The realization that stopped my overthinking IMMEDIATELY | Eckhart Tolle

Have the main focus of your attention in your daily life in the present moment. The world only challenges you, gives you challenges and adversities so that you awaken. The world cannot, as I said, it cannot make you happy because it's not here to make you happy, but it has another purpose. It is here to make you conscious. Most humans have this inbuilt dysfunction. They cannot acknowledge the present moment. Unconsciously, they regard the the next moment, whether it's a minute from now or an hour from now or 2 years from now, always regard it as more important.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I watch these videos every day because I need them for motivation. Being around successful entrepreneurs every morning helps me believe that I can do great things too. It's like your morning coffee, but for your goals, kickstarting your day with a blast of positivity. So here is a challenge for you. Try watching one video every morning for the next 30 days, and let's find out together if they help you do great things too. If you're in, leave a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can celebrate with you. So today, let's get some incredible motivation from the one and only Eckhart Tolle.

Believe. The center of your attention always bring back into the present because it's first of all, because it's all there ever is. Well, that's a good reason because it's life itself. Your life situation, yes, it exists in time, there's a past and a future as far as your life situation is concerned, but it's not your life. I wrote about that a long time ago, but it's so important. You can— people confuse their life situation with something more fundamental, more real, more immediate, deeper, which is called life. Life situation is circumstances and events in your life. And most of your life situation is experienced in your mind. And then life situation is relationships, work situation, financial situation, living situation, all kinds of problematic, often problematic situations. It's very rare that all of these situations are working smoothly and perfectly— relationships, family, professional work, financial environment, living situation, health situation— all working in harmony and perfectly, it can happen for short periods. But usually something somewhere goes wrong. It has to periodically, frequently. That's normal and that's good. But your life situation always has this element of uncertainty, instability too, although you might not recognize that when you look at seemingly solid things. And your life is your experience of this moment, the only thing there ever is. And if you neglect that, you miss the whole thing. And then you reach retirement age or old age and you say, "Was that it?" And perhaps you spend your whole life trying to arrive at some point, and the points change that you want to arrive at, but you always want to arrive at some other point. So when your attention is in the present, yes, you're more alert, which is helpful. You notice things that before you didn't notice, people, objects, all kinds of things around you, natural things, and it's quite— everything is a manifestation of life all around you. And the deeper aspect of being present is not just being aware of your surroundings, although that's fine, you're aware of yourself as the aware presence. And that's, that is the secret, that is the key. That is not something that one can easily explain. You can only experience it, what it means to be aware of yourself, not as an ego self like having a relationship with this conceptual identity, that's me. I don't like me, or I love me, I'm in love with me. That's happened to Narcissus, and things after that didn't go well for him. Or do you hear that quite often in In certain people, they love to say, "I love me." Well, it's a little strange. Who are you? And who or what is a me? Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I love myself. I hate myself. Oh, that's worse even. That's not uncommon either. I'm not happy with myself. But who is that I that constantly says these things? Who is that I that has a relationship with ultimately an imagined entity, mind-made, is a conceptual entity. And this happened to me one night, as I talk about briefly in The Power of Now, when my mind said, I can't live with myself anymore, because I was unhappy and I couldn't stand the unhappiness anymore. So I can't live with myself anymore. And this sentence suddenly, I looked at it and I realized it was a very strange statement. I cannot live with myself. At that point I realized that there must be two of me here, I and the self that I cannot live with. That was an incredible realization, there's two of me. There's the unhappy me that I cannot live with. Who am I and who is that unhappy me? This is almost like a koan, like a Zen riddle that you can't— hard to answer or impossible to answer conceptually, but I actually can answer it conceptually. I couldn't at the time. It took years before I realized what all this meant. At that moment, the consciousness that I am that was trapped in the movement of thought and continuously absorbed by the movement of thought, this movement of thought created the entity, the person, the unhappy person, the entity, the unhappy entity. Mind-made entity, and it was so active that it absorbed all of my consciousness, was always trapped in the movement of self-identified thoughts. So it was trapped in there, and when this strange statement arose in my mind, and I looked at it, and by looking at these statements, a sudden separation happened between the consciousness that was trapped in the movement of thought, suddenly was able to release itself, to extricate itself from being held in the movement of thought and stood back, and there was I as the consciousness looking at the unhappy thought movement. So it was a separation of consciousness withdrawing from the dimension of thinking. It, shoo, and then very quickly thinking subsided. [Speaker:JACOB] It was no longer fueled. Without the consciousness, there can be no thinking because thinking is not possible without consciousness. But a thought is consciousness that has taken form, whereas the realization of I as consciousness is consciousness that is prior to form or unconditioned. So I became aware of myself as consciousness, as the 'I,' and the thought then began to dissolve. Consciousness had been— without consciousness, it's nothing. Thought is consciousness that has taken form, and it dissolved, and then I was kind of felt like a falling into some hole, but it wasn't fear— not fearful. The next morning I woke up and I was at peace, like a new person, or no person. I was just contemplating things around me, and everything was lovely. And I didn't know why I was at peace. And then I went around the city on the buses, on buses, still at peace, the hustle and bustle of London where I was living. I was at peace. Why I was at peace, I couldn't understand it. It's, of course, not the peace that passes that's all understanding, I suppose. Several years it took me to understand why that's very weird. I did not realize that I was at peace for one reason, and the reason was that I wasn't thinking that much anymore. Especially there's no— the whole movement of thought that is imbued with a sense of self, self-referential Thought wasn't happening anymore. Occasional thoughts, yes, but a lot of the time there was just awareness, but I didn't have a word for it. I just called it peace. And so what happened then was the consciousness had withdrawn from its— until then it had been imprisoned in the movement of thought and continuously absorbed by thought, and then it stepped out. What you are looking for is something deeper. What every human is looking for is something deeper than the world can give you. The world can only challenge you, give you challenges and adversity so that you awaken. The world cannot, as I said, it cannot make you happy because it's not here to make you happy, but it has another purpose. It is here to make you conscious. That's how it operates. Also, that means whatever arises in the present moment is just right for this moment, for you at this moment. But if you are stuck in the mind, the egoic mind, then you will completely ignore or even continuously dislike the present moment. And that is an amazing way to live. It is dreadful, but millions still live like that without knowing it, unconsciously. They live for the next moment until they get very old. Then they know there's not much time left. Then the past becomes more and more important, the happiness of the past Oh, oh. So living for the next moment is, for most people, unconscious and quite normal. They live hoping that at some point they are going to achieve fulfillment. And little fulfillments come here and there. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's wonderful when you achieve things. It's even wonderful when you fall in love. Enjoy it. Falling in— it's not going to last, but enjoy it. So that's great. It's not— but there's always— I've met in the— fortunately been able to meet over the years quite a few people who are in the eyes of the world highly successful. They've got everything. They've got fame. They've got money. They've got everything. They have got their private jets. They can go anywhere at any moment, can have anything, any pleasure. And they've told me that after they achieved fame and fortune, there was an initial time period when there was elation and they were on continuous high, but then gradually more and more they experienced a very deep low in their mental emotional state, including depression and not wanting to live anymore. They had everything, but some had to go to drugs to make life bearable. Had everything, wasn't enough. Wasn't enough. And then you can't fool yourself anymore. When you have everything, you can't fool yourself. When I achieve that, I'll be happy. No, you have achieved everything, and you're not happy. So the worst thing would be for you to achieve, to get everything that you want, and then you can't fool yourself anymore and look to the future for some fulfillment. And that's really dreadful. So that is the human condition, and it all is connected to who you sense yourself to be, your identity, your identity as who you are, your sense of self. That is the foundation for your life, your sense of self. And everybody is concerned with identity from childhood onward. The identity becomes very important. Of course, every human needs shelter and food, sustenance, shelter. And one could say almost the next thing— well, the next thing is, as a human grows up, needs some kind of love or affection. But that's already bound up with identity, because if you don't get love and affection, then you already have a deficient sense of self that develops in early age. So identity refers to your sense of self, and where does your sense of self come from? What does it mean to be you? And usually most humans, especially those who are not awakening yet, they look to their sense of identity through a narrative that is connected to their past. So that's, I call that sometimes the story of me. So everybody has the story of me. I call that, it's what, it's a narrative. People call it— this is an interesting expression— they call it my life. So you think about my life. Let me think about that. Well, it's a mixture of good and bad. It's been all kinds of weird things in the past. And certainly almost everybody says it didn't quite go the way I had imagined it to be when I was 18. Or 17, and many people have a feeling something went wrong somewhere. It's not— strangely, many people have the feeling they haven't started to live yet. It's almost like I'm still— I'm hoping at some point I'm going to start living soon. I'll start. I just need to meet the right person. I just need to get that job. I just need to find this or that possession, or if people would only recognize my worth, or recognition of one kind. It's an unconscious process, the longing. My life hasn't actually started yet. And some people have that throughout their life until finally they are surprised that they reach retirement. And they still— but just maybe a few years before retirement, you can look to your retirement as the liberation. Then I can start living. Now I know when I retire, then I can start living. Okay, 2 more years, 1 more year, 6 months, and then the moment The day comes, you sit in your office, and the clock reaches 5 o'clock. It's my last day. And then off you go. And the first few days and weeks are great because you go to the golf course and then sit around. If you have sufficient funds, you can have your cocktail cocktails. You may not have sufficient funds these days, so that's another problem. And so a few weeks pass and you sit there and then you take a trip and you come back and then you move to a better climate because you don't— let's move to Florida, okay. And then you sit in Florida just looking at the sun and then they play another game of golf, and then a kind of fatigue sets in, and then their mind says, "And now what?" And nothing. "Who am I now? I had this title, I had a job description, I was the vice president of this company or whatever, and now I am no longer a vice president." And a great part of my identity was derived from the concept of vice president of the company. And suddenly the concept has dissolved, and who am I now without that? Well, that's weird. I get this weird feeling of not being nobody anymore. It's a— you're retired. And it's a strange thing that it is not uncommon for people to die just 2 or 3 years after retiring because there's nothing there anymore to live for. They were looking towards retirement for some kind of solution, but that's not it. So it's not— everybody's looking where it cannot be found. It cannot be found in the future. That what you're looking for cannot be found in the future because— don't tell anybody, but— there is no future. There is no future. There just seems to be a future. Have the main focus of your attention in your daily life in the present moment. The rest of your attention— so that's the main focus, here's this. The rest of your attention is where you want to go to. Whatever task you're engaged in has a certain purpose. The purpose is you want to finish the task, then it has achieved its purpose. And that's here, and that's in the— in your peripheral, the peripheral vision of your consciousness. That's where you want to get to, and this is what you're doing in order to get there. And your main attention is not where you want to get, and in the meantime you're just doing it in order to get there, you can see how that already creates an inner stress. I'm here, but I want to be there. That's a normal way of living, is the main part of people's attention is there, but in the meantime they are here, where they don't really want to be. I'd rather be there, as shown in famous bumper stickers on cars which say something like, "I'd rather be fishing." When I visited Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher who has now passed away, he lived on Maui, On his car, I saw a bumper sticker which said, "I'd rather be here now." That's a good teaching on a bumper sticker. So your attention is— and this is a reversal almost of how humans normally usually live. It's the opposite. And so that is in itself already a shift in consciousness. And then of course you're also aware of the past. There are certain things that may have relevance in the present. That's fine. So peripherally, past and future, usually future is more important because you're moving What's that? And here's the central vision of present moment. In the present moment, you're either actively doing something or you are more passively perceiving something. You're there as an observer or you're just there not actively doing but simply perceiving. That could be when you travel back from here already, you might be sitting in a car. If you're driving, you're doing something. There it's particularly important to be present. Or you might be sitting on a plane, and there's a good opportunity for being the— you go into the witnessing mode. There's nothing particular to do unless you get out your laptop and start doing. That's fine. And sometimes situations arise that are problematic. That's quite normal in life. They are challenging rather than problematic. And then you face the challenge, you look at it, so to speak, not necessarily visually, but you give it attention that this is a challenge. Instead of unconscious reactivity, The challenge is: your flight is cancelled. Oh, it's not one of the greatest challenges a human can have, but some people react as if it were. And when any challenge arises, is there anything I can do to respond to this situation? Or is that something where I simply have to say, well, for the time being, I accept the way it is because right now there's nothing I can do? I heard, for example, at some airports they're so busy, not sufficiently staffed people, when the plane lands they're still trapped on the plane for 2 or 3 hours. It has happened in Toronto and other places. That's a good opportunity for surrender. Some people can't do that. They start screaming and shouting, doesn't have no particular purpose, but they can't help it. It happens to them. So always the question was, is this an opportunity for surrender, or is action called for? That is some practice to get used to until it becomes second nature to have the your attention in the present moment rather than elsewhere. And it usually implies you are aware of your surroundings. That's inseparable from present, being in the present, through your senses. A more alert human being than a normal human being but an alertness in which there is no tension. Often alertness in a human is associated with, with being tense, but there's an alertness without tension. But it's not enough to be just aware of your sense perceptions. That's a good thing. It also can help you to avoid dangerous situations that otherwise you just stumble into and you don't know how you got there. You're more alert of your surroundings. You see how animals in that sense are very alert, because if they are not, they get eaten by other animals. So many animals have this incredible alertness, not the same as the human alertness, but it is an alert awareness of their surroundings that many humans don't have. They walk in the street and they're not really there. In their mind thinking about all kinds of things except where they are, and so they're not here. Whereas the bird sitting on a branch or the deer that's stepping out of the forest, and there's a field, and the deer stops for a moment, And the ears, they're very huge ears, they go— and it can hear probably 100 times better than a human. Or a bird on a branch sitting, it goes like this. And then suddenly it goes— And of course, there's no decision-making involved when a bird suddenly flies off. It did not think, I'm now going to fly off this branch and I'm going to 'Oh, go over there.' It just happens. There's a flow to life. There's no mind. There is a consciousness there, but there's no conceptualization at all. But when an animal rests, an animal also rests completely. It is completely at rest. Not thinking about my life. I have to figure something out. What's the purpose of it all? This is why it can be very healing to live with an animal. Yes, it can be quite a bit of work too, but it can be very healing to live with an animal and to have an animal presence in the house— dog, cat, usually. This unproblematic existence, except when the dog or cat are neurotic, which can happen, but there are reasons for that, usually connected to their early life, just like human childhood. When things go wrong in childhood, it leaves traces. So if— but usually a dog's and cat's normal state is, unless they're hungry or want to go for a walk. They can be really rooted in being and joyful. The cat purrs, the dog's tail wags, and it's a joy just to see it. And then you can contemplate with detachment what time is doing to your body, okay? Because your sense of identity is no longer derived from body, who you are. Obviously, that's That's sometimes a difficult step to take, to go deeper beyond. There are some people who have a particularly— a body that is more beautiful or more well-developed than normal bodies. Normal bodies are kind of, "Mm, I'm not sure." And then there are other bodies that are definitely not great. But people still identify, right, it makes them unhappy. For many years I had body identification too, but not in a proud way, it made me unhappy because it was less, much less good-looking than most other bodies actually. And so, if you have body identification, it can either create pride, and enhance your ego. Well, any identification enhances your ego, even a negative one. So I had body— negative body identification made me unhappy for quite a few years. Um, and that's also ego. The ego, the negative profile of ego. Egos are not always happy egos. Many egos are miserable egos. Just as strong as the happy ones to say, "I'm the greatest." And then the other ego, "I'm the most miserable," just as strong as the other. So ego is not just, "Me, look at me." Also ego is, "Oh no, why is all these horrible things always happening to me? I feel so miserable. I'm not..." It's all still ego, it's the narratives. So anyway, I had ego identification, but I could see perhaps a little bit easier for if you have a negative identification with the body, it's perhaps easier to let go because you're more motivated to let go of that. But if you have a positive body identification, very good looking, whether man or woman, or strength. If you look like Arnold in his younger years, How can you not identify with your body if your body looks just like some ancient Greek god or something? And so, or you're very beautiful, and every time you look in the mirror, you see how beautiful you are, and you continuously, these days, you continuously post images of yourself into the world. "Look at me, look at me, look at me." And you have thousands of people who love you, they send love signs. "Me, me." And so many people have this, their strongest identification is with body, And the rest, the psychological entities, come secondary. That's also ego, of course, but psychological entity, whatever they are on the level of their personality, becomes secondary, or whatever, what they have achieved becomes even secondary. But the body figures so prominently in their sense of identity And that goes on for years. When I was in my 20s, anyway, somebody had asked me, some god had come down and asked and said to me, I offer you a deal. I take away, I'll give you a great body like Arnold, or, well, it doesn't have to be that extreme, but just a good-looking body. Well, some would say, Arnold, this is going over the top a bit. That's a bit— but just a beautiful— I would have said— and he said, but we have to give up 20 years of your life. You are 20 years younger, but I'll give you a great body that you can enjoy for a few decades. For 3 decades, you can enjoy this. I would have said, it's a deal. And I would be dead now. I wouldn't be here. I would have enjoyed perhaps ego satisfaction during those years and sensory satisfaction through countless physical encounters with women. And would have exhausted myself and would have died young as predicted by the god who came. We were walking, or I was walking in on a waterfront, I believe in Sydney, Australia. It was a lovely day. I believe it was perhaps a Sunday morning and not excessively hot, just very pleasant temperature. Everybody was enjoying themselves. And then I saw one man walking without a shirt on, just bare. And he had a fantastic body, and everyone is kind of looking at him. And I thought it's strange that he was the only person who felt too hot, he had to take off his shirt. Strange. And then comes a time. The time eventually becomes your enemy when you'd say you have For years, you identified with your good looks, and then after a while, you realize the same thing is happening to you. It just takes decades. That's happening if you put a fresh apple on your windowsill and wait a few weeks and see what happens to the apple that you leave there. It kind of shrinks and becomes develops, it goes— before it looked— after a few weeks, the apple shrinks and it's old, an old apple. It happens to all life forms. And that can become a source of great suffering. There is still time for you when this suffering sets in, you realize you're no longer beautiful because old age is eroding your beauty. And then when you compare yourself to younger humans, you begin to feel inferior and to get resentful. Look at these young— and you feel diminished, and that's painful. So many humans who are identified with body, as they get As people get older, they move into a period of unhappiness, increasing unhappiness, unless they can break through that and go to a deeper level. Some can, some cannot. I would advise to go to that deeper level before time starts to erode you, as soon as possible. But there's all— there's always a chance to go there, so at the latest, shortly before you die, I would hope. But for many people, when they reach old age, the patterns are so deep-seated that are associated with the ego identity, they have become so rigid and so deep-seated that they get trapped in them. There's nothing you can do. We've all met old people like that. Instead, old age is meant to be a flowering of consciousness. When, as the body begins to dissolve, something else emerges, and it can be a beautiful thing. In many other cases, this does not happen. And we've all met old people who are cranky and angry and— your grandfather perhaps? You're still in all that spiritual nonsense? Are you still doing that? Like, it's all rubbish, obviously. I know it all. I've seen it all. And I have an opinion about everything. I know everything. And it's all dreadful. They're all idiots, all of them. And then he dies. Oh my God. So no matter where you're at in the movement of time, this moment is the best moment to step out of the movement of time and take your attention into the timeless so that you learn to be connected with that consciously for the rest of your life in this form.

