Welcome to the Present Moment | 20 Minute Meditation with Eckhart Tolle

Foreign welcome to the present moment. So to start with, let's just become aware of the present moment. And that has. That can have two or three steps. You can go deeper into the present moment. Or you can just begin to be aware of it. Step one is always, well, you could say remembering that the present moment is life itself. And it's all you ever have. And if you forget that, you live in a kind of hypnotic trance. Which is how most people live. Entranced by their thoughts and emotions. And a sense of self derived from the conditioned thinking. And the emotional conditioning. That's normal existence. And so you're not present. Your attention is absorbed by the conditioning. Mental emotional conditioning. And the egoic self. Which arises when you mistake the conditioning for who you are. So it often starts with remembering or, oh, the present moment. And then first your attention goes to sense perceptions. That's usually when you realize you had been lost in the mind. And suddenly your attention comes into the present moment. And first it means an awareness of sense perception. And suddenly you look around as if you had just arrived in that place. Because you have. If you've been absorbed in the usual problem making, anticipating, remembering, regretting that kind of mind activity. When you then first become aware of your surroundings. It's like as if you were arriving here after a prolonged absence. It could be your familiar room. But you never really looked at it anymore. Just peripherally, but. And suddenly you become aware of each thing. The table, the chair, the plants, the walls. Without having to name them. I'm naming them because I'm directing your attention to them. You become aware of whatever is there. And there's the silent presence of each thing. That's already an enormous shift in consciousness. It's already the beginning of a shift in consciousness. Become aware of the silent presence of things. And the whole problem making activity of the mind subsides. And you realize that at this moment there is no problem. You don't have a problem at this moment. But if you do, then you go and deal with it. But usually you don't unless the mind manufactures it. So it's quite a wonderful thing to become aware of. Let's say you're in your room, in a room. Become aware of the presence of each thing. And briefly acknowledge its presence. Without any mental activity. You just become aware of, comfortable with those things. And there's almost a kind of appreciation of everything. And then you take in the totality of the place where you are. You might not be in a room, you might be outside. It doesn't matter if you are Outside, then your attention goes out to whatever is there, whether they are man made objects or natural objects doesn't really matter. Of course, natural things are more conducive to taking you into that presence. Because there's no thought associated with a tree or flower, or the grass or the sky or the clouds. But even looking at a car or a house or traffic flowing, you just acknowledge the isness of all things that you are perceiving around you. And that is comforting. And it already frees you to some extent from the heavy burden of being a person, a personality, a me. There's a heaviness to that. If that's only if that's all you know about you, then it's heavy. You carry around the baggage of me and my problems. And already just allowing your attention to dwell on each thing that surrounds you already to some extent frees you from the heaviness of the conditioned person. And then you become aware also, not just of each thing, you become aware also of the totality of that place where you happen to be. If it's a room, you become aware of the totality of the room without focusing specifically on one thing. Just take in the wholeness of it. And if you're outside the same, become aware of the totality of your surroundings as a single whole. So there's two ways of being aware. You can place attention on individual things and as much as you can, without needing to label it, just attention, just taking it in, just noticing it. Appreciation sometimes comes with it naturally. So this is the first step in becoming present. That's already for some people, that's all. They might not go any deeper. And that already is a liberation. When they remember, they can go to that place where this, the non problematic present moment, then you also become aware of sounds. Of course, that becomes part of your experience of the present moment. It's not only what you see, it's also what you hear. So there may be sounds, little sounds, big sounds. And again you become aware. And in the same way that you give attention to a table or chair or tree, you give your attention to the sounds that arise. And most sounds come and go. They. They suddenly come up out of nothingness and then they disappear. Whatever it may be a child screaming or shouting, or dog barking, or human voice or car passing by, or motorbike or bird or gust of wind or raindrops, whatever. Most sounds come and go. So they arise and they subside. And again, there's an attention there. And again, natural sounds, yes, they can take you more easily into presence. Than man made sounds. Because man made sounds can more easily stimulate thought. But that's fine. So there's visual. So you're becoming free of the heavy me. And something arises that is just an aware presence. That aware presence is aware of these things around you that you perceive with your senses. And the next thing is you become aware of the fact that you are breathing. Very calming in itself. So if you had, if you are sitting in a room like here and now, you become aware of the things in the room, the totality of the room, any sounds that may be there and the fact that you're breathing, it's a kind of peace descends because the problem making entity has temporarily gone away and something else has taken its place. We could say. So that possibility is always there when life becomes heavy, or if you feel there's a heaviness to life, a burden, or it's. I'm close to a nervous breakdown. I don't know what to do anymore. I just can't cope anymore. Okay, so then look around where you are. Oh, where's the nervous breakdown now you're breathing, you're listening, you're seeing everything. So it's liberating how you can see how liberating the present moment is and how it's the entry point into something else. And as I said, for some people, that's already enough. Developing the ability to step out of, especially out of excessive and unnecessary problem, making mind activity and becoming comfortable with, appreciative of whatever is here now. And then you realize why some artists choose as their subject matter not the extraordinary things of life. But some artists choose very ordinary things and paint them an ordinary chair, an ordinary table, an ordinary landscape, or just a normal, just ordinary tree. Because the artist looked at that and gave it his or her fullest attention. And then he saw or she saw that there is something in the most ordinary thing, even the most ordinary table or chair or landscape, There is something there that you cannot name or define. One could almost say there is more there than meets the eye. And the artist realized that. And that's why he then or she picked up a brush and painted this thing that he wants to show on the canvas. His or her perception of it, that added dimension that you cannot define or name. There's something to it that's more than meets the eye, even the small, simple thing. And then if the artist is successful, some are, some are not. Some become successful after they are dead. At some point the painting may be in a gallery and then the people come and look at the painting of that old chair so powerful. But they would never look at an old chair in real life. In the old chair itself. They don't look at. But they look at the painting of the old chair. But the real purpose of art, or if not purpose, how art can be, contemplation of art can be helpful and beneficial, is it shows you what is possible. A perception that is possible, a deeper perception of things. So if you look at an ordinary landscape in a painting. And you realize there is a depth there, then perhaps next time you find yourself in an ordinary landscape. You look at it with new eyes. Not labeling it, but giving it your fullest attention. And that's the present moment. Of course, it's an aspect of the present moment. And that's really what your life consists of. There is nothing else but all the things that arise around you as you go through life. And the miraculous nature of it and the mysterious nature of it. If you miss all that, you miss the entire thing. You might as well not have come here. The aliveness of it all. And then to go a little deeper if you want, then you're not only aware of all those things that you perceive with your senses. You become aware also of an aliveness in your body. That's not really a sense perception anymore. Because you don't see it, you don't hear it. You don't smell it, taste it, touch it. You become aware of it in some other way. The simple fact that the body is alive. It.