What Being Awake Actually Means | Eckhart Tolle

Life without love is no life at all. Your state of consciousness determines what kind of world you create, what kind of action you take, and what consequences your actions have.

You can feel the first stirrings of anger. You may only have 3 seconds. It may come very quickly. Anger is like an explosive energy, and if you catch it in the early stage, don't suppress it. If you walk in the street, you will find most people look fairly sane. They're not talking to themselves, It seems because they're not talking out aloud. But if you listened into everybody's head, you would be amazed of how noisy the inside of every human is. In the face of a challenge, if you are present, you don't convert the challenge into suffering. You just be with what is.

There is a Deep-seated dysfunction in humans has been there for thousands of years. And if there's no shift in that, then the dysfunction will destroy us.

These humans are run by unconscious conditioning, usually goes back to their childhood and what happened there. Free will ultimately does not come in until there's some awareness in you. That's where free will comes from. Until you have some awareness, you are run by the conditioning of your mind. And so you have no choice. The element of choice comes in when you become aware, for example, of your— the thoughts that go through your head. And you might realize suddenly, and for some people that's the first time they awaken spiritually, when they realize that for years they've had a voice in their head talking to them, which could be a monologue, it could be a dialogue, you could have a conversation with yourself. You can beat yourself up and say, I'm not good enough. The voice in the head, for some people, the spiritual awakening comes when they become aware that there's a voice in the head, and there's the awareness. The moment there's the awareness, You might even be able to choose to let go of a certain thought, a repetitive thought that you don't need anymore, that you don't want anymore. And then you, you surrender it or you breathe it out. You don't need it.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I make these videos because running a business is hard and waking up every day and getting to work when you're all by yourself is hard. And the thing that saved me, that continues to inspire me, motivate me, give me hope, inspiration, ideas, is looking at the stories of people who've done a lot more than me, and I learn strategies, I get motivation, and it gets me to believe in myself to go off and attack the day. And so I hope this video inspires you to do the same as well. So today let's get some incredible motivation from the one and only Eckhart Tolle. Enjoy.

But sometimes people are in the grip of strong emotions, but if there's a little bit of awareness there, If, let's say, it's anger, you suddenly— anger arises, but in the background, you're aware that there's emotion of anger. So, there's a small element of choices come in. Do you want to then attack this person? If there's awareness, you can observe the anger, but may no longer need to act it out. I'm not talking about suppressing, but recognizing.

Mm-hmm.

The more awareness you have, or presence, the more choice there is in your life. And then, it's only then that you actually become truly intelligent, because this awareness is not an IQ thing. You can have— I've met highly intelligent people with 1 or 2 or 3 PhDs, academics and others, who are completely unaware. still just completely in their minds, and people in their personal lives, often very dysfunctional personal lives. So, it's not to be equated with intelligence, this awareness.

To take responsibility for— what is it that you can take responsibility for primarily? It's taking responsibility for your state of consciousness. Which determines what kind of world you create. You, because you are humanity. Humanity is an abstract concept, doesn't exist. Humanity is the human being. You are humanity. So for humanity to take responsibility, you need to take primarily responsibility for your state of consciousness, because only a diseased Or dysfunctional state of consciousness produces a diseased and dysfunctional world out there. By world I mean the human-made world that has been imposed on what's already there, the planet, which is potentially of course a paradise, the planet pristine, unbelievable jewel, a being of great intelligence. We are not separate from it, but the being is going through a transitional process, and every transitional process is critical. It may or may not work, in which case the being will go some other way. But your state of consciousness determines what kind of world you create, what kind of action you take and what consequences your actions have. So here, this is why my main work is to address the cause of dysfunction which lies in the human mind, the dysfunction of the human mind, or as it is sometimes called in Zen, the sickness of the human mind. So, as I see it, and I don't think anybody who reads history can doubt it, there is a deep-seated dysfunction in humans, has been there for thousands of years, and if we know— if there's no shift in that, then the dysfunction will destroy us. It probably won't destroy the planet because the planet has enormous resources, but it'll take a while, would take a while for the planet to recover. All you have to do then is primarily take responsibility for your state of consciousness now, now, and this is what the entire teaching really is about. What is my state of consciousness at this moment? Am I generating disturbance? Am I generating negativity? Am I generating conflict and suffering for myself and others? Am I generating inner pollution? Am I polluting my beautiful— the beautiful being that I am with continuous absurd moods movements of thought producing negative emotions, producing an entire entity that is illusory that I call the me. So to take responsibility, there needs to be just, of course, an awakening where you can say, okay, I will take responsibility now. Some people don't know that there is even the possibility of taking responsibility. That's why you are so important. Anybody who realizes it, this is— you are the beginning of the transformed world.

Most of the time, there is a voice in your head that comments and has opinions and viewpoints and interpretations about what's going on in your life. I call that the voice in the head. For most humans, that is completely involuntary. They don't even know that they have a voice in the head that never stops talking. Most of the time silently in your head. At other times it may even shout something out, so it wants to be heard. And so if you walk in the street, you will find most people look fairly sane, They are not talking to themselves, it seems, because they're not talking out aloud. But if you listened into everybody's head, you would be amazed of how noisy the inside of every human is. It's like a radio, you know, these radio stations where the people talk in an excited voice. They go on and on. If you go to a foreign country and you don't know what they're talking about, you might think this must be extreme. Extremely important, but if you can understand what they are saying, you realize it's completely meaningless. It's just noise. So a significant part of what happens in your mind, the larger part, is actually just superfluous noise. Thinking is a wonderful ability, a wonderful tool, If used rightly, it is an instrument that causes dysfunction and misery for millions on the planet, unhappiness for millions on the planet, if thinking is not used, but if you are used by thought. So when humans say, I think, In most cases, that's actually not true because they have no control over their thinking. It's compulsive and involuntary. And they are so identified with these thought processes, they don't even know that they are in the grip of their thought processes because they are so identified, they become their thought processes. So whatever comes into your head, you completely believe in it. And then you— Yeah, that's how it is. Whenever you feel unhappiness, this is a generic term, unhappiness in whatever form. Unhappiness can arise as irritation, can arise as anger, can arise as even boredom is a form of unhappiness, sadness, all kinds of States that are not— they don't feel pleasant, they're unhappiness, and usually they are attributed to a life situation, something that's going on in your life. So for example, waiting at the airline counter, and of course how often things don't go well there. Let's hope they don't drag you out of the plane, but that could happen too. Whenever you feel irritation arising, anger arising, upset in whatever form, ask yourself, is this caused by the situation or is it caused by what my mind is telling me about the situation? And in 95% of cases, you will find that the mental commentary that Argues and complains about something that's going on but should not be going on, but it is, but shouldn't be. And the gap between what is and what the mind says should be or should not be, that gap is the arising of unhappiness and misery, or as the Buddha called suffering.

A powerful transformation can happen when you— and this This is one way of approaching it, which may be helpful to you, is not to desire anything within you to be different from the way it is now. So that would mean complete acceptance of whatever it is that you experience. At any given moment. At the moment, there are these energies in you, but you don't really want them. So there is a conflict between what you want and what you have. Now, if you approach it in a different way, instead of having what you want, perhaps you want stillness, you want peace, you want that deeper sense of aliveness, perhaps that's the yearning. You want to be fully yourself, and what you have is you perhaps you feel contraction in the body, you feel excessive mind activity, you feel an almost semi-physical energy field blocking you. So you have the two. You have what you want and you have what you have. Now, as a practice, I suggest that you do away with the conflict between what you have and what you want, and you want what you have instead. Which means whatever your inner reality or outer reality— but we're talking mainly about inner now— whatever your inner reality is right now, as it's always now, of course, It's not a big thing, it's only the reality now. Accept it totally, this is what is. And so bring that— acceptance is a strange thing. When you really can say, well, that's what is, you might as well accept it because it is the reality of this moment. So if you bring that acceptance, no matter even if it feels not pleasant, if it might be a contraction in the body or my mind is just so active. Okay, let my mind be active. Bring the allowing to it. And the strange thing happens, you may find, when you do it, you will already have a little bit of space around the condition that you dislike, but now you accept. And so you accept the condition that you previously disliked, But now you say, well, that's what is, and so I allow it to be. And what you then can sense, if you're inside of you, a little bit of space around the condition. Not much at first, just a little bit. So let's say you have a contraction here and say, that's what is, and this acceptance brings space. So here's the contraction, then here you have a little bit of—

Space.

