Overcome Mental Barriers NOW! | Secrets to Awakening with Eckhart Tolle

Hello, Believe Nation, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves, and my sincere hope is that if you see in yourself what I see in you, you'll be able to change the planet. So to help you on your journey today, we're gonna learn from bestselling author Eckhart Tolle and my take on his Top 10 Rules for Success Volume 2. Rule number 4 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. Also, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired by it as well. And if you leave it within the first couple hours of this video going live, you have a chance to win one of two daily prizes.

I need my story. All the things that my— I, I've been telling myself in my mind about myself and other people and my and my relatives and my coworkers and my ex-wife and my ex-husband, and what people did to me, or what I did and shouldn't have done, failed to do. Who am I without that? I can't let go of that. I need to think about this more. So it becomes a habitual place, the habitual place of the mental noise where you feel, "That's me." And so every therapist knows that you always reach a point with your clients, patients, whatever, depending on the school of therapy, depends whatever you call your clients, your patients, whatever. There comes a point when you hit that resistance. They don't want to be free of their problems. And the big challenge is there. Is this person going to overcome that barrier? Because that barrier is not just becoming free of my problems, but also becoming free of a very limited and ultimately fictitious sense of identity, the me. So that is what I've described is the next step, one could say, in the evolution of human consciousness is stepping out of self-talk, which is the conditioned mind, and realizing there is much more to who I am than this conditioned content of my mind. And that is the beginning of awakening. It's not It's not those words, not that you need to believe that there is much more to who I am than the self-talk in my head, because that is still self-talk in the head. I believe there's more to who I am. And you better believe it too. Analytical thinking itself, or processing information, is not creative. So to, even to find a creative, a new solution to a problem in your life requires some creative insight. So whether it's a problem in your work situation or your personal life or something that you need to build or do and you have come to a dead end or you want to create something, whatever it is, a work of art or a new system for the computer. I don't know the expressions for that. You need to go to the place where creativity arises, and every human who brings— who is creative has some access to that, even if they don't know it. It seems to me there's a general pattern at work, that it is inherent in the nature of physical existence of life forms, that challenges are an essential ingredient of their lifespan here and part of the way through which they evolve. But when they say they evolve, really means is the one consciousness evolves, awakens into this dimension through the different life forms in different ways. And it awakens only because we are being challenged. And that's already, that is quite a relief to realize to be challenged doesn't mean there's something wrong. There's something wrong with my life that shouldn't be. If you believe or act as if this shouldn't be happening, then you get really unhappy. Then the challenges become transformed into unhappiness inside you. If it's not unhappiness, it's resentment. If it's not resentment, it's anger, it's self-pity, it's complaining, it's despondency. Self, for the simple reason that you are misunderstanding the very purpose of life and expecting something that your mind has come up with. It should be different. Some people are afraid of not succeeding in whatever they do because they have a self, their self-image, which is derived from thinking, would suffer if I fail at something, then I will— my self-image will be injured, and therefore I'm not even going to try. And again, that's to do with deriving your identity from thinking. And even the thought, I have failed, is a lie. I am a failure is an even greater lie. you have not failed, you can simply reinterpret and say, "I have learned something here, this is not for me," for example. So, but why believe the lies that your mind produces? So, as you know, many people live with a very hostile mind. But those people are— the motivation Their motivation would probably be very great, I would hope, to get out of their minds. But first they need to realize that their problems are self-generated, mind-generated. You may be surprised to know that there are millions, billions of people on the planet who have that same thought pattern, "There's something wrong with me." It's part of the human ego. But so you bring in the awareness, and that will change everything. That's the only true key. If you fail, next time the anger arises, what happens, you will become aware immediately after the anger has subsided. And then, oh, there it was, and I wasn't present. And then the moment will come when you are there in the first, if you can catch the anger the first moment it comes, or if you might even see that it could be the result of a thought that creates the anger, and if you can be there in the first moment before it becomes the fully-blown anger, then you can stay there, and it might not even become fully-blown anger if you catch it the first moment. You can feel the first stirrings of anger, you may only have 3 seconds. It may come very quickly. Anger is like an explosive energy. You may only have 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds to stay there with your awareness and feel it, oh, it's coming, there it is. That's the pain body, the angry pain body coming. And if you catch it in the early stage, don't suppress it, By catch it, I mean feel it, be there as the witness. Then you can stay even as it grows, the witness grows with it. It may not even grow, we'll have to see whether it still grows into full-blown anger or not, that doesn't matter. And so you be thankful for your anger because the anger can become a very important spiritual practice for you, because through it, awareness can grow. So it's sometimes