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How do we get into the state of presence? First of all, step one, so to speak, almost inevitably when you choose to be present, and it is a choice, But not everybody is capable of that choice. If there's a sufficient degree of awareness in you, you are capable of taking your attention into the present moment. And the first thing then that you notice is you become more aware of sense perceptions of the world around you that you absorb through your sensory perceptions. You will also notice a heightened degree of alertness, because that's why it's called awakening. It's another part of the awakening, a heightened degree of alertness, but not an alertness where there's any tension. There's no tension. It's not an alertness because there's no tension in it. It is a relaxed alertness that's part of presence. So you decide to come into the present moment. You decide to step out of the problem-making mind because you have recognized that a lot of your mind activity is completely unnecessary and even harmful. Not all. For some things, the mind is a great tool, but a lot of the time it creates. It does not solve the problems of life. It creates the problems of life. So you take your attention out of the stream of thinking and bring it into the present moment. So it could begin with sensory perceptions. Suddenly you are— there's an alertness that wasn't there before. Why wasn't it there before? Because your consciousness was being absorbed by thoughts.

Your consciousness continuously incarnated, which means took form as thought. Your consciousness incarnated into thought forms continuously.

There was— you were not aware of consciousness because consciousness always, always assumed a thought form, incarnation. You see why Buddhists want to become free of the wheel of continuous incarnations, but many of them don't realize this is the moment when you can become free of incarnation because the most foundational, the most basic incarnation It's the incarnation into thoughts, the primordial forms, thoughts, and emotions that go with thoughts. And here goes another incarnation and another. So you come to the end of— through consciousness, you're able to take consciousness out of that and then become aware. Well, let's— before we go there, you become aware of sense perceptions. Alertness rises. This alertness is consciousness itself without having incarnated. And then you observe. If you find it difficult to immediately become aware of sense perceptions, because the mind is still trying to get in there. Another helpful entry point into presence, present moment, that has been used for thousands of years is quite simply your breath, your breathing. Simply become aware that you're breathing right now, even without wanting to do any particular type of breathing. Become aware that your body is breathing. Become aware means you can sense that the breathing is happening. That is perhaps the most immediate entry point into the present moment, awareness of your breath. Already recommended by the Buddha, might even be older than the Buddha, as a meditation method, but not just as a formal meditation method, as a simple entry point into presence. Become aware that you are breathing. Now, being aware is not— could be misunderstood. A person might think become aware of your breathing looks like, oh yes, I'm breathing. What's next? That's not awareness. Awareness of your breathing is to be able to, with your attention, follow the breath as it enters the body, and as it leaves the body. So your attention moves with the breath. Now what that does is quite simply, it removes effortlessly, it removes thinking. You can't do both. You can't be aware of your breathing and think at the same time. Occasional fragments of thoughts may come in, but they immediately dissolve again. You can verify for yourself. Are you breathing? Just checking. Are you breathing? Are you aware that you're breathing right now? Sometimes the awareness can sometimes have the effect of lengthening your breath almost without wanting to. So when you become aware of your breathing, that's a wonderful entry point into presence. You are aware of your breathing and thinking subsides. Okay. Next thing that could happen is you're not only aware of your breathing, you're also aware of the energy field in your body, not the physical body, but that which— and the animating presence, that which animates the body, the life within the body, not the physical body. And you can sense that your breath can put you in touch with that. As your breath moves into the body, you feel it going into the abdomen and then spreading out the rest. You can feel the body is alive. You can sense it. I call it the inner body. You can sense the energy behind the physical manifestation of body. And thinking subsides.