That's what is. And then it may grow a little bit, this space around it. And then you find you become more interested in that little space around it than in the condition. So you give more attention to that, the spaciousness that comes with the acceptance of what is, and you can sense that space a bit more. And then it— what I'm saying is not literally true, but I'm just saying it grows, it seems to grow, and then there's a bit more. The condition is still the same, but it has receded somewhat. It's no longer the center of your attention. You're more aware of the space. You become the space for it.

I had a very extremely painful relationship with myself. I couldn't live with myself anymore. And so I somehow said, that's it. I can't live with it anymore. That's it. But that was so total that I no longer sustained, fueled the self through thought.

I didn't know.

anything about it. It just happened. So the mind-made image dissolved. The self that I couldn't live with, that was so heavy, dissolved. And what was left was simply I. So the I shifted from— whereas before when I said I, I was referring to myself, The unhappy, dense I, the story-based I, that dissolved. And then the true I emerged, had always been there. Presence. I am nothing in particular anymore, a simple sense of presence or beingness. And for the first time, I could walk and be without having a relationship with myself. And that— there is something so precious in that I or presence. So it's beyond words. You could say it's like a diamond. It's something extremely, very, very precious. That's why perhaps Buddhism sometimes has the image of a diamond. But this is not comparative. It's not a sense of that deepest self, not the mind-made self, Is so precious that it has— it knows itself to be that in a non-dualistic way without needing to compare itself to others. It has nothing to do with the form or any mind form. So as presence arises, you don't need Self-esteem anymore. You don't depend on that anymore because what dissolves is the mind-made entity with which you have a relationship. And it's— so self-esteem is an intermediate thing that for a little while makes your life more pleasant.

It's fine.

And then after a while, you see the unsatisfactory nature even of that, because you cannot uphold continuous self-esteem. It's hard work, all these affirmations. And then things come into your life that tell you the opposite, inevitably, sooner or later. So then suddenly you don't love yourself anymore, nor do you hate yourself, because there's no self to love. There's simply the state of this, which is love. It emanates. I often say, say yes to the present moment, or I say, Make the present moment your friend, not your enemy. So to say yes to the present moment is a powerful teaching, but it can be misunderstood and has been misunderstood sometimes, and it needs to be explained what that actually means. It means— oh, by the way, there's a funny movie made a few— some years ago with Jim Carrey.

It's called The Yes Man.

And this is a person in the movie, a character, the character he plays, he works at a bank, I think, in the mortgage department, and he's very bitter and he likes to say no to people who apply for mortgages.

Every—

no, you can't have it. He loves saying— and he's very negative about everything.

No.

Uneventful, boring. Everything is negative. Then he goes to a New Age— a friend invites him to a strange New Age event with a New Age teacher. And the teacher says, you have to say yes, yes to everything, say yes to everything. And he kind of becomes convinced that, well, I might as well try that. I've got nothing to lose. And from then on, whatever people ask him, every mortgage he approves. And whatever people ask him, can you lend me money? Sure, yes. Can you do this for me? Yes, yes, yes. And then his life becomes very interesting, but also very chaotic. He gets into most chaotic situations, and it kind of all gets out of hand. And in the end, he kind of seems to realize that this wasn't quite working, that is not the true meaning. So to say yes to the present moment does not mean that you accept everything that people ask of you. In some cases, you have to use the no.

The no.

But in the— but not in an angry way that denies the present moment. I call that a high-quality no. So it's, let's say, in your case, can you look after my children? Or let's begin, because I need your— you're so good with children. She'll flatter you, you feel obliged. You're such a wonderful person, I so love you, can you do it again, please? And at some point, you have to— I'm sorry, I can't do it anymore. But without any negativity, a simple statement. It is not a reactive statement. You don't make her into a bad person who would— I know you want to take advantage of me, I'm not doing it anymore. That is a low quality, no. Even if perhaps she did try to, perhaps she was trying to take advantage of you, but that is not, that may be then a dysfunction in her egoic self. Many humans do that. The world is full of people who perhaps are trying to take advantage of you. That's what the egos do. And so it is not who she truly is. But you speak to her You do not speak to the ego in her. You simply say, I love your children, they're just wonderful, and I enjoyed my time, but I can't do it anymore. I'm sorry about that. High quality, no, no, no, I can't do that. A person says, can you lend me another $1,000? And you say, well, I've already lent you $2,000 3 months ago, and last year I lent you $5,000. I haven't got anything back yet. And then it's, I'm sorry, I have to say no. But you don't say, you're just trying to use me and I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to be used anymore by you. This is it. That's it. No more. That's another kind of no, but it's a low-quality no. The high-quality no seems No, I'm sorry, that's it. I can't do that anymore. It implies there's a presence behind what you say. It's not reactive. And with the same, the person who asks you to write something, you say, I've seen the background, I'm not in agreement with that, therefore I'm sorry, I need to say no to this. I can't do this, thank you. High quality no.

It's beautiful.

Works quite often. You may have to use that, make sure that it's not reactive and then becomes low quality.

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-is-ness of the present moment. So if the fear arises, but then you also realize what is it. 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 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 to 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. 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 takes— 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. 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. So 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.

Cloudy. Totally overcast. Now, of course, there is 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.