strange for people to see you can be thankful for things that you think are the most difficult obstacles in your life, but they become, they can become your greatest opportunity for spiritual growth. For spiritual awakening, use it as part of your practice. There is a source of power in you that transcends the person and is not egoic power over somebody. And it's one with the power that is the power of life in the universe where all life arises. And People sometimes have a problem with self-confidence or valuing yourself. And sometimes you try to convince yourself by changing your thinking that you are actually good enough, that you should be self-confident. But there is a better way to find the source of self-confidence. On the egoic level, self-confidence is there because, you see, you can tell yourself, 'I'm actually more intelligent than most of these people,' or, 'I'm better looking than most. I have to remind myself that I'm better looking than most,' and then you— okay, yeah, I feel a bit more confident now. 'No.' Or you say, 'I actually have more money than these people, so I should have more self-confidence.' Whatever it is, some way of convincing yourself, and then you compare yourself with others, and then you focus in on those areas where you feel superior to others and try not to think about other areas where inevitably you are inferior to others because you cannot be superior in all areas. It's a complicated game when you start, start comparing yourself to other people. And if you want to bolster your self-confidence, and you only have to focus on where you feel, I'm actually better than most, but that doesn't really work that well. So there is a better way of self-confidence that has nothing to do with with others or with feeling you are better than or not as good as. And that is direct access to inner power. You don't need any comparison. You can have it right now at this very moment if you are not stuck in your thinking mind. But take your attention a little bit beyond the thinking mind and then realize that you are the presence behind the thinking mind, without which there could be no thinking. You're the aware presence behind it all, that, that is deeper. You've gone deeper than the thinking mind, and that aware presence is where power resides. And it's not yours because it connects you with universal power. Therefore, you don't need to compare yourself to anybody anymore or feel, as the ego always does, that you're either superior or inferior to somebody else. That's not a comfortable way to live, where you have to classify yourself when you meet people. And so the fear is always, I might be inferior. Or behind that fear is a desire to be superior. What happens when you pay attention to the way in which you interact with objects? And what is— okay, every minute of the day, you pick something up, you put something down, you unbutton your shirt, you take off your shoes, You lift this, put this there, open your back zipper, back, pssss, pssss. You look inside, take something out. Can you feel it as you take it out? Can you feel the texture of that? And then you put it on the table. It makes a sound as you put it on the table. And then you have a glass of water and the light is reflected in it. And it moves, perhaps you drink and it tastes, and you put it down again. And then you look at a familiar object, and instead of using it always as a means to an end, here you have the luxury of occasionally just taking an ordinary object that you handle every day and just for a few seconds give it Give it attention and acknowledge its being just as that object. Just feel it, see it, as it makes a noise as you put it down. And again, you bring in sense perceptions. Getting dressed in the morning, putting pants on, they make a noise as you put them on. A little bit. Listen. Two things. You pick up the toothpaste. You hold it for a moment. Open. Put the cap on the sink. Click. And then turn on the tap. Shh. And then while you brush your teeth, you turn off the tap because you don't want to waste water. But that's not part of the exercise. It's an actual thing. And it's, you can actually begin to like and to enjoy the tiniest things around you that would normally be completely overlooked. The essence, or the way in which you interact with the world of objects. And that brings a richness into your life that doesn't depend on how many objects you own. You don't need to own them to interact with them. So here you acknowledge their beingness, and sometimes you might just put your hand, as I'm doing now. Here's a table, it's wood, and I'm putting my hand on it, and for a moment I feel the smooth, texture, surface of this table, and it feels very pleasant. But I don't need the mind to tell me that. I can sense that. And the strange thing is, even so-called inanimate objects, in a strange way, have a life. Of their own. You know, I'm experiencing anger. Of course, you wouldn't say that, I'm experiencing anger, but to say I am upset or I am sick, you know, it's really sort of embedding that into yourself where you say, you know, I'm having an upset. Well, if you have something, you can give it away. That's right. So it's already progress if from saying I am angry or I am upset, you say there is anger in me. Me, or there is upset in me, you've already separated your essential identity from the emotional state, so you're no longer reinforcing the emotional state through your identification. So that's already— that's the beginning of inner transformation, is that separation from the passing mental or emotional state. The true self-esteem comes from not identifying with form. Now whether we even want to call call it self-esteem, I don't know. The true sense of worthiness and of power, true power, comes when you realize the formless in yourself, that dimension, and that all power comes from that. But it's not— it goes far beyond the person that you are. And then you are rooted in the formless, so to speak, or you are it. And that there's enormous sense of worthiness in there, but it's not comparative. It's not more than. You see the same worthiness in everyone, even if they don't know it for themselves. Yet. So there's power, but not more than. There's just the power of life itself. And you know, everybody is an expression of that, although they may not