And then it's easy to take the next step.

Well, let's— okay, let's start breathing, beginning to feel to some extent there's an energy field behind the physical body, within the physical body. Sense perceptions. Now you're able to look around and to listen and to hear. Let's just talk about the two predominant sense perceptions, seeing and hearing. And you're able to— and this is an important part of it— you're able to perceive without labeling, without interpretation. This room, now, man sitting on a chair, and you just see it, but you don't interpret it, you don't label it in any way. You just allow it, again, allowing it just to be as it is. What is there to interpret? You can perceive it without thought, just through awareness instead of through the veil of thinking. Perceiving through awareness rather than always perceiving through the veil of thinking. Sometimes thinking is helpful and you need it, but a lot of the time it's a prison. It imprisons you. So you become free by discovering, discovering your ability to perceive without needing to interpret what you're perceiving. And you know what you're perceiving, but this knowing is not conceptual anymore. When you look at another human being in that state of perception, of non-conceptual perception, in a way, you know that you're looking, that there's another human being, but not conceptually. So you discover a deeper way of knowing that humans have kind of— they have in the past, perhaps they had it a bit more than they have now. You can know something, there's a knowing through concepts, but there's a deeper knowing where concepts are not needed.

Manifesting doesn't always mean that you have a clear vision of what it is. That you want to achieve. Sometimes that is fine and works. But to be in a state of appreciation of life, in deep alignment with the present moment, in—

so that you do not—

you're not in an antagonistic relationship with the present moment anymore. You're just deeply aligned with the flow flow of life in the now and you appreciate all, everything that is and the things you do. The things you do, you do them fully. You give your fullest attention to what you do. That's another obstacle of many people. They somehow are not able to give themselves fully. They're not, there's something holding back. There's something that's holding them back. You can sometimes see it with people on stage or sometimes singers or musicians. You can sometimes see they're not, The full energy is not there for some reason.

Perhaps they are afraid for some reason of—

they may be afraid of giving themselves fully. To be fully in what you're doing, to give your fullest attention to what you're doing in the present moment, is a very powerful way of manifesting But whether or not you have a vision that you project and you feel it's already happening, the vision can only work if you continue giving your fullest attention to the present moment and to enjoy the energy of what it is that you are producing in the present moment.

That empowers the vision. The vision is always—

the point of power is always in the present moment. A great obstacle for achieving a vision or any success is to be, and this almost sounds paradoxical at first until you begin to understand it, is to have an excessive attachment to the outcome. That's a huge hindrance. Now you might think, well, if I have a vision of what it is I want to achieve, would it not be natural for me to be attached to the outcome that I want to get there. I want to reach millions of people with my music, and I want millions of people to have— to feel better by listening to my music, perhaps to get a glimpse of presence by listening to my music. So you—

that's a—

it's a great vision, but the The mastery of this lies in not attaching yourself to the vision so that you lose consciousness in what you are doing and it gets dissipated into the vision, which ultimately is a mental thing. The point of power is always in the, present moment. Excessive attachment to the outcome—

one could almost say any real attachment to the outcome, uh, weakens your ability to manifest.

So you can, you can hold an outcome in your mind and then return to—

I give the example of a pilgrimage.

Let's say you're on a pilgrimage. Life could be regarded as a pilgrimage or journey. and you know where you're going, you want to go to whatever it is, you pilgrimage to a holy site. In medieval times, there were pilgrimages to Rome and other sacred places. You pilgrimage to Mecca, pilgrimage in Spain, you can go on this pilgrim trail in northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, and you walk for many, many days. Now, the very purpose of pilgrimage is to bring about a transformation of who you are, transformation of consciousness. The arriving is relatively unimportant. Arriving at your destination is just a short moment and there you are. But the journey is how conscious are you of the step you're taking at this moment? Excessively attached to the outcome, which in this case would be your destination, then you're mentally, you already want to be there. That takes away from the quality of your step at this moment. Now the step stands, it's an analogy for whatever it is you're doing at this moment. And quality means how much consciousness flows into what you're doing in this moment.

Question: When I meditate, extreme fear often arises in my mind. I feel like I would be destroyed or completely disappear, so I stop meditation because of the fear. I'm so afraid to keep going on, although I intuitively know that bearing the fear would get me closer to enlightenment. How can I conquer this fear? This is, yes, of course, the fear of the person. The personalized sense of self or the ego, which can feel threatened by the arising awareness. And once you know that, you can still meditate and allow the fear to be there. It's only when you try to run away from the fear that really it becomes a great obstacle. But if you can be with the fear, allow the fear to be there, as on a pure energy level, feel the fear, then you will find it begins to dissolve. So rather than not wanting to feel it, allow yourself to feel it. Then this is the beginning of change. If you always run away from it, then it'll linger. There's no change. There's a book called, I think, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, or something like that. But that is quite good advice, although, I mean, not applied necessarily to everything. I'm going to jump off now. But to allow yourself to feel whatever feeling comes is part of the present, the what-the-is-ness of the present moment. So if the fear arises, but then you also realize, is the fear created by a thought? You will know that. Or is the fear arising just by itself in a particular situation when you become still? Do you have a fear of silence? Do you feel uncomfortable when you go into a room and there's no noise in it. Some people do feel— some people are uncomfortable in nature, it's not noisy enough. So see, it may be that the fear arises when you, when you become still, you meditate. Then it's not necessarily associated with the thought but with that arising of awareness. And instead of stopping your meditation, just what happens if I just carry on and make the fear into a meditation, meditate on the fear. So if you do meditate, nothing really can disturb you. The good meditator incorporates whatever arises in the present moment into the meditation, including the most irritating noise that suddenly starts up outside, And the mind says, I can't meditate now, I need stillness. And then you realize, no, perhaps this is part of the meditation. And how does it become part of the meditation? By allowing the is-ness of this moment, which is that by just letting go of resistance, allow whatever it is to be. And if it comes from within— fear, anxiety— you allow that to be. But you have to be careful that it doesn't become a thought, because the moment you are drawn back into thinking, that's the end of your meditation. You can allow a thought to be there, but in order to allow a thought to be there, that implies that there is some awareness there. Behind the thoughts, or you are still there. If so, to be able— it's a wonderful thing. Do you allow the thought to be there? It's very different from being drawn into the thought and following it where it wants to take you. Of course, that's the end of your meditation or your mindfulness or whatever you want to call it. I don't use mindfulness, as you know, because it's not about a full mind. That's why I avoid the word mindfulness, but mindfulness is a lovely thing. It's really presence. So you can follow a thought, it grabs you, it grabs all your attention and pulls you along. That's one way. Or you can realize there's a thought arising about what my ex-spouse did 5 years ago to me while I'm meditating. And you can allow the thought to arise and be aware. And if you do that instead of being pulled into it, then you will find that it quickly— it arises and it subsides. So then it becomes very much like, you know, the sky. In this, let's say you have a blue sky and clouds occasionally come. So the clouds are the thoughts that arise in the mind. The blue sky, the vastness of that space, is your awareness. So clouds are not a problem if within the larger context of the aware presence they come and go. And there might be thoughts that say ridiculous things. There might be a thought about I'd like to eat apple pie now. I really need to eat apple pie. The mind can ask the most absurd things to interrupt your meditation. Then you imagine an apple pie you're eating. And then you know there's the thought of apple pie. You allow that to be. You don't get drawn into the apple pie thought, or even suddenly you have to get up and run to the fridge to see if there's an apple pie still in there. The thought arises, you are the sky, that's the awareness, and the thought is what comes into the awareness. Now, if more and more thoughts come, or if you follow one of the cloud thoughts that drift into the space of awareness, one of the cloud thoughts, and you suddenly go, it grabs hold of you and you follow it. Then the cloud gets bigger. Then it attracts other clouds that correspond to it. They suddenly come from out of nowhere. And then you are in a big cloud. You're still sitting there trying to meditate, but you're really in a big cloud of thought. And before you know it, the entire sky is Cloudy or totally overcast. Now, of course, there's still some light shining through the clouds, but you no longer know where that comes from. There's some light, of course, consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness. Thought is a manifestation of consciousness. But so there's the consciousness that is behind the thoughts. But you no longer know that consciousness directly, only through the filter of thoughts, in the same way that you don't know the sunlight anymore except through the filter of the clouds.