I'm surprised there's nothing on Google about Eckhart and free will, but maybe I haven't said anything about it. So here we go. As you know, it's an eternal ancient philosophical question and there's never been a definitive answer that everybody would agree with in that sense. So is there free will? You mentioned everybody's doing their best because nobody can act beyond their level of consciousness, etc., for For example. Okay, let's start from on one level, and then we go on to the next level. On the level of egoic unconsciousness, where you are a conditioned entity, your mental-emotional makeup is totally conditioned by the past, And you are completely identified with the conditioning of your mind. And in that state, that spiritually speaking is the unconscious state, it is obvious that in that state there is no freedom at all because you are forced to act out the unconscious conditioning of your mind. with which you are completely identified. So I think most people would probably agree, if you understand that, that on that level there is no possibility of freedom. Your actions are determined by your conditioned mind. You are forced to act as you do because there's no choice, because choice would imply some awareness. So on that level, there's certainly no freedom. Then awareness comes in. The human being begins to awaken. Then it appears— I'm not saying it is the case— it appears that then the human— freedom begins to be a possibility. Because you can choose to step out of the conditioning of your mind. You can recognize a conditioned thought and do— you're no longer compelled to act it out because there is an awareness there. You can choose a certain course of action, not from the conditioning of your mind, but From the presence. So you can act and you have much more freedom that before you could not have. Freedom comes with awareness. So it's then relative to the unconscious state, there is now freedom to act. But If you look more deeply, even there, even there on that level, you are connected with the totality of consciousness. You're only an expression of the totality of consciousness. You are not really a separate entity. You are a, like a, as who said it, you are, was it Alan Watts who said you are, you in the same way That the wave is something that the ocean is doing, you are something that the whole universe is doing in the same way. So the wave is something the ocean is doing, you are something that the universe is doing. So although it appears from a certain relative to the previous state of unconsciousness, there is freedom, and relative to that, there is freedom. But then if you look more deeply into that, you realize that even there one cannot say that you are choosing this. You are an expression of consciousness, and consciousness, one could say, is choosing, and you think you're doing it. Sometimes people ask me, can you choose to be present? And from one perspective, you can choose to From another perspective, one could say that presence chooses you, it chooses to become present through you. Depends how you look at it. So in ultimate terms or in relative terms, there is freedom relative to the unconscious state when you become more conscious, but even there, it's only relative. Relative to the unconscious state, even there, there is not absolute freedom because you do not exist as an independent entity. You are part of the web of interconnectedness that is the whole universe. So in that sense, there is no freedom of choice of the individual because ultimately there is no individual. So to, to go about wanting to manifest material abundance in your life is perhaps not the the right way to go about it because you're concentrating on the outermost layer of abundance. And even if you manage to manifest abundance on the outer level, it's not going to give you the true feeling of abundance. It's not— in other words, it's not going to make you happy. It's not going to fulfill you except for a few days. The new possession, nice and shiny, whatever it is, and there you look at it, got it now, it's mine. And after a few days or a week or two, or give it a month, it wears off. Hmm. It's no longer that fulfilling to be driving the Ferrari or whatever it is. There's nothing wrong with the Ferrari, but if you're looking to the Ferrari for happiness and fulfillment and to get you— give you the feeling of— it's not going to work for that long. If you're just driving it because you enjoy that experience, that's a different matter. Manifest abundance from the inside out, not from the outside, just hoping that you go find some inner state Through external things. That is the dilemma of many people who practice manifesting, which of course manifesting is something that you can use and it works if it's done rightly. But the dilemma or the fallacy is— What is the problem? The belief that whatever you manifest is going to make you happy. It's to seek the fullness of life through what you manifest, through things. Does the mind create a physical problem to distract us from emotional pain? It is often the case that emotional pain that is not recognized when there's not enough awareness, the emotional pain exists beneath your level of awareness, and it can come out as certain kinds of reactivity in daily life. So you are taken over by reactions to certain things that trigger that type of emotional pain that is in you that you're completely unaware of. And emotional pain that is in total unawareness can very easily become a physical symptom, it transferred into the physical realm. Any kind of prolonged negative mental states which produce corresponding negative emotions affect the functioning of the physical organism. And even research has been done on this and been confirmed that negative states, mental-emotional states, affect in the long run long-term affect the physical organism. You need the challenge, and you need to challenge yourself if you want to create something, if you want to bring about some change in this world, you want to make your life, your so-called life, better, you are looking to achieve this or to learn this or to acquire this. That's part of being human. We don't deny that. And if you don't want to achieve anything, let's say you have no ambition whatsoever, you say, oh, it's all pointless, because you don't want to challenge yourself, then life will challenge you even more. If you don't— if you're challenging yourself, would be even to engage in physical activity, in jogging, you're challenging yourself, or you're lifting weights, you're challenging the body on a physical level. The only way you can make the body stronger, the physical body, is by making— let's put it like this, it's a strange way of putting it, but it's true— you have to make life difficult for your body, otherwise it doesn't get stronger. Well, to lift a weight is— I mean, if you ask the body, would you rather have a good just relax or lift this weight? Oh no, I just want to relax. I don't want to make my life more difficult than it needs to be, so I just— Okay, you don't get stronger without that. But when you make life difficult for the body, then more energy is demanded and more energy comes flowing in. Energy doesn't come until you demand it. There's a request or demand for energy because There's a gap between what you want and what— at the moment, the body doesn't have enough energy, and suddenly it comes. And then you reach a point when an influx of energy starts, then it's no longer perceived that you make life difficult for your body. Once the energy starts flowing, the body enjoys this flow of energy. But before the energy starts flowing, life was difficult for And so you always, you meet always the threshold of life gets difficult for the body and then energy comes in and then suddenly not even perceived as difficult anymore. And that you may experience that every day when you start exercising. When I look at you, first thing I would see is your personality and of course the physical body and the personality, whatever makes up your personality. But if I look more deeply, and not just look, but actually sense your presence, I know that beyond your personality, there is an essence in you that is one with the essence in me, and one could describe it as consciousness itself. The essence of who you are, the essence of who I am, is consciousness. When I recognize that consciousness, the same consciousness that in me, this consciousness beyond the That's right. That which is beyond the conditioned self recognizes the consciousness in you, that which is beyond your conditioned self, and that recognition is what Jesus called love. And therefore, he said, love thy neighbor as thyself. But that, as a separate statement, it doesn't work. But when you put it together with Kingdom of Heaven, then it reads, Find the kingdom of heaven within you, the dimension of spaciousness, then you will recognize your neighbor, which is anybody that you are with, then you will recognize him or her as yourself. And this recognition that, in essence, you are one, that you are deeply, deeply connected, that you share the one consciousness, When you recognize them in the other, then you have suddenly an outflow of benevolence and goodwill and love, not the ego love, but true love towards the— which in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, is agape, spiritual love for another human being. You can sense their very beingness. And that's the whole secret of all spirituality. It's in Jesus. in the teaching of Jesus.

Non-attachment to things does not mean not appreciating things, but it means not seeking yourself or to regard things, things as an extension of yourself. Or think of things as needing them to add to yourself in order to be yourself more fully, that's attachment to things. It's an ego dysfunction, but a way in which the ego survives. And it's not pleasant because you always need more and nothing really satisfies you. If ever you buy something and seek some kind of self-satisfaction through it, very quickly you realize it doesn't work, and then you look for something else. However, there is Yeah. And the way of appreciating things, beautiful things or simple things, appreciate is not being attached. You can love, even love a piece of furniture or whatever it is, a little object or a piece of something you wear too. Not saying all this needs to disappear. You can like things and appreciate them, love them in a sense of having appreciated, without the self-seeking in it. And when the thing leaves you, you lose it or it breaks or—

It's gone.

It gets stolen or whatever. Without the attachment, you'll say, oh, it's a pity, but you don't— there's no reaction and no pain. You're able to let go, and that's a sign that something you appreciated, and yet when it's not there anymore, well, that's all right too. I always appreciated since Yes. I started in my— between the age of 30 and, well, up to the age of 30, I don't know, 36, my main transportation was bicycle. And I always had a— I always appreciated I loved my bicycle, and I developed a strange habit. When I parked my bicycle and chained it to something, a railing outside, whatever, I would take a few steps and look back on it and just appreciate its beingness. A very strange habit. it and look back one more time, there it is. And sometimes people ask, why are you looking back at your bicycle? Are you proud of it? Well, it wasn't a particularly special bicycle, just a normal— No, I just appreciate its being there. And one day when And then I got a car, somebody gave me an old car, and then I lent my bicycle to somebody, and suddenly that person came and said, I'm so sorry, I lost your bike. I didn't lock it for a few minutes and now it's gone. And I had already gone through a shift in consciousness, so I said, it's okay, it's gone. There's nothing we can do about it. Hopefully somebody else appreciates it now. Then I developed the same habit with my old car. I would look back when I parked it, I'd look back and just appreciate it being there. And I do the same now that I have a much better car. And now with my good car, people think I must be proud of this car or something, but it's not that. I did the same with the bicycle. So It's a strange habit. I'm not recommending anybody that he should do that, but it's just, it's a way in which I appreciate it, its being.

Jesus often talks about the kingdom of heaven, interesting expression. And there's a line which I opened the Bible the other day and I saw the line, it said, Jesus went from village to village and from town to town and said, repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And the whole thing is already contained there. Repent means— it's a mistranslation. Repentance, the original Greek is metanoia, which means a turnaround, a shift, a complete shift. So the repentance was—

So people think of it as apologize or something like that.

That's what I was thinking. Don't beat yourself up. I'm such a miserable sinner. That's not— that's a misinterpretation. The misinterpretation of repentance started when it was translated into Latin as penitentia, which was already wrong. And now we have metanoia as repentance. No, a complete reversal, a complete turnaround. In other words, a shift in consciousness. Repent. What does He mean by the Kingdom of Heaven? Now, Christians traditionally believed it's something that's going to come. That's the belief. They completely overlooked when they asked Jesus, when does the Kingdom of Heaven come? He said, the Kingdom of Heaven does not come with observation. In another translation, it says, the Kingdom of Heaven does not come with signs to be perceived. You cannot say it's over here or it's over there, for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Now, what is that thing that's within you where you can never say it's there or it's there? I retranslate Kingdom of Heaven into modern terminology. For kingdom, I substitute dimension. And heaven, what is heaven? When you look up into heaven, you see the vast sky, the spaciousness of the sky. He used that analogy to point to an inner reality. He used— because language usually refers to external things that you can see and touch. So, the closest that Jesus could find in the external world to point to something in the inner realm was to look at the vast spaciousness of the sky, which in itself has no particular form, but is amazing, and he said the kingdom of heaven then is— heaven, my translation is spaciousness.

Mm-hmm.

Inner spaciousness, which is the uncluttered mind, consciousness without conceptual, without thought, inner alert stillness. The dimension of spaciousness. Find that dimension of— that's the primordial teaching in Jesus. Find that within yourself. Find the kingdom of heaven. Find the dimension of inner spaciousness where you're able to be alert and still, completely conscious, but not thinking.

