What Is Meditation? with Eckhart Tolle

To meditate successfully. The idea that you are doing a meditation can be quite an obstacle. So maybe that's the first thing we can get rid of tonight. The preconceptions and the expectations that come with that term. So why did we call it guided meditation? Well, we had to use some word to get you here. Meditation is usually something that you do among many other things. Doing implies all kinds of things. It implies time, even future to some extent. And yet true meditation, if you even want to call it that, and it's better not to call it anything, is not to do with doing. It's not a doing. It's the realization that you are of being, which underlies all doing, is prior to all doing. Thoughts, emotions. Is prior to that, the simple realization, not the realization who you are, because there can be so many perspectives on that. Not the realization how you fit into the totality of the cosmos, how that seemingly little life, fleeting existence, fits into the totality somewhere. Not realizing how I fit into the whole is impossible to comprehend, but an alignment with the totality without the need to mentally understand anything. A realization. The simple realization that you are, which is expressed in the sublime words I am. And if you have missed elementary grammar at school, you might not realize that I am is the first person singular of the verb to be. You think it's two completely different words. The realization that you are not as a concept, but as a deeper sensing of the life that you are the aliveness, the life. And something helpful to realize that is to pretend for one moment that there is no past and no future. I'm saying pretend so that everybody is still with me. If I said. If I said there is no past and future, some of you might suddenly start thinking, just a second. Aren't you going to sign books in an. And the moment you go into thinking, you're off into the realm of mind, the realm of things, object, objects in consciousness. Every thought is an object in consciousness, and every thought has a pulling power. So it arises and it pulls your attention in and you start thinking, okay, but there is. I came here half an hour ago. There must be a past. Not realizing. Of course, when you came here, it was the present moment. And when the books are going to be signed, it will be the present moment because there is nothing else. Okay, but no need to believe that. Let's pretend. Let's pretend for a moment that there is no past and future. Or let's just say past and future become peripheral to you, who you are. There's only this. That is the entry point into the realization I am.