Whereas meditation, true meditation, is not a doing, but it's the realization of being. And there's no time in being. Simple realization that you are. This is why I— some techniques are fine. Eventually, every technique you have to let go, like a raft. Buddhism has the image of the analogy or the story of a raft that you use to cross a river. You use a raft to cross a river. When you've crossed the river, you don't take up the raft and carry it around with you. So the raft is a technique or the teaching that can take you there perhaps, but once you're there, you realize you don't need it. So whatever technique you use in meditation, eventually it is to be transcended, or you can transcend it right now without any technique. This is why I don't call this a meditation, because if I— again, I love meditation, but there's another possibility. Possibility, and that is at any given moment to invite this awareness into your life, this dimension, to see there is a possibility of awakening, simply realizing that you are in this moment. And so that awareness of awareness, the realization of being, and in that And then as this deepens— again, this is time to talk about something timeless— and that becomes your identity, the being, not the personality or any achievement or whatever it may be in your past or future. That's fine. Manipulate, you hold, you handle your life consciously, it will actually improve when you are rooted in the unconditioned consciousness, because that's what it is. Then if you are rooted in the vertical dimension, things begin to actually also improve in the horizontal dimension because that consciousness flows into your life. Not that it ever becomes totally free of challenges. The challenges continue. But the challenges will then only take you deeper instead of making you more unconscious, which is what they often do for many humans. So the That is— there's an ancient word, self-realization. You can use that expression. That's who or what you are beyond the personality. And then that is what Jesus calls when there's a parable about him. He tells a parable about a man who builds a house and the house is built on sand. And when the storms come and the floods come, the house is swept away. And then there's another man who, before building a house, he digs deep. That's— he digs deep until he reaches the rock, which is deep. And so he reaches he reaches the— after he digs deep and finds the foundation, and then he builds the house on the rock, and the floods come, and the rains come, and the storms come, and the house is not swept away. It stands. This is an analogy about states of consciousness. The state of deep connectedness with being the vertical dimension, and the state of being trapped only on the horizontal dimension, when life becomes actually suffering, to use the term of the Buddha, frustrating, suffering, and then you can resent it all and so on. So this is the And now your mission is to invite this into your life throughout the day. Don't miss an opportunity. Yes, you still go about your normal activities, but allow yourself to become aware of the vertical dimension. As much as possible, it seems at first, there's a current in you that doesn't want that. There is the egoic self, and it will tell you that this is not the time to be present. You have other— I've got so much on my plate, I can't be present now. Don't talk to me about this. Look what I'm dealing with here. You want me to be spiritual? Just, I'll be spiritual when I've solved all that. And then I'll find a nice place in the retreat center in Bali, and then I can finally— of course, life does not stop challenging you, so don't wait. Have your life interspersed with that brief moment, initially brief, brief moments of spaciousness, brief moments of spaciousness. One conscious breath is already something. Let's say you are on your computer. Okay, one conscious breath. You look away from the screen. If you can look away, it's the sky or a plant, anything natural, or close your eyes. But if you close your eyes, then your screen will still be there. You'll still see the computer screen. So you look at it, one conscious breath. A little bit of spaciousness has opened up. And during that time period, which if you measure in time, it would be like maybe 10 seconds, whatever. But that is a little bit of spacious consciousness you have suddenly experienced. And you might even want to take a second conscious breath. Follow the breath with your attention. And maybe even a third, although your mind says, I don't have time for this. But it's only one minute. So don't believe every thought that comes in and says, I have to deal with this first. I have to do this first. That's another parable in the Gospels where you're invited to a wedding feast. People get invited to a wedding feast. 'Everybody says, let me do this first. First I need to sell my cattle. No, I need to do this first. Let me do this first.' There's always something. Don't believe your mind when it says, 'Not now. Can't do it now.' There's nobody who does not have one minute to be aware of their breath. Unless it's an emergency, you have to get to the hospital now, okay. Your car every time, I recommend you close the door and stay just a moment of spaciousness. I suggest half a minute to 1 minute, but don't measure it, just feel it. Don't, okay, I'm going to do 1 minute now, and then you're just internally already trying to get to the end of it. You have to be there. Anytime you're waiting for something, be present. Use, if you cannot just be present, this ability may arise a little bit later when you can just decide, so to speak, not the right word, to just be free of thinking but just be aware. So that comes a little bit later, just the ability to just have that space. Somebody asked me some years ago, what's your greatest achievement in life? And I said, well, my greatest achievement is I don't think when I don't have to think or don't want to think. I don't need to think. I think that's my greatest achievement. But it's not really an achievement, is it? It wouldn't get me a job. I'm applying for a job in my curriculum, what do you call it, CV, resume. Can be free of thinking. So it's not an achievement. Again, it would be a misperception to call it an achievement because that discovery, this realization, that dimension of consciousness has already always been there. In that sense, it's not an achievement. I made it. No, you didn't do anything. You just became aware of being, which is not a doing. It sounds like a doing when you talk about it. You become aware of being, not an achievement, because being is the essence of who you are. And to know the essence of who you are is not an achievement. And so, wow. The transcendence of thinking means the transcendence of the egoic mind. It means that you're able to spend part of your time relatively free of compulsive thinking, certainly free of self-serving thinking and destructive thinking that continuously creates unhappiness for yourself and the people around you. How many people live the compulsive narrative in your mind that for many people is very negative, constantly critical, constantly complaining, never at ease with what is, there's always something wrong, fault-finding because the ego grows through the constant opposition, constant antagonism, never at ease, always looking for the next thing to complain about. And it strengthens the egoic self. The more you complain— or offended is a new version these days, it's very popular on the internet— I'm very very offended, outrageous, how dare you. There are thousands or hundreds of thousands who go on every day, they look on their screen waiting for the next scene to be offended by. And the ego loves it. And for many of them, it's the only way they can inflates their ego by sitting on the screen and sending out tweets. The transcendent of thinking is not any kind of regressive movement. We are not regressing to the state of somebody who is whose mind is relatively undeveloped and who does not have a problem with egoic thinking because there's very little going on in their minds, what used to be called, before it became politically incorrect, idiot or fool. The fool was they were always, you could say, happy fools. There's not enough thinking to make them unhappy, so they are below egoic thinking. In medieval times, every village had at least one village idiot or fool, and it was normal, it was accepted, an essential part of the community. And even the royal courts had a fool, a very important figure, although that figure probably was just pretending to be a fool, and that was one of the most, sometimes very influential position in the royal court, but also one of the most dangerous jobs you could have, because you could lose your head at any moment. But only the fool was able to tell the king or queen what was wrong, by making it into a funny story. But the fool is more deeply connected, as we know from mythology, the fool is more deeply connected with the source, still hasn't gone as far out as a normally developed human, he's more simple. The fool, for example, relatively speaking, is a simpleton. It's like the Hobbit in Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is a simple guy, doesn't think in complex terms, loves the simple things of life, loves eating and enjoyment. But while Why the fool has to go on this important mission that nobody else can carry out? That's a mythological motive. That's often the case because the fool has a connectedness still with source that the more developed humans don't have. Similar motive in Forrest Gump, the movie. The fool does great things, this guy Forrest Gump, But he's— because he's— and life always supports him. If you watch that movie again, he always— he saves people in the war, he does heroic things, but he doesn't claim credit because he doesn't have much of an ego yet. And always life gives him the next thing and the next thing, supports him. But we don't want to go there. When I say cessation of thinking, I'm not talking about regressing to the stage that is the pre-thinking stage of humanity. I'm thinking about rising above, pointing to the possibility of rising above thinking. So you stop thinking, which is normally associated with the diminishment of consciousness, and transcendence of thinking is an intensification of consciousness, turning up the light. This is why the term attention and alertness, those terms are extremely important. They're also used in Zen very frequently, the Zen teachings, could be described. If you wanted to summarize Zen, you can just say simple things like, "Pay attention." There was one Zen teacher who would, whenever they asked him a question to explain Zen, he became quite famous, he would always raise his finger. "Please explain Zen to us. What is Zen? I haven't quite understood yet." He was calling people to attention. Now, this attention, there's a state of attention that sometimes people experience when they are engaged in dangerous activity. You can climb a mountain, Do you think you're doing much thinking when you're hanging on this wall? No, you can't. You have to be absolutely present. In that moment, you have transcended thinking, and the situation has forced you, is forcing you into complete presence, this highest degree of alertness. Without it, you slip and you're gone. And so this high degree of alertness, however, has no tension in it. In the case of somebody practicing a dangerous sport, yes, there is physical tension, but the state itself has no tension in it, and you do not need to engage in a dangerous activity in order to enter that state. We are entering it here because even as I talk about it, I hope, well, I don't really hope anything, but I trust that as I speak about it, simultaneously to listening to it, you can verify in yourself this state of attention, which is a state of very high alertness, but there's no tension in it. It's not the alertness that sometimes goes with fear, and you go, "But this not, ah." That's really a contraction of the entire body. It's not really alertness. So that's not it. It's a relaxed alertness. There's both yin and yang in it coming together, and it's that. If you— I also mentioned the other day, when you first look at something for the first few seconds, a new vista, a new landscape, you enter a room or you step out of a room into the open or whatever it is, or suddenly something new comes into your field of— into your perceptual field, in the first 2 or 3 seconds you don't know what it is, you have to first take it in. There's a moment of alert presence in this, but usually you're only aware of the sense perception, you're not aware of the background of the alert presence itself. But you can be aware of the alert presence itself as you take it in. And that's the key. So you're not just alertly present, you're aware of the field of alert presence in yourself, so to speak, as yourself. And the awareness of it and it are the same thing. Cessation of thinking. Now, you can try it. Even now, I would suggest that as I'm speaking, you may find, you may not know this yet, in the moments when I'm not speaking, like now, And now, and now, if you're alert, you're not thinking, you're just present. And now, it's just an alert field of presence. So some of you may not be able yet to be totally free of thinking, but I believe that most people are able to have short gaps of no thought, pure awareness, or no thought, just a short— and then you look around. In that moment, your whole your personal sense of self has receded. In the moment of pure presence, which is just this, you have no memories and you have no expectations for future because you have no thought. But you haven't fallen asleep, you're very awake. In that moment, you're not a person anymore. What are you? Just a field of consciousness, conscious presence. Something has emerged from within you and has taken place of the person. The person is still there, it's just gone, receded. If the only thing you achieve in life is this, that you are able to be free of compulsive and addictive thinking, if you're able to almost, one could say, to choose not to think when there's nothing in particular to think about, when you can just be present. In other words, if you can step out of thinking into aware presence, that alert space, then that is the greatest thing you could achieve in this lifetime, that any human could achieve in this lifetime. And yet there's nobody left to say, "I have achieved it." That's the problem for the ego. The ego would love to say, "Oh, I have achieved the state of presence." So it's not an achievement. I'm just saying it's an achievement, but it's not really, because you didn't do it. You got out of the way and then it happened. You need to realize most humans have this inbuilt dysfunction. They cannot acknowledge the present moment. Unconsciously, they regard the next moment, whether it's a minute from now or an hour from now or 2 years from now, always regarded as more important. Whenever you are impatient, trying to get somewhere, waiting for something impatiently. What's the next thing I have to do? And I have to do that. And you're pulled in all kinds of directions. What's now? Oh, now I have to do that and that and that. And there's always the pull to the what's the next thing. That is, I call that sometimes you lose yourself in doing. Doing is necessary, obviously, you need to do, but to lose yourself in continuous doing is a serious dysfunction, but it's so normal that nobody realizes it. So if you lose yourself in the doing, there's always another— and this is how stress arises. Stress is the gap, in the gap between now and later, the projected then, now and then, in that gap arises the stress arises. So the mental projection towards future creates the stresses between, well, I'm here, but I want to be there. And for many humans, that is their predominant state. They're always— they're here, but they really want to be there, either there in space or time. It's amazing. And even you awakening beings may still sometimes or often find yourself in that state where you'd suddenly realize that the whole day you've been stressed about this, that, and that, and that. The world makes so many demands upon you. You need to deal with this and this and this, amplified by the gadgets that we now use, which is an amplification of the dysfunction through this. And you lose yourself in the doing. You become completely uncentered and basically lost. There are many— even happens even to children already at an early age these days. And many children are suffering from attention deficit disorder and so on, which means their mind is being pulled always away from the present moment. So lost in doing, lost in doing really comes back to lost in thinking. Thinking underlies doing. So you are lost in your thoughts about the world, and then you engage in all kinds of activities propelled by thought that, "Now I need to do this, now I need to do that." So the basic condition still for most humans on the planet, so fundamentally, yes, they are lost in doing, they lose themselves in doing, but basically it means they are lost in their mind, in the movement of thought. What now you identify then, they identify with every thought that arises, Many thoughts are about future or the past, not that many thoughts are about the present moment. And if they are about the present moment, then it is an interpretation of the present moment that is completely determined and colored by your past conditioning. So very interesting to observe in oneself this tendency to deny, devalue, disregard, reduce the present moment to a means to an end. It's always a means to an end, but it's never recognized for what it is in itself. And often it is more than a means to an end. Means to an end. For many humans, this is a very dysfunctional way of being. For many humans, the present moment is actually regarded unconsciously as an obstacle that they need to get beyond. There's a continuous underlying unease. And what's the next thing that's going to go wrong? I know it's going to happen. Lost, lost in the mind, lost in thought. There was an Indian teacher who described the essential human condition as lost in thought. And of course, that's how it is. This is then, this movement of thought gives you your sense of identity, the unease, the uneasy narrative, the problematic narrative of me and my life. I have to think about this when I wake up in the middle of the night, and I carry this heavy burden of my problematic life. For many humans, their identity is unconsciously regarded as a problem to be solved. I am a problem that I'm looking for a solution to this problem that I am. And of course, then you go to a therapist. Now, if the therapist is good, he might be able able to take you beyond that. Depends. If he or she is not good, then you get more deeply entrenched, and 15 years later, you are still undergoing psychoanalysis and find ever deeper layers of complexity in your past, and there's no end to it. So the present moment is devalued, not recognized, regarded either as a means to an end or an obstacle. That is, for many humans, that is their predominant state of mental-emotional state. And as I said, their identity is derived from that. So the error lies in identification with thought. Now the question arises, who or what is it that identifies with thought? If I am not the story that I tell myself about who I am, if I am not ultimately that, then who or what am I? And what is it in me that identifies with the story? What is it that creates this sense of identity that exists mostly in a state of unease, or very often discontent because it cannot acknowledge the present moment. That is the ego, by the way, that's what we call it, the egoic sense of self. There's a very simple spiritual practice to get you to the realization of who or what it is that identifies. I suggest at this moment moment that— Observe yourself internally right now to see if there's any lingering emotion in you, perhaps from earlier today or an hour ago or yesterday or the past 2 years. Or the past 10 years? Is there any— can you feel, for example, is there an irritation somewhere? Is there some kind of anxiety? Is there a kind of heaviness, a certain heavy mood, a despondent mood perhaps? Is it lingering there? "Is there anger?" Anger, big thing. Some residue of anger from what happened earlier, is that in you? And then normally, humans would say, "I am angry," or they would say, "I am anxious, I'm fearful, I am in a bad mood." Now, there's already a delusion when the moment you say, "I am angry," or, "I am anxious," that indicates already that you have identified with the emotion of anger or the emotion of sadness or the emotion of fear. You have identified, you equate "I" with what arises in your field of consciousness. So you say, "I'm angry." It would be more correct to say, "There is anger in me right now." Now, it may sound a trivial difference between saying, "I am angry," and, "There's anger in me," but there's a significant difference which goes beyond mere syntax, how you put words together, because when you say, "I am," you equate "I" with whatever condition is there in you. This applies to emotion and it also applies to thought. Because anger is often, it's not just the anger as emotion, the anger also exists as angry thoughts, and then they they reinforce each other as a vicious circle. When you are trapped in irritation or anger, the emotion feeds the thought and the thought feeds more energy to the emotion. It's a vicious circle, and you don't want to get out of it. You might notice when you observe an angry person or despondent person, anxious person, they don't really want to be free of the anger. They don't want their— if you suggested to an angry person, "You can be free," you will not get a pleasant answer. And you've seen angry people who, they are in the grip of anger or irritation, they cannot help it, then they shout at you and then they leave. They leave the room, and a minute later the door opens, they come back because they thought of something else to insult you with. They are in the grip of it. There is complete identification with thought and emotion. They are lost in thought, they are lost in emotion. But who or what is it that is lost? If I'm not the thoughts and the emotion, who or what am I? Okay. I just asked you to just have a look inside yourself and see what it is, if there's anything there that's jarring and doesn't feel good, but it's there. And I'm not saying try to get rid of it, no. Acknowledge the present moment. The present moment is what is, externally or internally. That's what is. But there's a huge difference now. You've already, by recognizing that there is, let's say, irritation, anger, or anxiety in you, an additional element or dimension has come in. And that dimension we could call awareness, or we could call it presence. And the moment awareness comes in, you are no longer completely identified with it. One could say, I sometimes describe it as, let's say, there's the anger, and as your awareness of the anger comes in, there's a little bit of space around it. That's the awareness. The awareness knows that there's anger. The anger may still be there. It may not immediately disappear, but the awareness knows it's there, or whatever else it may be. The arising of awareness is spiritual awakening. The disidentification that happens When awareness arises, that is the spiritual awakening or the arising of the transcendent dimension of consciousness. Transcendent because it transcends who or what you are as a person.