Mm-hmm.

And that's the essence In this world, dealing with things, creating things, achieving things. And being is about being aware of the present moment. Which, after all, is all you ever have. Whatever you achieve through becoming in the future eventually turns into the present moment. So as I speak to you, the meditation, if we even want to call it that— it's perhaps best to forget about the word— as I speak, Be aware of the silence or the stillness between the words. Being aware means just notice that it's there. It's very simple. So you notice that In addition to the words, there's another dimension that is easily overlooked, and that's the dimension of stillness. Which we could also call space or spaciousness. So when you notice That there are 2, so to speak, 2 dimensions here. The dimension of words which you hear and which then become...

Thoughts.

Thoughts in your head and the dimension of no-thing spaciousness. And you just— so you just notice That's all that's required, that there is that dimension also present. So you notice it in between words and even behind the words, so to speak. Now, when you notice it, what happens inside you? What does it mean to notice the stillness? Be aware of.

The stillness.

It means you have become still inside. It means you're conscious, but at that moment At this moment, you're not thinking, but you're alert, present, completely here, but not thinking. So that's the realization of the dimension of depth within you. 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 Yes. 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. They'd rather be there. It's shown in famous stickers on 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. When things go wrong, that's a moment of becoming more conscious. It's every— even the smallest things. If you don't react out of the conditioning, the mental-emotional conditioning, but be the awareness, and then, oh. And you observe if emotions arise, you are there and you can say, oh, there's the anxiety again. And then you know that there's anxiety without calling it anything. This is a huge difference to know that anxiety is in you, anger is in you right now, for example, or anxiety, Whatever else it may be, or some mood that suddenly gets a hold of you, and then you're suddenly in a bad mood. Don't talk to me, Dorothy, I'm grumpy. Well, to say I'm grumpy is already a little bit step forward, because at least you know that you're grumpy. If you're totally unconscious, the grumpiness is you. And you don't even know that you're grumpy. You say, don't talk to me, I'm grumpy. That already means there's a little bit of awareness there. That's great. So there's a huge difference between saying, I'm angry, and slightly different, I feel angry, or there's anger in me. I feel that there's anger in me. I feel angry. There's somewhat a difference between I am angry, because then you equate identity with the emotion. So it's not I am angry, that's a huge— you've fallen into a huge trap if you equate emotion with your identity. Or if you equate a thought with your identity, or a story in your mind, you equate that with your identity, or an opinion which is thought, the world is full of people who don't know the difference between their opinion and their identity. Their opinion becomes their identity. And then they have lots of fights with other people because they are totally confused about who they are. They derive their identity from a set of opinions. Politics, for example. You derive— it doesn't mean you cannot have opinions. Everybody has opinions. But where does your sense of identity come from? Does it come from the opinions, or do you realize that you have certain opinions which may be valid or not? You're on a human level, you have opinions or viewpoints or perspective, mental positions. You have them, they are there. But do you— do these give you your sense of self? Or if they do, then you're continuously arguing with other people, making other people into enemies, because when you contradict somebody who equates opinion with identity, unconsciously they believe that you are attacking their very self. Because there's a confusion about who they are. They don't know who they are. So you attack the opinion of somebody who's totally identified with their opinion, and you become their mortal enemy. They might even try to kill you in an extreme form of unconsciousness.

Affirmations are, if they are done rightly, can be very beautiful substitutes for prayers. I'm healed and whole and at peace. And after that, let there be a space. And really the power is in that space. In the space you experience that you are already whole. The outward form might tell you something different. I'm holy. A Course in Miracles says, I am holy, for example. That's again, you are. And so it's simply an affirmation of how it— this is how it is. Or if you're healing for somebody else, you're either with that person Or that person comes into your mind, you're thinking about that person, and that person may be ill. And then the most powerful healing I find is to be— to hold the image of that person and then go deeper into yourself where the wholeness of life lies. Where nothing is needed. Nothing needs to be added. And there you find the wholeness also of that person. They're already healed at that deepest level, beyond form, they're already healed. So you go from form and then into formlessness. Happiness or fulfillment does not depend on any other human's acceptance of who you are. Deluded thought. If you think you can only be happy if these people accept and understand you. Some people have that with their parents. So they say, my dad, my father, they don't understand me at all. It's terrible, terrible. I'm trying to explain what I'm at. Of course they cannot understand you. It's beyond their comprehension. If you have awakened spiritually and they haven't, so compassionately accept that they cannot understand you instead of trying to explain yourself to them. Just be there in a loving way with them when you meet for Christmas or Thanksgiving and you hear all the judgments coming at you from them. You should have— why don't you— Look where it's taken you. When you look at your sister, she married a millionaire and you— And you are into that weird kind of meditation stuff that's not getting you anywhere. Whatever judgments come, say, okay, I know that this is what you think and feel and I think and feel differently, that's all. So you don't need to justify accepting people's limitations and And suddenly realizing whether or not your father, your mother, your sister, your brother, or anybody else close to you accepts you for who you are is really not—

you become free of the need to be accepted, but you can nevertheless have a deeper connection, keep that deeper connection and connecting I've had this strange feeling or idea in the past few months that a certain segment of humanity is losing the ability to think rationally. There's a decrease in whether I call it IQ or whatever it may be. There's a diminishment of rational faculty. as reflected in many ways on mainstream media, social media, and so on. And another segment of humanity is actually becoming more aware, more aware, more conscious, is not drawn into the regressive phase that some of humanity may be going through. It's not unusual for humanity to occasionally collectively regress to a lower state of consciousness. It has happened whenever a country or a collective has been taken over by an almost, one could say, toxic ideology that has completely taken possession of millions of people's minds. Look at, of course, National Socialism in Germany. The Maoist Cultural Revolution was quite What happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot. Totally crazy ideas invaded millions of people's minds and reduced their ability to actually engage in rational thinking. And things that happened, for example, in Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution. Children reporting on their parents when they were angry with their parents. All they had to do is go to school and report their parents if they had said something against the government. The parents would be taken away and never seen again. They went around public parks in big cities in China tearing out flowers because beauty was regarded as bourgeois. You had to kill your pets, your dogs and cats totally. And these are just a few examples. Of totally toxic and irrational thoughts taking over people's minds. So that's, to some extent, I've been seeing this happening collectively, not just in one country, in quite a few Western, many Western countries that I'm aware of. But it has not affected everybody. Some people have managed to remain aware. They have not been one could say infected by what one could perhaps call a mental virus or mental viruses that reduce people's ability to actually see reality. Reality then gets distorted through the veil of these mental viruses that have taken over people's minds. This is more serious pandemic than anything that happens on the physical level as far as pandemics are concerned, the actual viruses. Actually, you might, I don't know if you've read, Carl Jung said that the greatest danger that humanity faces is not from any external force like natural disasters or diseases or pandemics, He said the greatest danger that humanity faces is collective psychosis. For someone who's a little bit hyperactive, what's the best way to get a balance between removing content, which is really good, but then not getting annoyed when content comes in and you think, oh, it's spoiling My piece. Is there some way to get a balance? Be more a listener than a speaker. Make that your practice for the time being. I'm not saying don't say a word, but be more like 80% a listener than a speaker. And that, for example, you can do by asking questions when you're in a— rather than stating your view or whatever it is. Ask questions that encourages the other person to speak more. As the other person speaks more, it forces you to listen, and then make the listening into a practice. While the other person is speaking, are you able to, let's say, at any time, to feel your inner body? Can you feel that?

Yeah.

