True Gratitude Beyond Thought | Eckhart Tolle on Attention and Awareness (Part 1)

The mind may tell you, oh, I should be happy because look at all those other people, they are far worse off than me, so I should be happy. So the mind tries to convince you to feel good about yourself. Or the mind reads something about gratitude and says, oh, I really should be grateful because look at all those people who are worse off than me. These people are very old and I'm still relatively okay, not that old. And look at those people who are all ill and I'm still relatively worth. And all these people, the poor people around the world, I really should be happy and grateful. That's trying to arrive at something that you cannot really arrive at through thinking via thought. So the only thing that can make you feel a little bit better about yourself is to say that others are worse off than you. Then you're depending on others being worse off than you to give you a sense of little bit of happiness. So some people do try to arrive at gratitude in that way, but that's not the true way. And that you can't really. There's no depth to that. You don't need any comparison. For gratitude to arrive, there needs to be a moment of no thought. And with that moment of no thought, there comes an appreciation of whatever it is that arises in this moment. An appreciation that has nothing to do with conceptual thinking. Although at some point conceptual thought may come in, and then at some point it might say, oh, what a lovely sky, or what a lovely human being he or she is, or some comment about beauty. At some point that may come in. But the true gratitude and appreciation are really the same thing. They're synonymous. A Buddhist asked me, you talk about gratitude, but I don't believe in God. So who am I grateful to? Because obviously Buddhists don't talk about God or believe in God. Of course, some Buddhists may try to be grateful to the Buddha, oh, thank you Buddha, for this. But that's not it. You simply, in that state when there's no thought, there is an appreciation of the aliveness of the life that inhabits all forms, even inanimate life forms. There's an alert attention, and with that you perceive and you hear. Do you listen? Look, there's an innocence of perception in which you're not judging at all, you're just appreciating. You give attention, and that giving of attention is the most precious thing you can bring into this world. That's really what you're here for. You're here to bring consciousness into this dimension. So when you give attention, which is not thought, you give Attention, then consciousness flows into this dimension from some other place, some other dimension, so to speak. So you bring from the unmanifested the source, you bring that into this dimension. And that is the real purpose of human existence, is to be the channel or the opening for consciousness. You're here to bring consciousness. And consciousness is the light of God, the light of the divine. That's why it's sometimes called the light of consciousness. So you're really a channel for that transcendent dimension, the divine to come. It's better to come into this dimension and thereby transforming it. Not you doing anything. You're not thinking, I am going to transform the world. No, the I that thinks it has to do something is not needed here. And then it happens. So primarily it's not so. And the shift that happens when you realize that is that your purpose, your life purpose in any situation is not really the surface of that situation. Whatever is happening there. There's always. There's a deeper and true purpose in any situation that it's very easy to forget that. So that you believe that what really matters is the actual situation that you're dealing with. Your life situation, your whatever it is, your relationship, what. Any situation that arises in the present moment, any challenge or whatever it is you do for a living, the work you do, you think I'm doing it in order to achieve that through it or not? Well, yes, but that is. That is the relative purpose. But the true absolute purpose is never that. It's to bring to be the bringer of consciousness into that situation. And whenever you're being challenged particularly, it's easy to forget that. And then you think, this is what matters, dealing with it on the surface level, or the primary question needs to be what is my state of consciousness? And are you able to bring that attention no matter what happens in your life, face it with an outflow of attention, and then thinking can happen afterwards if it's needed. It then comes from a different place and will be more intuitive, more inspired, more fresh, more adequate. Right. For that particular situation rather than old conditioned thinking. So the primary thing is, are you able to dwell in that state where attention can move through you consciousness? So no matter what your life purpose is for you as a person on a personal level, you do whatever it is you do. It may be important in the eyes of the world, or it may be not important in the eyes of the world, but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is what state of consciousness you bring to it. And then something that may be unimportant in the eyes of the world may be more important if you bring consciousness to it than a so called VIP doing what he or she does in the state of unconsciousness. So it is sometimes it's even what written values are reversed when you look deeply that a person who is maybe doing a menial job, so called maybe may make a more important contribution to human consciousness than somebody who is in VIP and totally absorbed in the mind and in reactivity. And Kunti really a continuation of the problem making in other or in Eastern terms, producing more karma. And so, of course, in conventional terms, the VIP makes a more important contribution. But in reality, the person who may not be recognized by the world as important may actually be making a more important contribution. So it's in any situation then what really matters is not the situation, but your state of consciousness that you bring to it. Sa.