Adversity can either— it can strengthen the ego or it can gradually, or in some cases suddenly, dissolve the ego, or at least diminish it. It can go either way. And I must agree with you, I don't know whether you literally said it, in perhaps still in the majority of cases, it strengthens the ego because nobody knows, people don't know the opportunity that every adversity represents. So why does it happen? How does it strengthen the ego? You can see it sometimes with people who are sick or people who are disabled. Let's say I've met disabled people, people with physical disabilities, for example. And in some cases, they are very, really angry with the world and bitter because look at what happened to me, they say.

Why do I can't move anymore?

I've been afflicted with this. What have I done?

To deserve this?

And these are all questions that are justifiable questions. The question, what have I done to deserve? Why has the world, or whatever they say—

God, the world, the universe, or whoever—

they've done this to me? Well, and then they become bitter and angry, and the ego becomes more and more rigid and hardened.

And, and that is one way it could go.

And then I have met people with disabilities who, through their disability, at some point, whether through a spiritual teaching— and in some cases never come into contact with any spiritual teaching— it just happened that at some moment they realized intuitively that all the suffering was generated through resistance. And then the resistance to the is-ness of their life, this moment, they were able to let go because perhaps the suffering was getting too much. Something happened. Something clicked inside. Or even if it didn't happen completely, they were able to have moments of inner peace. An inner peace that is not caused by an external condition.

An inner peace that seems to be in contradiction to an external condition.

So that they would say, how could a person who is suffering this feels so peaceful. And so, um, also that applies to people who are approaching the end of their lifespan because they have some illness and they have been to the doctor and the doctor says you have 6 months or 1 year. And so, and suddenly something in them opens up and all that remains is that the person already dies. There's no more future and all that remains is the present moment and the, the aware space.

So I've had the privilege of working with, when I was still seeing individuals, with 2 or 3 people to whom that happened and they became luminous beings in the last few weeks or months of their lives and became just—

there was no—

there wasn't— I couldn't see that there was any person left. There was only a space of conscious presence left. Just wonderful, as if they had just come into this world. So they came, and then they came to me, and then still asking questions, very profound questions, wanting to understand what happened.

And it's beautiful.

So this can happen.

It can happen collectively to people who have—

who go through warfare and in countries or become refugees. They lose everything.

And again, it can go either way.

Whenever there's any great loss in your life, that again, an opportunity opens up. If you resist, And you resist— the resistance origin, the origin of the resistance is a narrative that forms in your mind that says something about the situations and about your life and about other people. So the narrative forms in your mind and the narrative is an unhappy one. And then there's continuous Resistance and non-alignment with the is-ness of the present moment. Now one could ask, well, how could somebody who is lost, who's lost their home, perhaps even lost loved ones, and then they don't know where to go, how could this person be in a state of alignment with the present moment? Isn't that— how can somebody accept the unacceptable? Accept that which in conventional terms would be regarded as unacceptable. How is that possible? But that's precisely it. If you can accept the unacceptable, that is the sudden, the opening, and then you realize the unacceptable is actually not unacceptable, it is acceptable.

And the—

I was homeless for a certain period in my life with not knowing where to live on the the next day or the next week. And I had already gone into the state of acceptance, so it was a very pleasant experience, but potentially would have been extremely unpleasant. So not having a home was for me already something that was not experienced as something bad, but I knew I had to take some action eventually to get a home. And so gradually something happens. I don't want to talk too much about that. I also mentioned in the New Us, I believe, when I was at university, there was Stephen Hawking, the physicist who was confined to a wheelchair, passed away a couple of years ago, and there it was.

He would always—

he wasn't famous at that time, only famous locally in the university. We would always be in the same dining room having lunch, but not the same table. I never met him, wasn't introduced, observed him many times sitting at a neighboring table. And then I, the one moment when I held open the door for him, he was coming through in his wheelchair, and I looked into his eyes and I could see There was no unhappiness.