The hands, but then I seem to lose them quite quickly. Okay, but hands, you can feel the energy in your hands. The rest of the body is more difficult?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, well, it's a good start. It's a start. So I suggest that once you've asked a question, while you listen, you direct your awareness into the inner feeling of your hands. And that keeps it there so that it doesn't— your mind doesn't doesn't take off. So you ask a question, what, where are you from? How long have you been with Eckhart? How did you first discover the books? Have you been to other retreats? Many questions you can ask and people will be happy to help you by answering your questions.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, thank you, that's good. Yeah, that'll help. Yeah, so, and so while you listen, have your attention in the inner energy field of your hands. If you can amplify that and have your attention also in other parts of your body, for example your feet and hands at the same time, that's even better. But hands is fine too. So you feel your inner, the aliveness in your hands, and from there you listen and you know, just give it. This will help you prevent the stream of mind from taking you over. Be aligned with the present moment rather than carry in your head this huge amount of mental content about your past and your future, because the mind is primarily concerned with past and future. So while you're walking here, you're already thinking about, in a week's time, I'll be home again, and then what? Then I'll have to do that, and I have those phone calls to make, and then I'll have to do that, and then those problems will be I shouldn't have come here because I've got so much on my plate at home. Why did I come here? I should have dealt with my things there. I should have waited, gone to next year's retreat. That's the self-talk in the head. You may encounter it here too. As you walk from here to there, you will encounter the self-talk. So how do you get out of the self-talk in the head? One, you need to know that that's self-talk in the head. If you don't know it's self-talk in the head, you become the self-talk in your head. You become the voice in your head. You don't know it, you are it. So you have to— the vital step, and I cannot I cannot tell you how to do that. That minimum of awareness needs to be there where you know that there's self-talk happening in my head and it's telling you some kind of story. It could be the briefest of stories, like, I shouldn't have come here, or, I don't fit in here, all these people are— I don't fit in here. Too spiritual for me, or I'm so spiritual, these people are not spiritual at all. It's all little stories in the head. Every— even every fragment of self-talk is a little story in the head that goes around.

Mm-hmm.

And then you look at reality Through the lens of the little story. It's not just one story, of course. There comes another one and another. And some stories are not little. They may be big stories about yourself and your life and what's gone wrong with it or what's gone right with it. Even that's a story. More pleasant than if it's gone wrong. So you need to know when the self-talk happens in the head?

Hmm.

The knowing is not part of the self-talk. The knowing is just an awareness that there is self-talk. The moment there is an awareness that there is self-talk, the possibility of freedom from the self-talk opens up. I will probably be talking Poor most of the time, but there may be quite a few gaps of stillness in between the words, as they are now. And these gaps are very important. I would even say more important than the words. If you become conscious of these gaps of stillness in between words, you notice the gaps instead of just impatiently being in your conceptual mind and saying, why is he talking so slowly? Why hasn't he said anything significant yet? If you are able to notice the gaps, give them attention, that is the arising of that state of consciousness that we call presence. It is a state of alertness, relaxed alertness, clarity, A state in which the conceptual mind has come to a rest and something else arises. Thinking is most people's normal state of when they are awake in conventional terms. And when you become aware of these gaps, thinking subsides and presence, or we call it awareness, arises. Thinking subsides, presence arises. Of course, thinking will come back, but it has briefly, momentarily subsided. Something else has emerged, and that is what we call presence. It is a state of, one could say, pure awareness or pure consciousness. So that is what sometimes people hope to achieve in medit—

when they actually do formal meditations.

Meditation is a good tool But it's not enough. It's not even for everybody. The most important thing is to bring that state of clear, alert presence into everyday life. There was a long time when I had resentment towards my father because my father was pretty unconscious, except Very late in life, had a very strong ego. And living with him as a child was living with an unexploded bomb that could go off at any moment. He got these intense rages, would suddenly come several times a week. So, I lived in a constant state of kind of background anxiety. When is this bomb going to explode again next. And then for a long time, in my 20s, I had a resentment towards him, until I went through this shift in consciousness, and I suddenly realized he did what he had to do. There wasn't enough awareness in him to act any different. So he was at the mercy of his own conditioning. And once you When you see that, you no longer make it into an identity for him, and so you free him. And really, perhaps this is the meaning of forgiveness. You can forgive yourself by not making unconscious behavior in your past into an identity for yourself or for somebody else. You may be surprised to know that there are millions, billions of people on the planet Who have that same thought pattern, there's something wrong with me. It's part of the human ego. But so you bring in the awareness, and that will change everything. That's the only true key. If you fail, next time the anger arises, what happens then? You will become aware immediately after the anger has subsided. And then, oh, there it was and I wasn't present. And then the moment will come when you are there in the first— if you can catch the anger the first moment it comes, or if you might even see that it could be the result of a thought that creates the anger. And if you can be there in the first moment before it becomes a fully-blown anger, then you can stay there, and it might not even become fully-blown anger if you catch it the first moment. You can feel the first stirrings of anger. You may only have 3 seconds. It may come very quickly. Anger is like an explosive energy. You may only have 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds to— To bring the— stay there with your awareness and feel it. Oh, it's coming. There it is. That's the pain body, the angry pain body coming. And if you catch it in the early stage, don't suppress it. By catch it, I mean feel it, be there as the witness. Then you can stay even as it grows. The witness grows with it. It may not even We'll have to see whether it still grows into full-blown anger or not. That doesn't matter. And so you be thankful for your anger, because the anger can become a very important spiritual practice for you, because through it, awareness can grow. So it's sometimes strange for people to see you can be thankful for anger. Be grateful for things that you think are the most difficult obstacles in your life, but they become— they can become your greatest opportunity for spiritual awakening. Use it as part of your practice.

Life without love is no life at all. Now, what does that mean, life without love? Love can only be there when you're connected to the source of life, who you are beyond form, stillness, spaciousness, and then from there you perceive, you relate, you operate, you do what you You do, and there's a sense of oneness, no longer a sense of separation. You're one with the present moment. You're one with whoever you meet because the separation comes through mental concepts. And that sense of oneness is love. It's a recognition that You share with every life form, you share the same consciousness. So it's always a self-recognition. You see, you sense rather than see yourself in the other. That is love.

There's an innate human feeling. You see something and it has a lot of attention and it's shiny and it It's whatever, and that everyone wants to get in. But basically you're saying if you would take that breath, if you would just say, I don't want in on this, that eventually you can actually, you can almost pull other people out of it too by your own behavior.

Yes.

Because this isn't just about you.

Yes. Also not to feed other, if other people post negative things about you, in many, In many cases, non-reaction is the best thing instead of feeding it.

That's a lesson I need to learn. I will try to take that one with me.

That applies both offline and online, in your personal life too. Often it's just, well, I believe Jesus was talking about non-reaction when he talked about turning the other cheek. I don't think it's to be taken literally, but it means when somebody Somebody attacks you, not physically, it's an analogy he uses, it's a parable. Turn the other cheek means just be free of reaction. And that very quickly deflates even the other person's ego. It doesn't— the ego needs the reaction, it needs the reactivity. So that's a powerful thing.

But how do How do you avoid then just becoming a pushover within that?

Well, in some situations, something needs to be said, but even then, that can come from— you could say, especially if you're with somebody, that kind of behavior is unacceptable. You can say that in a conscious way rather than in a destructive and aggressive way. You one can actually be very firm and conscious, or when you say no to somebody, it doesn't have to be aggressive. It's just a clear— I call it a high-quality no. Somebody says, can you lend me again? I have $2,000 I need. I know I still owe I owe you $20,000, but I need some more. And then not to make the other into an enemy, just, no, I'm sorry, can't do it anymore. It's a high-quality no that's— you're present while you say it. And then you can set boundaries if necessary. So, in some cases, something needs to be said, we need to do something, but in many other cases, Complete non-reactivity can be very, very powerful.

The normal thing to happen is that the connectedness with your essence identity is lost very easily in human relationships because the mind is so active and we live in a civilization that provides continuously, continuous and incessant stimulus, stimuli is the plural, continuous incessant stimuli for the mind even more than even 30 years ago. 30 years ago it was just radio and television and you would— people would sit there for hours, but nowadays you have countless sources of stimulus For the mind that draws you into continuously thinking about what's your next Facebook post, what's it going to be. And you look at the ones that are coming in, all these people are doing these fantastic things. And me, I'm just sitting here. And then you have to pretend that you are also doing fantastic things. And usually it involves taking a nice selfie. And then you project your self-image, which has existed for a long, long time before in humans. They have a— it's part of ego is to have this image of who I am. But in this Facebook, now you have the opportunity to project that image into the world and it'll reach hundreds or thousands of people all at once. And then you construct your life. There are many people alive these days who without knowing it, they partly live for their Facebook image and they're just looking for the next thing that they can project out into the world. It's Narcissus. You might remember the myth of Narcissus, the Greek, ancient Greek myth. There was this young man who had never seen himself before because they didn't have mirrors at the time. But one day he happened to look into a little pool of water and he saw himself and he realized that he was extremely beautiful. He said, oh, that's me. And the story goes he fell in love with himself, not in a good way. Not by becoming one with who he is, but the separation happened. This myth shows the beginning stage of the egoic sense of self expressed as a story. The image that he saw of himself in the pool is the mental image of the ego, and stories are part of that image. That's me, I'm me and my story. So you have the image of me and then— oh. So this guy Narcissus, he experienced that separation.