know it yet. Everybody. So this is— you transcend conventional self-esteem. And it doesn't mean you lose your sense of worth. It shifts into something much deeper. If you think the world is full of evil people, you will meet many evil people. And in other words, unconscious people, and even people who are on the break or who are halfway between conscious and unconscious, when you come together with them, your belief will pull them into unconsciousness. And that's karma. So karma is the complete absence of conscious presence. And so it's automatic. It plays itself out. And time does not free you of karma. That is a misperception that if you only have enough time, eventually you can become free of karma. Karma reduce itself and repeats itself. It's a wheel. And so the only thing that can free you of karma is the arising of presence. And why, how is it that for some person presence arise, I cannot tell you why. I only know that at any point in the wheel of karma, presence can come in. It can happen to a criminal in prison condemned to death. It can happen to somebody who's never heard of anything spiritual. It can happen to somebody who's been meditating for 30 years, or not happen to them. The same person who has been meditating for 30 years. So in your own life, I can see from what you're saying that presence has already— I can sense that presence has already come into your life. And presence frees you from karma, not all at once. Karma has an enormous momentum, meaning The patterns in yourself, the thought patterns, the emotional patterns, the reactive patterns, there's enormous momentum behind that. But as presence arises, gradually karma diminishes in its— the energy behind it diminishes. And gradually you experience a fading out of those patterns, they become weaker. You're no longer completely in the grip of those patterns. So as presence arises, there's a gradual fading out of karma, not that it matters that much anymore, because once you are present, you can, as we, the previous questioner said, when we were talking about certain thoughts still arising, certain negative thoughts, that's still part of the karma, the old patterns, the unconscious habit patterns inherited. They still arise, but it's no longer problematic, and they no longer cause the suffering that they would have caused before because they are seen in the light of awareness. So the light of awareness arises, and in the light of awareness, the patterns no longer dominate your life. They no longer run your life. And if occasionally it happens that the patterns do take over, then after a little while, your presence returns and you say, "Ah, well, there it was again." Pain body is part of karma. Which may be strong in some people, not so strong in others. And so as presence arises, you are freed from karma. It has— and then you have another completely different factor coming into your life. And so, for example, for a person to become free of collective karma, you need a considerable amount of a presence for that to come in to remove you. And it then will remove you in one way or another, either internally, you find yourself completely free, you might still live in a violent society, but internally you would be free. There is such a— there is a possibility you can have a holy man or woman living surrounded by violence. It's possible. It's rare, but possible. Or very often it happens that life removes you, out of there and you find yourself somewhere else. So let's say vast collective karma, for example, in the case of, let's say, you have the Taliban there, you have all kinds of unconscious movements, you had Soviet communism, you had National Socialism in Germany, and for a person being born into that and not being drawn into that unconsciousness requires considerable presence. So not that many people, for example, in Germany, when Hitler came to power, not many people were able to remove themselves somewhere. Some artists, some writers, They left, they could see what was happening, and they were strong enough not to be identified with the collective when there had been a tradition of obedience to authority for hundreds of years, a tradition of following your leader, and so on. To take yourself out of that collective karma requires considerable presence, but some people had it. So it is our destiny then to go beyond karma by being the receptacles for presence. All you can do to be helpful in this world and help others is those people that you come into contact with, you may— everybody in this who is awakening will find that sooner or later they become a kind of teacher to others. And what a spiritual teacher does, the teacher points out the possibility of awakening out of identification with unconscious patterns, which means the spiritual teacher teaches you to go beyond karma.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because LiveNow06 asked me to. If there's someone you'd like me to profile in a future top 10, please check out the link down in the description below and you can cast your vote on who we should do next. I also want to give a quick shout out to Lynn Podetti from Outsourcing Angel. Thank you so much, Lynn, for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and going through it and finding your one word of love and then sharing it with with your newsletter as well. I really, really, really appreciate the support and I'm so glad that you're applying the wisdom from it. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is.

Much love.

I'll see you soon.

To meditate successfully, the idea that you're 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. It's impossible to comprehend. But an alignment with the totality without the need to mentally understand anything, a realization, a simple realization that you are, which is expressed in the sublime words, 'I am.' And if you've 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. Pssst, pssst, pssst. 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 hour?" 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. That's how 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'll 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. Okay, well, let's just say past and future become peripheral. Jiayin, who you are. There's only this. Aum. That is the entry point into the realization 'I am.'