, because it already is the way it is. That's the weird thing about the present moment. It's already the way it is. No matter how you argue in their mind with it, the isness of things is already the case. And that's all there ever is in your entire life. Your entire life. This is not something to just understand intellectually, but to grasp at a deeper level. Your entire life unfolds in the present moment. That's all there ever is. That's all there ever is, is this moment. And most people live as if some future moment, whether it's a minute from now or tomorrow or next year, they live as if some future moment were always more important than this moment. That is implied. They don't tell themselves, oh, the next moment is more important than this one. No, it's an assumption, an underlying assumption. It's a mindset. And that mindset is a form of conditioning, cultural conditioning. That mindset, by implication, if not literally, always says, there's something more important coming, and I'm on my way to it. And that is a dysfunctional way to live because you're never fully alive. You never feel at home, you're always looking for your home in some future moment, or when you get old enough and you realize there's little future left, then you think about the past more than the next moment. This is why many old people talk continuously about the past. So coming into alignment with the present moment brings about a shift in consciousness. And this is so simple and yet so profound now. And this shift in consciousness is what our evening here together is all about. It is about a transformation of consciousness in you. And the reason why you are here, most of you, is that this transformation of consciousness is already happening. It's a process for most people. It's already happening in you. And you are here because you know that this. Or you hope that this is an opportunity for deepening this shift in consciousness or accelerating the shift in consciousness. There are other terms we could use. We could say it is about an awakening of consciousness. It is about a spiritual awakening. And this is a term that in several spiritual traditions is used and has been used for a long time. The term of awaken, which implies that the ordinary, the normal state of consciousness of most human beings is a kind of dreamlike state. It is a kind of sleep. But people, if you tell that to somebody, says, what are you talking about, dream? I'm completely awake. This is just nonsense. And then I might say, have you noticed that there is a voice in your head that almost never stops talking and commenting and analyzing and interpreting and judging and liking and disliking. And all the time it talks and talks, it's in your head. And if you talk out aloud and there's nobody there, then you're crazy. But it's in your head and it talks about you, about other people. It has comments about things, a lot about the future, sometimes totally imaginary things that are going to go wrong. Especially at 3 o' clock in the morning when you're in a warm bed, you can start thinking about all the things that are going to go wrong in your life. And that's the voice in the head. And. And most people are so identified with the voice that they become the voice. They become the compulsive, almost obsessive thoughts that continuously roll through their heads. And if I say to somebody you are not awake, they say, what the hell are you talking about? And I say, that's it. That's the voice that keeps you asleep. Identification with that voice is a kind of hypnotic trance that you live in on a daily basis. What the voice says varies from person to person, from culture to culture. It's the conditioned Mind. And the way the mind has been conditioned. Depends on the surrounding culture that you grow up in. If you had grown up in a totally different part of the world, somewhere in Africa or in Asia or Saudi Arabia or South America, you would have different types of thought. Not all of them would be different. But there's a different type of conditioning that goes with that particular culture. But what everybody has in common, no matter what the voice says, is that they are identified with the voice. Which means apart from the voice. They are not there. Apart. They are the voice. They are their mental positions. You notice it, for example, when you start discussing something with someone. And you have a disagreement. Which happens very quickly, of course, when you start talking to somebody. And then quickly you find something to disagree with. And you then might notice in the other person. It's always easier to notice the unconscious in the other person. You might notice in the other person defensiveness and aggression arising. And emotion arises. They're getting upset because you are questioning their opinion, their viewpoint, which they don't even know it's a viewpoint. To them, it's the truth. That's how it is. And you question it. And they are beginning to defend, not ultimately their opinion. They are beginning to defend their identity. Because identity is bound up with thought. Identity, sense of identity, is derived from the movement of thought. And so whenever somebody questions something that's connected with your thinking. Very quickly it is regarded unconsciously. Of course, this is why we call that the unconscious state. It is regarded as an attack on your identity. It's almost as if somebody was physically attacking you. And of course, in some cases, in very unconscious people. Even a disagreement can lead to physical violence. Incredible. So the voice in