Eckhart TolleNYT Bestselling author of the Power of Now

Why Doing Meditation Makes You Miss Presence | Eckhart Tolle

11 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief monologue, Eckhart Tolle explains that the essential purpose of meditation is to cultivate presence, not to chase a future awakened state. He warns that many meditators mistakenly view meditation as a means to achieve a future condition, believing that increased effort will eventually bring enlightenment. This future‑oriented mindset, he argues, actually hinders the experience of the awakened state because the act of ‘doing’ meditation distracts from the very presence that constitutes that state, which he refers to as the realization of being.

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Meditation. If it works as it should. Ultimately, the purpose is, the aim is to be present while you meditate, not to seek some future condition. This is a fundamental mistake that meditators make is they imagine a future condition that they want to arrive at or achieve. And they think, if I just practice more and harder, I will eventually achieve that awakened state. And that belief is actually a hindrance, because then you are doing a meditation. And if you're doing a meditation, you miss the one thing that is the awakened state. And we could call that being, the realization of being.