Be grateful for whatever your experience of this moment is, and if you cannot be grateful, at least allow it to be because it already is. You might as well. Now, if you did this little thing, It sounds very little and it is very little. Allowing your experience of this moment to be the way it is. Just this little thing would remove— well, it's hard to put it in percentage terms. Let's say 95% of the suffering from your life. I don't know about the rest, the 5%. We'll get to that sometime. That would already remove a gigantic chunk of unhappiness in whatever form. Unhappiness is the most generic term one could use. The Buddha called it suffering. And so for the next 6 months, then that obviously is one of the practices practice is not to internally resist your experience of this moment. Now, of course, many times, possibly you forget that, and that's fine. The moment you realize that you forgot it, it's there again, and then you can accept the experience of this moment as the unhappiness that is arising in you because you forgot to accept your experience of this moment, and so you feel this unhappiness arising in you, and you say, "Where does that come from?" Oh, I forgot to accept my experience of this moment. And then you accept the unhappiness. And the weird thing with unhappiness is when you completely accept the unhappiness, it cannot survive very long. It doesn't like— it cannot actually coexist with acceptance. So the weird thing then arises that you say something like, "Okay, I'm unhappy. That's okay. I don't mind being unhappy." And then the unhappiness goes, "What's going on? That's not supposed to happen." The unhappiness cannot survive for very long with the acceptance acceptance, even the acceptance of unhappiness, not indulging in unhappiness, but the acceptance. Now, the acceptance of unhappiness, it presupposes that there's an awareness there that knows that you're unhappy. Now, that might sound like something very natural, but it isn't, because the most unhappy people, and there are still millions, and of course they have reasons for being unhappy, yes, And it's not necessarily the people who you'd think would have the most powerful reasons for being unhappy. It's often those who you would think, well, there are many millions who have it worse than they, but these are more unhappy than those. That's often the case. So the unhappiness Unhappiness is something that when it's recognized as unhappiness and accepted, something happens to it. It begins to dissolve. But the really unhappy people are so identified with the unhappiness, which is a combination of certain recurring thoughts in your head, a certain narrative that is not pleasant, whether it is about my life, whether the narrative says, "My life, oh, dreadful thing, my life. Why did it all go so wrong?" 'Wrong, so wrong, wrong.' And now I say, 'It's nothing I can do.' Or whether the narrative is about somebody else. 'You know what he did, what she said and did.' And the narrative may be about something that hasn't happened yet, and it goes on and on, or something that happened in the distant past or not so distant past. So there's a narrative, and then there are emotions that are a reflection of the narrative. The narrative is thoughts, certain types of thoughts, certain thoughts that have a certain frequency, and then that awakens the emotions. Emotional frequency, because the body thinks the narrative in your mind is reality, that is the reality that you're experiencing. So the body reacts with an emotion. Simple example: at night you can't sleep because you're extremely worried about what's going to happen to you or somebody close to you, even the world. And it all sounds very critical. There's a crisis in your head, not outside. Outside your head there's a pillow and there's a blanket or even something big and strong fluffy and soft, down duvet, and there's no unhappiness there. And if you look around the bedroom also, where's the unhappiness? The plant is okay, it's not unhappy. No, it's all happening in here. And then the body, since that is your— the critical reality that you inhabit, you are— there is a crisis in your life, the body doesn't know the difference between what's actually happening and what's happening in your head. What's happening in your head is taken to be the absolute reality. And then you experience the emotion that goes with that kind of narrative. And so there's no awareness. And when you're trapped in that, you don't even really know that you are unhappy because you are the unhappiness. The unhappiness has become your identity. So when you become the unhappiness, you don't even know that you are— or suffer, let's use the Buddhist term suffering. When you are in this deep suffering. You don't even know you're suffering because the suffering is a gigantic, huge chunk, part of your sense of self. You are a suffering entity. And as all therapists know, that once the patient or the client or whatever they call the people that come to them according to their school, they reach a point where there's a possibility of going beyond the deep-seated patterns, unconscious patterns, and then there's a huge resistance very often because the person is afraid of losing a very important piece of their identity, and sometimes it's the most important part of their identity. They have lived with with an unhappy sense of self for years and perhaps even decades. They don't want to let go. And again, they don't know that consciously. They never say, "I do not want to let go." If they could say that, then that means there's already some awareness. So lack of awareness, lack of presence, that is the unawakened state that Still, unfortunately, millions of humans are trapped in that. But the moment you know, you recognize your inner state, that means there is an awareness, which is— there is another dimension of consciousness that has emerged in you, through you, a deeper dimension of consciousness that is not the conditioned thinking. So we can call it awareness, or we can call it presence, you can call it the unconditioned consciousness. And then the beginning of freedom, or the possibility of freedom arises, and it's from there that you recognize your inner states as they arise, from there that you recognize your unhappiness and say, You can feel the unhappiness. But the moment you become aware of suffering or unhappiness in you, you're no longer feeding it with your thoughts. As long as you're not aware, you're feeding it. There's this vicious circle. You're feeding it with your thoughts, with your narrative, and you're trapped in the vicious circle. Your narrative creates more unhappiness. The unhappiness creates more thought, and you're trapped in that. So for the next 6 months, and hopefully beyond, because it's a much more pleasant way to live, you make it your practice to be aware of your inner states. And meaning, no matter what situation arises in your life, whether it's little things, big things, difficult situations, difficult people, challenges, problems. Because the next 6 months are not going to be free of challenges and problems. So whatever it is, realize that the primary factor in any situation is your inner state, because that determines how you respond. So no matter what it is, your primary responsibility is to be aware of what goes on inside you. And that means whatever arises in your life is actually to be used in your practice so that you do not become dependent on what's going on externally in your life. So your inner state gradually is no longer determined— perhaps still a little bit, yes, but not completely determined by outer events, people, situations, and so on. Inner freedom arises. That's awakening. I am is the word. All you can say is I am, but you don't need to— you don't add anything, not this or that. I am. In the Old Testament, God is asked, 'Who are you?' And that's perhaps the most profound sentence in the Old Testament, 'I am that I am,' where God defines him, her, itself as the 'I am,' as the essence identity of all forms. And also another beautiful sentence in the Old Testament, as you know, the Old Testament is a mixed, the New Testament, the Bible is a mixed bag of fantastic things and other things. The, but I like to look for the jewels that are there. Another beautiful statement that points to all this is, 'Be still and know that I am God.' 'Be still and know that I am God.' Now these words are all synonymous. 'Be' refers to being. 'Still' is a state of consciousness without thought, stillness. Being and stillness, the same thing. And know, there is a deep knowing in that. In fact, it's— that is because that is the source of all intelligence. There's a deep knowing, but from the point of view of the conceptual mind, it looks like unknowing. It looks like ignorance because it's not knowing through concepts anymore. It's— there's a deeper knowing, and this is where what we call wisdom arises, which is very different from intelligence, the IQ kind of intelligence. The wisdom that the world needs— not more intelligence, please, no. But wisdom, yes, be still and know that I am, it is the I am of being, God. Oh, here we come to a difficult word, but they are all synonymous. What is God then? I rarely talk about God because you can't really— it's so transcendent that whatever you say would be very limited. As you know, human language and human thought is relatively limited. How can I make statements about the ultimate transcendent reality just by producing a few weird sounds with my vocal cords plus air pressure through my tongue and lips. Oh, the vowels, A, I, A, E, I, O, U, E, U, R. This is what language is. Oh, okay, now tell me the ultimate secrets of God in the transcendent universe. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't. It's absurd. Just produce a few sounds and that explains— No. However, I'll carry on talking. All we can do is give an analogy or like a poetic image of what God might be and how God what relates to who you are. And that image is, that I prefer, is the image of, you know, we can only use images from our sense-perceived universe. The sun is a life-giving thing in our universe. The sun gives of itself. Ceaselessly for millions and millions of years. One could almost say eternally. It's not eternal, but as far as we are concerned, it's eternal. Without the sun, there would be no life, no physical life here. So the sun gives of itself, it emanates continuously. The very heat in your body ultimately comes from the sun. So the Sun, if you use the Sun as an analogy for the transcendent, you know, the transcendent God, God has no location in space or time. God is neither there, or if we have to say anything, we could say God is right here because it's transcendent to this dimension. So if we use this as analogy, the transcendent emanates into this dimension something that creates form, that creates life. And what it ultimately— this thing that it emanates is consciousness. At first, very little. At first, consciousness appears as if it were frozen as minerals and stones. And then consciousness becomes as if it were liquid, If we use an analogy of water, then it becomes vegetative life, and consciousness gradually evolves. So one consciousness, more of it comes in, and then you get animal life. It's like— and then you get human life, it becomes ethereal, it's a human mind. So emanating from the source of all life that is transcendent, of which you cannot say anything, into this world, as the sun emanates light, the God emanates consciousness, and this brings about this universe. And in this universe, it's a process, it grows. In the transcendent, we don't know anything about that. So, now the important thing is the ray of sunlight that you come that hits your hand, you feel the warmth on your hand, that ray, it's not the sun, you couldn't say, "I have the sun on my hand." I mean, if you got close to the sun, you would immediately disappear. But this ray of sunlight is still connected to the sun in some way, it is still part of the sun. We can't even say where the sun exactly ends, it doesn't really end anywhere. It doesn't have a clearly defined surface. It extends outward, so it emanates continuously. So what the source of all life emanates is consciousness, and you can sense that in yourself. When you can sense yourself as consciousness, presence, then you realize this: the ripple on the surface of the ocean has realized that it is not only a ripple— I'm mixing analogies now— it's not only a ripple, more fundamentally the ripple is the ocean. And suddenly the ripple is no longer fearful, because it can sense its deep connectedness to that which is vast and all-encompassing. And so the ripple suddenly lives in a different way because it realizes its own timeless essence. Or the sun, the ray of sunlight, could do the same. It could suddenly become aware that it is still connected and part of the sun. It can— and you can sense in yourself the undoubted fact that you are conscious. But not only that, we're creating a duality here that doesn't exist when we say that you are conscious. The essence of who you are is consciousness, so you are consciousness. How you respond, and that, if you are, I have the, we can use the two words, react, respond. The way I use them is react means it's a karmically determined reaction. You act, you react, out of the conditioning of your mental-emotional field. Response implies that you are present and your action is no longer determined by the mental-emotional conditioning of the person. There is a higher intelligence, one could say, or I call it wisdom, but let's In other words, there's a higher intelligence that can then operate in your daily life, a higher intelligence which we could call wisdom. So it's not the conventional intelligence that you can measure in IQ tests. That's a very limited version of intelligence. There's a higher intelligence that comes in through presence that deals more intelligently with any situation that arises in your life. That's the only possible way of dealing intelligently, is by dealing with the situation through presence. Especially important, of course, in human relationships, because there's so much unconsciousness that happens in the interaction between human beings, between two human beings and larger numbers of human beings and then groups of collectives of millions of human beings here and another million there. Or this, you can see when you look at politics and affairs and so what's happening in the world, very little intelligence, the way they deal with things. And you would be amazed, how can they be so short-sighted and ultimately have to use a simple word, stupid. But these people have degrees, they have university degrees. How can they be so stupid? Well, they only activated a very limited version of intelligence that you can measure in IQ tests. That's not enough. I'm sorry, I don't want to offend anybody who has a very high IQ or is a member of this— there's an organization called Mensa, I believe. Belief. So if you have a very high IQ, you can be a member of that, and that's good for your identity, of course. So I don't want to take anything away from you, but that is not real intelligence. Yes, it's a form of intelligence, but it's a relatively low form form of intelligence. Much higher intelligence comes in through presence, and that is lacking in the world. There are occasionally, you see, very rarely you see a politician, actually, you can see, oh, this person has some real intelligence and insights, and it's usually not the people who are running things. If it's a politician, it's usually somebody who's been pushed to the periphery of politics, and from there he or she comments on the stupidity of what's happening in the world. I've observed it in different countries, similar phenomenon. There are, okay, there are a few people here and there who can can see clearly where we are going and what we are doing. It's crazy because there is a lack of true— this higher intelligence that is beyond the egoic mind. And, um, well, at the moment it doesn't look good because we're going on I was going to use that weird expression about the handbasket again. So you can see it. Now it's important when you look at the state of the world, it's important that you don't— you do do not enter a reactive mode because that will draw you into unconsciousness. If you watch too much television or current affairs, you will be drawn into most likely unconsciousness unless you watch it as an— watch it as an anthropological study of how misguided humanity can be. So you need to stay present while you look at all this and see what's happening. Question may arise, shouldn't I be doing something Well, there may be something you can do, bring some sanity into this world, perhaps through saying something, speaking out, pointing out something, not creating enemies. If you see people are deluded in what they say or do, don't make them into enemies. Enemies and to attack them and say, "You are totally crazy." No, it may be that what they do may be and probably is dysfunctional and stupid, or the opinions they hold may be extremely misguided and irrational. So you can address the opinions that they hold, their mental positions, and point out the irrationality and so on without making the people who hold the opinion into enemies. So don't equate the mental positions that people hold with who they essentially are. You can speak out, maybe you can post something on one of the many platforms that are available, something that is sane rather than insane. But perhaps you can post something that points out the insanity of it all. Some people do that. So that's a good thing, you know, because some people may suddenly see, oh yes, that's true. So higher intelligence comes in, and that can then deal with situations, and that's the end of karma. What humanity is doing now collectively is karma playing itself out, the movement of unconsciousness. And so, as we mentioned yesterday with reference to individuals, you remember we talked about responsibility. Can you hold a person responsible responsible for what they do if they are unconscious? We talked about that yesterday. If they are in the grip of their mental-emotional conditioning, that is part of their karma. Can you hold a karmic formation person— can you hold a karmic formation responsible for what they do? Not really. So there's a deep wisdom in what Jesus said, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Forgiveness means the realization that they are not responsible, they cannot do otherwise. But we also, and this also applies to the collective, what all the politicians are doing and so on. They don't know any better. They are in the grip of egoic reactivity and shortsightedness that comes with it and so on. But as is the case with individuals, although they may not be and cannot be held responsible, and yet they have to suffer, the consequences of their unconsciousness. This is how humans ultimately awaken. They're not responsible, they still have to, they create suffering for themselves and others. And through the suffering that's created by the unconsciousness, an awakening happens. So in other words, the ego, is necessary for the awakening to happen. The ego ultimately self-destructs. It has built into it a self-destruct function. That is ultimate wisdom. So that also applies to the collective. Already if you look at the 20th century, the wars that happened, and the internal conflicts in countries that happens, the countless millions upon millions killed by other humans, what they did, the terrible suffering they have to— this is all the movement of unconsciousness. They can't— they don't know what they do. And then humanity suffers and suffers and suffers. Through the suffering, gradually, gradually an awakening happens. So the ego's dysfunction creates suffering, and ultimately the suffering acts as an awakener. It's just a question of how much longer is the suffering going to go, and what's the next stage, you may ask, on the scale of collective suffering. I don't know, but it doesn't look good at the moment. But you are here to represent, to embody the higher intelligence. I mean, hopefully you don't make that into a mental concept. I embody the higher intelligence. It is true, but it should not become a mental concept that you identify with. And so the sanity— you embody the sanity in a world that is still predominantly, one has to say, insane in many ways. Not all of it is insane, but a lot of it, important parts are insane. So let's then see what the— whatever comes is maybe bad from a lower perspective, doesn't look good, but ultimately everything that happens in the service of the evolution of consciousness, even in your own life. And if it applies in your own life, it also applies to the collective of humanity.