Shhh.

And then I think something bad happened to him, but I don't remember what. So, and then you have other divine things that continuously stimulate the mind, that almost designed for you not to become still. It's like the civilization has made a great effort to come up with as many things as possible to prevent people from becoming still and spacious and taking a moment of looking at the sky and feeling the inner spaciousness arise and becoming aware of the leaves of the tree or the branches and the wind. Blowing and the noise of water, the simple thing becoming still, alert, sensing that stillness within.

Almost everybody has in one way or another been a victim of other people, but in some cases much, much more so than in others. Some element of having been victim is probably present in everybody's life. In other words, you are surrounded by unconscious humans, and then unconscious humans will inflict suffering on themselves and others. That's just how it is when you're alive in this— on this planet. Childhood particularly is a place where many, many children experience abuse, either minor forms of abuse, emotional abuse, or they live in a very toxic family environment. And then of course there are other children who experience much more serious forms of abuse and really suffer and have these carry with them the memory, both mental and emotional memory, of what happened to them. In some cases, the memory is repressed because the child— the emotions may be repressed. The child could not deal with them and they had to repress them. And then later, the possibility of remembering arises and then Do you remember what happened to you? And how do you do— it's the question— what do you do with what happened to you, what was done to you? How do you deal with what was done to you by other humans, whether it happened in childhood or whether it happened later in life, whether it was a relatively minor thing or whether it was a very serious form of abuse. How do you, how do you deal with that? Now, the, the ego, the human ego, is always looking for something to add to its sense of identity. It's looking for a stronger sense of identity because it always feels I'm not enough. So it's, it's going— it's trying to add something that it can identify with, so add to its sense of self. And it very often happens that the memory of, of having been abused is used by the ego and is added to the ego's sense of self. So that means You not only remember what happened to you, the memory of what happened to you, which is a bundle of thoughts and emotions that go with it, the memory of what happened to you is more than just a memory. There is self-identification with the memory. In other words, It's not, not perceived as just something that happened to you, but it becomes part of who you perceive to be. So I am a victim of that. It's not that this was done to me, but I am a victim of— so it's the transition from memory to self. That is the victim identity. The ego does that. Because victim identity is a very powerful form of identity, a very powerful form of ego. And particularly in cases where the, the ego is always— does not find sufficient things that it can identify with in this world. Because the most common form of identification, for example, is with the way you look. You look better than others, so you can identify with that. If you look worse than others, of course, that could become part of your victim identity because you've been treated unfairly by life and life has made you look worse than others, that could become part of victim identity. Although that's not actually abuse, but it could also be incorporated into victim identity.

There are millions of people in this world who believe in God and have no access, have not found within themselves access to the spiritual dimension. So we are here. In the case of some of you who are perhaps new to this, so to speak, we are here for some of you to get perhaps a glimpse of it as you sit here and watch and listen. And I will endeavor to put you in touch with that depth within you without which your life is frustrating, and without which everything you undertake, every endeavor and every activity, Ultimately becomes frustrating. And for others, we are here just to deepen it, to provide a reminder on a conceptual level, but to deepen the dimension that they already have access to within. So that it can be sustained in everyday life. One thing is accessing the spiritual dimension in a meditation setting, like here and now. That's already a good thing if you are able to do that when you sit still, become still inside. Another thing is to carry that with you, so to speak, so that it is there when you lead your life, when you do things, talk to people, interact, even when you think, to have that in the background. So we have the 2 steps, one could almost say. First is you realize that within, when you're not being disturbed like now, hopefully you're not being disturbed externally, although you may be disturbed as you sit here by your mind, that's quite possible, who says, what is he talking about? Because the mind doesn't like it. and understand it. The conceptual mind alone is not sufficient to make this a satisfying experience for you. So for this to be a satisfying experience, you need to have at least a glimpse of what it is that I am pointing to, and a glimpse also of— What it is. That which underlies the words, and that's ultimately not in me, but ultimately you can only glimpse that in you. There's a stillness behind the words as I speak within myself, and there can be a stillness in you. As you listen to the words. And that would already be a glimpse of the spiritual dimension. So part of this is, of course, to be— give more attention to the present moment, because the more you think, the more future you generate. And the more attention you give to the present moment, The less thinking, because to be really present, you don't think about it, you just are with it, give it attention. I recommend the little things of life, to be more attentive to all the little things that make up every hour of every day. Every minute, every hour, and give them more attention. Walking steps, one step at a time, objects that you're handling. All the time you're handling objects in your life. You're always touching something, putting something here and there.

Mm-hmm.

Is everything that you handle just a means to an end, or are you able to just appreciate the simple presence, even of a so-called inanimate object? Contemplation also of all the lovely things that make up your environment. Part of your environment. For example, if I were sitting here alone, let's say I'm waiting for everybody to arrive, I might be sitting here looking, of course, at the floor, sense the stillness, and then there's a glass table here, and then there's a glass of water here. And there's a clock and a bell and tissues, and they all reflect the light in different ways. There's a little bit of a rainbow effect in the glass of water here, and then the lights are reflected on the bells almost like a mirror, and there's the clock ticking. It's a beautiful scene. Sometimes you go to an art gallery— well, not so much with modern art, but a very favorite thing would be still life artists. And it took a while in art before they discovered— the artists in the history of art— before they discovered the seemingly insignificant things and Yes. They started to give attention to those. Before that happened, they were very much interested in the huge things, the saints or the kings or the huge battle scenes or the big— they painted those things, or the important people, or some dramatic thing, the volcanic eruption or whatever, fire, And then at some point, they started to discover the beauty and the incredible sense of the quality that is in the little things. Perhaps after these— more of these artists depicted relatively seemingly insignificant things, perhaps it motivated some people to give more attention to that. But even now, it's still— people very much overlook that. And you overlook then a large part of your life. You don't give it attention. When I say give attention, there's an element of appreciation of everything, of the little things. And you begin to realize that your entire life consists mainly—

Of what?

If you find the strange phenomenon that you are always right and others are always wrong, that's an important realization. How is that possible? I must be superhuman. And in the eyes of the ego, of course, that's kind of the case, because the ego Which is that which is perhaps the major obstacle towards the realization of that deeper dimension. And the, the ego strives incessantly for Sure. Some kind of superiority. And so this is what you are condemned to when you have not yet awakened, even just at least to some extent, to the deeper essence of who you are. The awareness, the presence, the stillness, then you are in the prison of your own personality, and it's not a pleasant place to be.

No.

I sometimes watch people and they are so burdened with their personality, so in the grip of that thing. What is personality? It's the sum total of their mental-emotional conditioning from the past.

Mental-emotional conditioning.

Conditioning. Mental conditioning means certain thought forms, mind structures that become repetitive, certain narratives concerning your life. My life, says the ego. Certain narrative concerning my other people in my life. What I did, what they did to me, my victories, my defeats, many things form the, the egoic conditioned self. And one important aspect of the egoic conditioned self is it, it talks about my life all the time in the head and out aloud. And my life is what concerns me. Obviously, it's my life. And what is my life? It's a story in my head, but they don't know that. They think it's the reality, but it's a story in my head. It's a narrative. It's the predominant narrative in my mind. And it's a narrative through which I interpret everything that comes into contact with. It becomes a screen through which I interpret other people, situations, places, events. I don't know that because I am so identified. with that mental-emotional conditioning that it has become me. It has become me and my life. It's— I don't know anything else. That's the fate still of the majority of humans on the planet. Although the minority that is awakening is growing, it is still a minority. Most humans are still totally in the grip of their egoic self, and probably most of you are moving Still in and out of your egoic self.