the head is what most people derive their sense of self from. All the people who are not yet at least beginning to awaken out of that voice. And so that is, in the larger context for this, is that the evolution of human beings. And the evolution of the consciousness of human beings has not come to an end. Humans are not yet a finished product. They are a work in progress. If they were a finished product, that would be very sad and a terrible tragedy. If you look at human history up to now, is that the best you can do? It would be a tragic thing. Then you say, well, God must have made a huge mistake to create beings that create so much unnecessary suffering for themselves and for other human beings. That they kill each other by the millions, millions and millions. Just read the first history of the first half of the 20th century. It's insane. And that is the manifestation of the unconscious state on a collective level. And then you have the manifestation of the unconscious state of consciousness on a personal level. So on a collective, it might manifest as violence between nations and so on. But the same mechanism is at work when two people are having an argument and they are beginning to hate each other because they have different opinions. You'd be surprised how many people, when somebody expresses an opinion that conflicts with theirs, whether it's political or religious, whatever kind, political is a good example. Somebody questions their viewpoint and immediately they have an emotional meltdown and the other is no longer a human being. The other becomes the enemy. And this has been going on for thousands of years. But of course, now, with the miraculous arrival of advanced technology called the Internet, this dysfunction that is in every human being, that makes other human beings into enemies because they hold different mental positions, now you can get on your keyboard and send out your hatred towards all these dreadful people who have different opinions from yours, and then you feel satisfied and you don't know that you are completely unconscious. Spiritually speaking, Unconscious is that complete identification with a conditioned mind and the emotions that accompany the conditioned mind. And it's the now complete identification with the conditioned mind is what, in spiritual terms, we call the ego. The ego is a very simple definition, the unobserved mind, Complete identification with the mind is your egoic identity. And for millions of people on the planet, that is who they are, not who they are, but who they think they are. Now, that's an amazing thing. So that is, it's been an evolutionary development in human consciousness. The ability to think was an amazing development in human consciousness. It's, of course, bound up with the arising of language, the ability to think. It was not a mistake. It was an incredible step forward in the evolution of human consciousness and has created civilizations and so on. But there is a heavy price to pay, as there always is in this world of polarities. There's a heavy, very heavy price to pay for the power to think, the ability to think. And that is that gradually your entire sense of self, your sense of who you are, becomes bound up with thinking. And this happened over a long period of time. At first, humans started to think. From time to time, they were surprised. Some anthropologists believe that when humans first started to think and use language, they do happen. At the same time, they were surprised that suddenly there was a voice in their heads talking, and they thought a God, some God was talking to them. And so they heard this voice go and kill these dreadful people in the other tribe, ok? And so, but you may Know that in many ancient cultures, there's a mythological tale of called the Golden Age. You have it in India, you have it in the beginning of the Old Testament, the Garden of Eden, other cultures, as if there were some distant memory in human consciousness, in the collective consciousness of something, a state a long, long time ago that was lost. And that is the myth of the Golden Age. And this, of course, some people say that's a complete fantasy, that something humans are longing. Or some people might say, oh, it's a long longing to return to the womb before you were born, and so on. Or it could be, as I believe, an actual distant memory of a state that humans lost. And that was the state of connectedness with the totality, connectedness with being, to have the ability to be rooted in the being of yourself. And that is, of course, how everything in nature still has that. When you look at a tree, if you really look at a tree, really sense the presence of the tree, the beingness of the tree, then you can sense that the tree is not only rooted in the soil, but the tree also rests in itself. It is very still. When you really give yourself a moment and contemplate a tree without formulating words about it, concepts about it, just be with it, then you can sense that the tree exists in this field of deep stillness. It just is. If the tree could speak, it would probably just utter the ancient sound of ancient India, which is. That's the. Oh, by the way, just a little aside, as you know, the languages that we speak in Europe are called Indo European languages. And there's a link with Sanskrit, the ancient language of India. And it is my personal theory that the English word home is related to the aum sound. And because home, the deepest meaning of home, is not your external home, the deepest meaning of home is to be rooted in the being of yourself. It.