In this world, you have to be careful with what kind of thoughts you absorb from the collective, because there's so much unhappiness in the collective energy field of humanity. So it's very easy to get drawn into that if you're not careful. And participate in the suffering of the collective— fear, anxiety, anger that's everywhere. It's also very easy to be affected by certain thoughts that can take over your mind, that come from the collective thoughts and thought patterns. Anybody who is not sufficiently present sufficiently aware is susceptible to being infected by certain thoughts. The mind— certain thoughts become lodged in your mind. Every thought is an energy formation. Like you could say a little entity. The thought gets lodged in your mind and attracts associated thoughts and becomes a bundle of thoughts. And without awareness, you identify with the thoughts, and then you are being possessed by certain thoughts. They may arise from your personal, but very commonly they arise from the collective. In your personal life, you could develop some kind of thought that— of an obsessive nature that occupies your mind and you can't get rid of it. It could be the thought of one directed to one particular person, very, very negative thoughts, even At the simplest level, some people have— you can have a melody that you can't get rid of in your mind. You can have a whole day or two days and you can't get rid of some— this thing that's in your mind, it repeats itself again and again. You can have certain assumptions about this world, like they may be totally absurd and irrational, or there may be some truth to it, but only there may be an aspect of the truth. You might think that The most absurd thoughts could be there. You might think that the extraterrestrials are already here. Well, they may be, but— and every other human is actually an alien, and you just have to look at them carefully to figure out whether they are aliens or humans. And that could— I'm not excluding the possibility that some aliens may be here, but we are really— I'm talking about obsessive thoughts that are probably not correct. And then it colors your subsequent perception of reality, gets totally colored by the obsessive thoughts, and it can explain everything. In those terms, all the evils of the world have suddenly one explanation. Another one that's also in the collective, you can have a thought that the entire world is divided into oppressor and oppressed. Any human being either belongs to the oppressors or to the oppressed. That was an idea in communism in economic terms, in terms of social power. They divided humans divided humanity into oppressors and oppressed. And then they look at, you can look at any human being and to me he's oppressed, he's an oppressor. Now, thing is, of course oppressors and oppressed have existed and to some extent in some areas still exist. But to take one fragment of truth, because the totality of human life is much vaster than that, this is one aspect. But if you take one aspect that then occupies your mind because of lack of awareness, you are possessed by a thought. And this thought says the entire world, this is just one example, could give many examples. The entire world is, Either the essential identity of any human being is either they are oppressed or they are the oppressor. Now, of course, if that is the thoughts that dominate your mind, then obviously you would probably regard the oppressed as the good ones and the oppressors as the bad ones. So then that simplifies life enormously. You immediately can decide who is good and who is bad. And you are probably good, presumably, even if you're an oppressor traditionally. You now recognize your sins and you will atone for your sins of being an oppressor and you side with the oppressed and therefore you become one of the good people. Okay, so we had the same phenomenon in very extreme form. We all know about Soviet communism, we know about Chinese Mao Zedong Cultural Revolution, quite a crazy time here, you know, National Socialism in Germany, all these evils perpetrated by all these collective delusional systems that divided people into good and bad, entire groups, gave them an identity. I was in Cambodia a few years ago and visited the death camps of Cambodians. It's a small country, so not many people are familiar with the recent history of Cambodia, but they had an extreme communist regime under a mad dictator called Pol Pot. And in that extreme communist regime, Cambodia experienced dreadful suffering. One-third of the population was killed by their own government. Because they were the oppressors. An oppressor was anybody who could read and write because obviously they were exploiting the peasants. Anybody who wore glasses, it would immediately— like that's what oppressor, they would be sent from the cities into the countryside to work on the fields where they didn't have enough food and most of them starved. Total lack of humanity, total lack because of the entire country was dominated by one absurd and obsessive thought that made it impossible for them to relate to any human being as a human being. They relate to them through the conceptualization that thought had created for them. They couldn't sense the humanity, the being of the other human anymore the moment they had imposed a conceptual identity on them. This is an extreme example of what can happen to you when you're taken over by certain thoughts in your mind. This is not to mean that— of course oppressor and oppressive existed and exist, but it's not the entire explanation. There are many other facts in this life. But I'm saying all this because you need to be very alert so that your mind is not taken over by certain thoughts that invade your mind and color your view of reality. And there are certain irrational thoughts that are floating around in the collective at the present time, so it's very very easy for you to absorb some of them and being possessed by certain thoughts. And maybe it's so irrational that it's unbelievable, but I'm not giving any examples. You have to find it out for yourself with awareness you can. And be very careful with observing your mind. Be there as the witness of your mind so that you don't get taken over by certain thoughts, that your mind does not get taken over by certain thoughts. And then you cannot perceive reality anymore as it is. Everything is colored by the veil of irrational thinking. So Nowadays, these things can spread very quickly and easily, these irrational things. In the past, they were confined to either one country or one area in a particular country. But nowadays, certain irrational thoughts can go through the entire world through the technology we have and can quickly affect millions of humans all over the world. So in the past, you had it, as I said, limited. Let's say the hunt for witches in the past, totally absurd and irrational. It's a mental disease that affected certain countries or areas in certain countries. And this mental disease then, so there were some places in Europe, there were villages and towns in Europe in the middle Middle Ages, during that time of collective insanity, there were almost no women left in some villages and towns at that time. They had all been burned or drowned because they were counted as witches. Absolute insanity. So don't underestimate how insane humans can become. The only antidote that you have against it is awareness so that your mind does not get affected by mental virus. The awareness, the awareness is aware of what your mind is doing so that your mind does not get occupied by one particular way of thinking, which is probably irrational. Anything that's one-sided that does not see the totality of a situation like oppressor and oppressed. If you don't see the many factors that make up a human being's identity.

So be very careful with what you consume in the media.

The media that brings the news to you. Be very careful with what you consume so that you do not take on without knowing it unquestioningly certain ways of looking at the world. Realize that you're being— how manipulative most of the mainstream media has become. You need to If you watch it knowing how you are being manipulated, and the people themselves are being manipulated too. So they are in the grip of unconsciousness and they want to draw others into unconsciousness. So they're not the evil ones, they just don't know any better.

Sometimes people try to exercise willpower when they try to manifest what they— I really, I'm going to— I really want, I want this to do it is. That is not necessarily a good way to manifest, because by saying I want it, you're also saying that you don't have it yet. But the most powerful way to manifest is the feeling that you already— that it's already here. And that can only rise out of the fullness of being, of presence in the present moment, because then you merge the image of what you want with a sense of fullness, the fullness of being. So the image and the fullness of being come together. And that is a powerful way of manifesting it, which means you don't, you don't need that thing for your happiness anymore. You don't need it for your ultimate fulfillment. The most powerful way to manifest is to regard it as a play or a game, the game of life, the play of life, of manifesting. Then That's also a sense of detachment from the outcome. An excessive attachment to the desired outcome is also an obstacle to manifesting. If you desperately need something, if you are unhappy, if you are unhappy when you're If you don't get it, then there's something wrong. So if you're unhappy when you don't achieve whatever you want to manifest, then you didn't do it right. So there needs to be a detachment, so to speak, from the desired outcome, so that you don't project this. Whatever you want to manifest doesn't become a future projection, but whatever you want to manifest needs to be realized as already existing. Existing on some level in the unmanifested. That's why Jesus said— I want to go back to Jesus because whatever you want to learn about manifestation, just read what he explained it all in very simple words. He said, whenever you pray for something believe that you have received it and it will be yours. That's the entire secret of manifestation right there. And the importance of the words are not believe that you will receive it, because then there would be too much wanting. I want this, I will get it. No, he said, believe that you have received it and it will be yours and it will be given to you. So the believing that you have, in other words, you already, it's already there and you can, when you, and how does that happen? How does that happen when you know, when your senses tell you that it's not there? Let's say you live in a trailer. There's nothing wrong with living in a trailer. I love trailers. But let's say you live in a trailer, but you want a nice house. Okay, your preference would be a nice house, but are you unhappy in your trailer, or do you appreciate being in a trailer and you can hear the pitter-patter of rain on the roof?

Well, I can hear it now. I'm not in a trailer, but I can still hear it from the windowpane.

So in a trailer, but you want a nice house. Okay, where is the house? Of course, you look around, it's not here. I'm living in it. Are you creating some kind of dissatisfaction by telling yourself a story? This is what my life has come to. I'm reduced to living in a trailer. I need to get out of here. These are— this is all disempowering. All those narratives, telling yourself stories that it's not good enough, all very disempowering. Yes, your senses are telling you that you're not living in a nice house, it is in a trailer, but that's fine for the present. Moment. So where's the house? The house is in your imagination, in your mind.

You can—

you maybe visualize it, or maybe you have certain verbal affirmations that you have a lovely house that you live in, and then the visualization and the verbal affirmation, you bring it together, allow the visualization of the verbal affirmation to be empowered by that sense of presence. So it meets the presence. So that's how it merges with the sense of presence. And then inside you feel You already have it. And the weird thing is, when you finally— when you do get it, let's say next year or 6 months' time or in 2 years' time or in 3 years' time, when you do get it, the nice— and then suddenly you sit in your nice house, it makes no difference to your inner state anymore. Because when you were in your trailer, you were already in the same state of fullness of life when you're in the nice house. And here's a nice house and say, okay, it's fine, but you are not— you say yes, a certain amount of satisfaction may be there, but basically your inner state is the same as it was before because you already touched full. You are already rooted in the beingness, the dimension of being, the fullness of life. In other words, when it does manifest, you don't suddenly become, oh, I'm so happy, I caught it, oh, finally I got 'No, that doesn't happen anymore.' 'Oh, it's good.' But your inner state is not the same as it was before. No matter what you achieve, you already have the foundation for everything. You're already rooted in that. This is why Jesus called it 'all these things will be added unto you.' It's no more than that. An adding, or use the expression icing on the cake. And when you have an enormous sense of freedom, of liberation, because you're no longer— your inner state is no longer dependent on external conditions.