Take your attention more deeply into being or into attention itself. Purely practical, don't turn on the TV in your room, please. I have not installed hidden cameras to check on you. Second, limit your interaction, the interaction with your devices. If you cannot eliminate interaction with your devices completely, and I understand that you may not survive if you do, At least put aside just maybe once a day, 15 minutes, when you check your whatever it is that comes through, whatever text, email, Facebook, Snapchat. Tinder. It's all very important, but there's something more important, and that's why you're here. If you— so now let's see. I suggest to you that you make an agreement with yourself. But not to go there unless any more than is absolutely necessary.

How do I strike a healthy balance between simply accepting life as it unfolds and actively working towards and striving towards goals, destinations, aspirations? Well, accepting life as it unfolds, of course, That is the foundation for conscious and sane living, accepting whatever unfolds in the present moment. There is nothing else. That's the foundation. Does that mean you cannot have goals? You cannot have aspirations, wanting to achieve this, do this, do that?

No.

that it's perfectly compatible with accepting what is arising in this moment. One difference between the unconscious state, which denies this moment and wants to make it into a means to an end all the time, the difference then is, what is the motivation for your doing? If you deny this moment, can never embrace it, honor it, appreciate it, then the motivation for your action is basically dissatisfaction with what is, and the action is looked towards as a possible way of overcoming the discontent and the dissatisfaction that you feel with the present moment. And that's a very normal pattern, and that's, for many, many people, that is what motivates them. They don't feel good enough, they don't feel— they feel there's something fundamental missing in their lives, they don't feel recognized, they don't feel Loved, whatever. And so they try to find something, achieve something that will bring them that which they feel is missing. They don't realize that it's— that is not going to work. You need to start with the foundation for your life, which is this moment, and go deeply into that. And Become okay with it, friendly with it, realize it's the only thing there ever is, just this moment. Nothing ever exists that's not this moment. So you might as well become friendly with it and appreciate it and look around and see how actually it's okay. This moment is actually okay. And If it's not okay, you can still say, well, that's what is right now. If something goes wrong, that's what is. And then things will come in that you want to do. Suddenly an idea comes or you need to do something to make a living, and then out of that state of becoming one with the is-ness of the present moment, something arises. that wants to take form in the world, that perhaps you want to create. And then you create it out of the joy of doing instead of out of a feeling of lack, that you need something to make you complete or happy. So the motivation changes from neediness and discontent to joyful doing, it's not stressed anymore. When stress is a sign that you've lost the present moment, the next moment has become more important than life itself.

You won't really enjoy the fruit of your labors if habitually you cannot be present in the moment. No matter what you achieve, the enjoyment will be short-lived because of the habitual pattern of dissatisfaction in the background. It's always there, some obscure sense of lack, and often it comes into the foreground as real unhappiness, frustration. And then if you realize that there's always this waiting for the next thing, which is thought, when you're waiting for the next thing, you're trapped in thought, because that's where the future happens. Now, the realization that this is happening to you is very important.

The first step is the beginning of something else arising.

And in all of you that has already arisen, although occasionally it still gets obscured, perhaps, probably, I assume. Something else has arisen that's not thought, that is beyond thought: the ability to recognize thought, the ability to recognize certain patterns that habitually arise in your mind, your mental-emotional field, the ability to witness that which arises in your mental-emotional field. That's an enormous leap in consciousness. Another dimension, one could say, has arisen. We could call it presence, we could call it awareness. It's not thought, but it's intelligence. So intelligence is not confined to thought. There is a dimension in you that is far greater, far more intelligent than any intelligent thought. It's the place from where all intelligence arises, a place of where all creativity arises. So there's the ability to suddenly be aware of your inner states, to be aware of what your mind is saying, the narrative, the habitual narrative that you're telling yourself. You're having a monologue, or many people have a dialogue with themselves where they split themselves in 2, and then this one argues with the other. Why aren't you good enough? Why did you do this? Why do you never get anything right? Why do you do this? This shouldn't have— he shouldn't have said that. Yes, but on the other— so you can have a dialogue in your narrative, or you can have a monologue that says, I am such a miserable creature. Because a lot of the time, the narratives, the unconscious thought processes, tend to be more negative than positive for many, many people. So to be aware that this is happening, that's an enormous gain in consciousness. It's the beginning of awakening, spiritually speaking. Something arises that is not part of the conditioned mind patterns. So there's the ability to observe your inner states, and that's a wonderful little pointer to ask yourself, frequently, what's my inner state at this moment? And then look at it, direct your attention to it, the narratives, what have I been telling myself, and the emotion that accompanies the narrative. What am I feeling? What's the emotion? So in addition to being an A story in your head and an emotion, there's a knowing behind it, there's a space behind it. Sometimes I call it inner space. There's an inner space from where you can be aware of what's happening on the level of the person, the personality.

Because that inner space, the awareness, is not part of the personality.

It's But it's the being, the knowing that is inherent in the being. You can look at the world wars, you can look at all the terrorism and all the other mad wars that are being fought as just— it's just a question of degrees of unconsciousness, not different. So when you go into that state of unconsciousness, it takes you over, you lose it. Basically then, that is the same energy field that has created what we see as the madness of human history and what we see of the madness of the so-called world news. The same energy. So don't complain about all these violent people who are doing all these dreadful things. All that it is is human unconsciousness in a more pronounced form than yours or your partner's. And So that helps a little bit to find perhaps almost some compassion towards all these crazy people that are doing such crazy things and creating such terrible suffering. Now, if you become compassionate towards them, don't worry. It doesn't mean that they will not experience the consequences of their unconsciousness. That still happens. You, by being compassionate to another human being, you don't necessarily remove the karmic consequences of their action. But you yourself become free. from being drawn into the karmic cycle. So the act of forgiveness does not mean that this person is not going to suffer the consequences, because life makes sure in whatever form that they do suffer the consequences of the suffering that they inflict on other human beings. It's a karmic law. But if you don't want to be part of that anymore, if you want to step out of the karmic law, the first step out of the— and the most important step out of the karmic law is forgiveness. Then you do not feed it. You don't become You become part of it. That's why traditionally in spiritual teachings of various traditions, forgiveness is always emphasized. It must be real though. It's— there are many forms of superficial forgiveness when just the mind says, okay, I forgive you. It's not deep, it's not real yet. The mind is trying to forgive, but you, you can only You can only forgive if you realize that whatever actions have been perpetrated are the effects of human unconsciousness. In other words, what Jesus said on the cross, or is reported to have said, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Very profound statement. It is a profound statement that can be applied to any act of violence perpetrated against other humans or life forms. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Not knowing what they do, of course, means they are unconscious. The word unconscious probably in that sense wasn't used at the time, so he said they don't don't know what they do. Karmic law still operates, but without you. And you can notice karmic law when you see a movie. Some movies like to manipulate your emotions, and so there are particular types of Yes. You know, there are a lot of movies where they first, they build up the tension by showing you some very evil person, and this evil person is killing all these people or hurting all these people, and then you're being manipulated to feel that incredible pull that this person should suffer for what he or she has done. That's the manipulation. The audience loves that. things like that. So then the emotion builds up and finally, there are even some movies like the movies that about vigilantes who take justice in their own hands because the justice system doesn't deal with the criminals anymore. So finally you have this guy who goes out and kills all the bad guys. And your emotions have been manipulated. so much that the audience says, yes, yes, he must die! Not realizing what you are feeling, this incredible— It might also happen if you read about some dreadful crime that somebody has committed, and then if you read it on the internet, you can read on some news websites, you can read the comment section. And in the comment section, every other comment says, we should have the death penalty, he needs to— the electric chair, he needs to be done to what he did, they should do to him, and all these. And this is an enormous pressure that people feel inside. And this is connected to karmic law because there's a compensation. compensatory factor in karmic law, and you can feel that as the pressure inside you, but it keeps you trapped in karma. So in that sense, watching these movies is not helpful because it keeps you trapped in that wheel of karma. So they don't teach forgiveness.

They don't.