There's no need to demand that external conditions should be perfect. So that you can become still. In fact, it's sometimes the case that it's precisely when external conditions are seemingly unhelpful that can sometimes be a great opportunity to find that true stillness. And especially that is the case when external circumstances have the appearance of actually being a hindrance, something disturbing, something happening that upsets the status quo in your life. And those are great opportunities because then your motivation for going deeper as you suffer when things happen in your external life that quote unquote should not be happening, then you begin to suffer and as you suffer the motivation eventually arises of going deeper, of finding the place where there is no suffering. And you could still suffer a little bit on the external level of your life. So sooner or later, we find in our life that life does things to us, seemingly putting obstacles in our path, seemingly having bad intentions towards us. We experience diminishment in some form. Of course, the ego says, or the egoic self says, That's terrible. I don't want any diminishment. Diminishment meaning loss of something that had become part of your sense of self. It could be loss of possessions, could be loss of a relationship, loss of a loved one, loss of a healthy body, diminishment of physical health, loss of your persona, of what other people think of you. One day they tell you that you're the greatest, and the next day they tell you you're awful. Diminishment of whatever kind is abhorrent to the egoic self. There's a beautiful saying, I believe it comes originally— I'm not I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter where it comes. It comes out of consciousness, so it doesn't really matter. But I believe it comes originally out of Sufism, and that is, when the ego weeps for what it has lost, the spirit rejoices for what it has found. And those people who— there's no human, by the way, who does not experience this in life several times. Sooner or later, the next one comes. Some people experience it even very early in life. Some children experience loss of a parent, of both parents. So diminishment comes sooner or later. How do you meet it? Recognize it when it comes. Not as a monster or the work of some malevolent deity or demon that wants to sabotage your life, but as an opportunity also. Now, you may not be able to be grateful for it in the moment of it happening, opening, that would be perhaps too much to ask. But you will find that later, a year may pass, 2 years depending on what it is, suddenly realize that it has taken you deeper into the essence of who you are because something was removed from you that you thought you were, but it was a fiction ultimately. You had identified with something that ultimately is not who you are. It's a temporary thing. Possessions, status, great physically strong body, good looks. Relationship. And then retrospectively, very often you are able to be grateful for the loss, for the diminishment, because it drove you deeper. It brought out the essence of who you are beyond any form. Now, it does not do that to all humans. It's for everybody— diminishment is only a potential deepening. The possibility is there. Many, many humans are not able to use it because nobody has told them. The knowledge, this kind of spiritual knowledge, is still very limited. It is not part of mainstream culture. People are dying every day without having any true assistance. People who are approaching death, who are getting old, our mainstream culture still knows nothing. It's just, let's prolong life for as long as possible, even if it's totally pointless and it creates a lot of suffering. Let's just— because we don't know what to do with death. That's one of the reasons why the Foundation will hopefully be able to reach people to use the opportunity of this greatest diminishment, which is death. The greatest— when, as you approach death, an enormous opportunity for spiritual awakening, realization. But many humans, of course, miss the opportunity of that diminishment, and with the result that the ego becomes even more hardened through it, or in the words of Brother David, shriveled, shriveled up to even harder, lifeless thing. Then either you carry continuous anger or resentment or despondency for years, which becomes part of your egoic identity. And the ego loves any kind of identity. If it's a miserable one, doesn't matter, I'll have it. Just give me a strong identity. I take miserable any time over being nobody. So the opportunity of diminishment is missed. Often you see when people, they're wealthy people and suddenly something happens, they lose their money and then they jump out of the window. Because the entire sense of self was associated with their possessions. There are people who lose their reputation. You remember, of course, the case of Mr. Madoff a few years ago, who had this scheme, fraudulent scheme, and people lost millions or billions of people who were investing with him. Scheme on Wall Street. They lost— it was a pyramid— it was a Ponzi scheme, I think is the word. So he was deceiving all these people and they lost all their money and he had accumulated billions. And then finally it all collapsed. Now he's in prison and his sons couldn't take it. One of his sons— apparently the sons didn't know what was going on, I don't know I don't know if that's true, but they were also working in his firm, in his company. I believe one died of cancer soon after and the other committed suicide. Would have been a great opportunity if only somebody had told them, you've lost your money, you've lost your reputation, this is a great opportunity. Find yourself. The opening is there. But it's just lack of information. Nobody told them. I hadn't actually thought of this until this moment because we want to bring the teaching to places where it otherwise would not be— go or not rich, and I just thought of Wall Street. We will donate books and CDs to Wall Street. So we'll have to call Goldman Sachs tomorrow. See if they agree. Now, they won't be very interested, perhaps, at the moment, but they may become interested in the future. Just wait. So you have already, I believe everybody here has already experienced some forms of diminishment, to use that word, through the physical form, the psychological me entity, and for many the reason why you're here It's because you've gone through that and it has deepened you. Even the collapse of a relationship, you don't even have to be married, but you have a relationship, doesn't go well, it ends, it's a little death, it can be painful, it leaves a little hole in you. It takes, it seemingly rips something out of you, and for quite a while you feel it. It's not pleasant, but that too is an opportunity. So when the ego weeps for what it has lost, Oh dear, they're so terrible. I'll tell you what happened, and I'll tell myself what happened. Even if nobody's listening, it'll go through your head. I can't take any 'Oh, this, I just can't take it, it's just too much. What's the point of it all?' Just completely— it's good to act out the ego sometimes because then you can actually see it. It's like a reflection in the mirror because it's funny, because you remember everybody knows, familiar with that in some way, and that's why it becomes funny. I'm learning from Marianne yesterday because she has other ways of acting out the ego. It's a little bit more feminine, but I can try that too. It may look a little weird when I do it, though. But there's a lot in it that doesn't really need to be explained in words. Just this simple gesture implies a self-image, to look at yourself through a self-image. Look at me.

You know that you get defensive. The question is, do you know in the moment of getting defensive that you're defensive, or do you know it afterwards? You can look into that. I'm rarely content or grateful. That's interesting. That's very good self-observation too. I'm not content at this moment. I'm not content. My thinking is so negative. Another good piece of knowledge. My thinking is negative at this moment. What are the thoughts that are going through my head? So if you apply the awareness that is already there hiding behind all these things, if you apply the awareness to the present moment when these things arise, Defensiveness. What is low self-esteem? It's something that you tell yourself about yourself in your mind. It's certain repetitive thoughts that the voice in the head tells you. Those are— this is self— low self-esteem. There might be certain emotions that go with it, emotions that are, ooh, But really, the basis for low self-esteem is something you tell yourself about your low worth. It's thoughts. Now, the questioner already knows that she has low self-esteem, and if she can know that she has low self-esteem in the moment of the low self-esteem arising as thoughts, she can recognize them as thoughts and not necessarily true thoughts arising, repetitive thoughts, conditioned thoughts. Perhaps this low self-esteem might have started in childhood. It often happens to people whose parents are very critical, or parents tell them, "You're never good enough." This can be one reason. So it might have started there. It's a conditioned way of of thinking, conditioned thoughts. Now, the awareness that's already there in the questioner would need to be there in the moment of those things arising. And then you can see when these thoughts arise, you recognize them as thoughts that are arising, and you're no longer completely trapped in what these thoughts are saying. In other words, to use an analogy that we used not long ago, your sense of being is not in the thought anymore, it's in the awareness of the thought. In other words, if you look at the sky, the vast sky, daytime, this time, let's look at the daytime sky, the vastness of that, the huge expansiveness of the sky is awareness in this analogy, and clouds that come are thoughts. So when the clouds come, why can I never do anything right? Why are other people more successful than me? Or I'm no good at this. When these thoughts come, instead of being drawn into those clouds, and then the clouds get bigger and bigger, you remain the sky, and allow the cloud to pass and then to pass away. And that means you begin to no longer— you're no longer feeding conditioned thinking and you are separating who you are. You're taking your identity out of thinking. Thinking for a while has still a momentum. Old patterns will come again and again. But you're no longer renewing them. You're no longer feeding them by— how do you feed them? By identifying with every thought that comes. There's a self in it. It's in— so you separate yourself. You are the awareness behind the thought. Same applies to any kind of negative thinking. You recognize it as automatic. It arises and it's a thought. So, but you are the awareness that knows that this is a negative thought pattern. And if that can grow, because it's already there to some extent, if that grows, which means deepens, then those conditioned patterns will diminish. They get transmuted. So Another one point here mentioned, I get defensive easily. Defensive can happen, happens very, very quickly in human interactions. The defensiveness can come up so quickly, it's an automatic pattern, and you may only know it afterwards, oh, that was defensiveness again. And defensiveness is of course, These are all ego, ways of the ego to protect itself, ego being the mind-made self. Defensiveness will just come up with any lie just to keep its ego identity intact. So it'll come up with anything just to keep— it's automatic. So you could— A Course in Miracles has a lovely saying which is, whenever you become defensive about anything, know that you have identified with an illusion. You have identified yourself with an illusion. That's interesting. Is that true? Let's say you say that the distance from here to the moon is 300, I think in kilometers it's like 350,000 or so kilometers, and that the light takes just over 1 second to travel from the moon to the Earth, and you know that for a fact, well, I know that, I haven't verified it myself, but it seems to be true, And somebody else says, "No, that's completely untrue. It actually takes 1 minute." "It does?" Now this is just a difference of opinion or viewpoint, and of course you know very well that the other person is wrong. Now if you say, "No, that's not right," is that defensiveness? Well, it depends how you say it. The question is, Are you identified with your mind, which has this position, which happens to be true, but are you identified with that mental position? In other words, do you derive your sense of self from thought? If you're identified with it, you will get angry and defensive about the other person who is so completely wrong, and you might say things like, Well, if you know that person well, you always doubt me. Why do you always doubt me? You never believe what I say, do you? That's called defensiveness, and that's the ego trying to protect itself. And then the Course in Miracles thing applies. Know that when you become defensive about anything, know that you've identified yourself with an illusion. The illusion is not that it takes 1 second for the light from the moon to travel to the earth. That's not what the illusion is. The illusion is that you identified with a thought, with a mind pattern, and so you are strengthening an illusory identity by identifying, by strengthening the mental position of me, my mental position that's unconscious. So this is how just a difference of opinion can degenerate into huge conflict. Just a small difference of opinion because the ego becomes defensive. So that requires alertness on your part so that you know when it arises. Oh, so whenever you become defensive— so without ego, the same conversation would go 'No, it takes 1 minute. I know that for a fact.' The other person says, 'It takes 1 second.' The other person says, 'It takes a minute.' 'Well, no, you're wrong. It takes 1 second.' 'Okay, well, we leave it at that then. I think it's a second and you think it's a minute. End of the story.' That would be without defensiveness or ego. Okay, and then you can go on where everybody goes, on the internet, and that would definitely solve it. And in extreme forms of egoic unconsciousness, you will say, what it says in Wikipedia is wrong. It's wrong. They didn't get it right. That may bring me to another question. Oh, just to end on this question: the key is your awareness, so that that deepens, then all those patterns that you mentioned will weaken. And there's already a considerable amount of awareness in this person, the questioner. The awareness, of course, isn't the person, but it's deeper than the person. The thing is to apply the awareness to the present moment when things arise, not in some abstract way. I am a defensive person. Will I ever become a person who is not negative? I can't get rid of my negative patterns. I'm so negative. So it doesn't matter. This moment is what matters. So just apply your awareness to this moment. You can't change things into mental constructs. How can I change myself? I don't want to be that kind of a person anymore. Forget it. This moment, this is where you apply presence, as I sometimes call it. I haven't used that expression in a while. The sword of presence that cuts through time, and you go, until you apply it to this.

For some incredible Bruce Lipton motivation, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

Let me just introduce this because it's profoundly important. The brain is a computer. It's not like a computer. It is the most fabulous computer on planet Earth, is the human brain. And I go, so what? I go, but it functions in the same way