I'm glad you're there. So this is— we are talking about something very important, and that is dealing with human unconsciousness and what looks like evil. So there are many things that are quite dreadful. So how do we— how does that affect our state of consciousness? consciousness, and what role does our state of consciousness play in this whole scenario? It does have a role to play. So it's for us important that we are no longer part of action and reaction because the definition of karma is action. Karma means action. Action and reaction. And it goes on and on. And as you can see in certain societies and so on, the karmic thing goes on, goes back centuries and centuries, the same grievance transmitted from one generation to the next and the next and the next and they They are all asleep. This is why spiritual teachings say you are asleep. They are all so unconscious, they get taken over by the collective mental-emotional pattern and the mental story. They just inherit it from their parents and then they pass it on to their children. And then they— and each generation suffers. They suffer. They cause much suffering for each other. And at some point, the suffering becomes almost unbearable for certain people within that society. And that's the beginning of a shift when it gets too much. So suffering drives humans to a point Of awakening. That's a strange paradox here, is the suffering is created by the unconsciousness in humans, but in some strange way, eventually it wakes you up, it awakens you. That's the redeeming feature behind the suffering that humans create for each other. Eventually it leads to a spiritual awakening. So it all is a good thing to realize. It all comes down to your state of consciousness and how you relate to the people around you, and that spreads. That is what creates the world. And even how you react to when you listen to the World news has certain influence because all human minds are connected at a deeper level. So the way in which you react to what you hear on the world news contributes either to the unconsciousness, if you get on your computer or the iPad and you type in, this guy does not deserve to live. He should be— die slowly and they should torture him. Then you become part of the same karma. If you've ever done that, please forgive yourself. And if you enjoy reading those comments, also forgive yourself. The greatest obstacle is probably when meditation comes out of a sense of lack or neediness. So you feel you are deprived of something, be it money or religion or whatever. relationship or a living situation, and you feel there's a great lack in your life, and you desperately want this to change. And so you perhaps use manifestation in a way that is not likely to work when, for example, you use affirmations such as, I want a better job, I want a job with a good income and a life situation in a nice place, and I want this and I want that. By making these statements, you're actually by implication saying that you don't have it. So you're also by saying that you're— there's a reverse side to your statement, I want, and on the reverse side of the statement, I want, there is the statement, I don't have and I need. And similar things, please give me, if you pray to maybe God, maybe you pray to Jesus, maybe you pray to Buddha— they do that in Buddhist countries— maybe you pray to a saint or whatever it is, Or you pray to the universe and say, please, universe, please give me this, please give me that. That also doesn't work very well. If it works, it could be accidentally, who knows? But usually that greatly diminishes your power of manifestation because the manifestation practice arises is out of a state of lack or neediness, so there's no powerful manifestation there. The secret of manifestation is expressed in one simple statement by Jesus, and that encapsulates all the books that have been written on manifestation and will ever be written on manifestation. It's just one simple simple sentence. It says, when you pray for something, believe that it has been given or that you already have it, and then you will receive it. So the important thing is he doesn't say believe that you will receive it. He says believe that you have received it. So there the secret is hiding in that statement, believe that you My North Star is the monk, the story you shared about the monk who lived saying, is that so? For everything that came. I am trying my best to get there in my journey to accepting the is-ness of things and accepting the moment. What I'm struggling with is when am I being a doormat? How do I determine? It's clear in the example you just shared, being homeless, In the gray areas of life, how do I determine when I need to take action? The important thing is non-resistance is not so much to do externally what you do, but it's an inner state of consciousness of non-resistance, acceptance of what is, of the present moment in this moment. It doesn't— if it's misunderstood, then it could lead to, as you say, It could lead you to become a doormat because then you would go along with what everybody says, anybody says to you. And you would— can you do this? Can you do this for me? Yeah, okay, I can do it. And then you could be used by people. But a state of non-resistance Sometimes it may require you to say no to— let's say somebody requests something, but you feel you don't want to do it, or you cannot do it for some reason, and you say no. I think I wrote about this. I had this expression, A high-quality no, as opposed to a low-quality no. A low-quality no is you make the other person into a kind of enemy. Why you always ask me this? Like, you argue and you shout, you accuse the other person. You're just trying to use me. I can see it. You've used me before and now you're doing it again. Now you're asking me for money again. I've already lent you— 5 times, have you given it back to me? No, you haven't. So no, I'm not going to do it. Just don't, leave me alone.

That's one no.

And then there's another no which is non-reactive. It does not arise from reactivity but is a response to the situation that says, no, I don't want to, let's say, whatever the request is or the demand. No, I can't do it anymore. I don't want to do it anymore. No, I'm not going to give you money again because I've already given you 5 times. So I won't give you again. That's just how it is. No, I can't. No, I cannot. Whatever it may be, you're saying no. Without creating an enemy, without treating— or a situation, without making a situation into an enemy. So it's a conscious no. And you're still in an inner state of non-resistance. The state of resistance strengthens the ego. And this is a way of not operating through ego.

I wonder, to connect that to what I'm doing with this month, I suppose someone like you kinda digs something like this, the idea that someone could put down the devices. And I wonder, what do you think just in general about a world that is so obsessively connected to other people's thoughts all day long?

Yes, that's good. So over this excessive identification with thinking and overthinking, Excessive thinking had been there for a long time, long before we came up with these devices. But these devices amplify the human tendency to engage or indulge in excessive thinking and problem-making thinking rather than constructive thinking, focused thinking. What you are doing is very, very helpful because you are basically having a period of, we could call it decluttering your mind. You declutter your mind. And this is necessary because our mind, most people's minds have never been as cluttered as they are now.

Mm-hmm.

Clutter means there's a continuous input of stuff that comes in through the devices. The messages come in, Facebook posts, tweets, and continuously the devices demand your attention and say, this is important. And a lot of it is not important. But As we all know, there's an addictive quality to it. It draws your attention to it. And then every time it draws your attention, you add to the clutter of your mind. A lot of it is not constructive.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of it is just random. People often see people, they get out their phones and they do this random scrolling. I can see it's random. There's nothing specific, but they think they have to do it because everybody else is doing it around them. Wherever you are these days, people are engaging with this and they're continuously taking in thoughts from others. And as we said before, some of these thoughts may be toxic and they may easily become lodged in your mind. So to declutter is extremely important. And you can see if you're even just not using a device for a day, for many people is very, very hard. And some think they can do it, but they can't. So they are truly addicted. Now, when you declutter your mind, first of all, you put down your phone, you don't use it. Not everybody can do it for whole months like you.

Of course, of course.

But I recommend to everybody to have certain periods of time when they do not engage. So for example, in your bedroom might be a good place to start for not engaging with any device. Certain periods of time when you go out into nature, be there rather than carry that thing and every time it makes a noise, you still look up and you still, even while you're surrounded by beauty and aliveness, you're still engaging with this. And the moment you watch the screen, whether it's television or whatever screen, you might have noticed that your own, your so-called own thought processes come to a stop. So to some extent, you're free of the self. This is why people sometimes find watching television and relaxing, say, okay, I just need to relax now, just turn it on. By this they mean while they watch the television screen, they're not burdened by their self-induced thought processes. What they do, however, they replace their own thoughts with the collective thoughts. So they just— you're in a state— you're not in a state of thoughtless awareness when you You watch television or you watch something on the screen, you absorb the thoughts from there into your mind and you link in. So for people, often in a state of semi-hypnosis when they watch, and it kind of paralyzes you. It can also happen with the screen, with television already started, of course. I don't know when, whenever, 60 years ago, whenever television started. And you go, hmm. And so your mind is just absorbing whatever is playing. It's the TV mind, which is receiving stuff from wherever it comes from, is going into your mind, and you become no longer thinking your own thoughts. Occasionally your mind is saying, oh, this guy is so stupid, and then you're watching again. And then another thought, why am I watching this rubbish? Half an hour later, this is so awful. But you can't turn it off. Here's the remote. Let's just try one more channel. There might be something else there.

Oh.

Oh no, that's stupid. Try one more. This is how an addict behaves. And the device is even more addictive because you carry them with you. And you have to admit, you may have to admit that You— there's an addiction in you. Not everybody here, but quite a few. It would be almost normal to feel this draw towards it, and you use it even when you don't need to use it. That's the amazing thing. When you're standing at the elevator waiting, another person is standing next to you, and he or she is pulling out the phone, And then you pull out yours. You don't know why. Or anywhere you're in a— you're waiting, you're ordering a tea or coffee somewhere and you're standing in line. And if you look around, there's almost nobody and probably nobody who is not looking at this little thing. This is scary.

Zombie-like.

The feeling, first of all, needs to be acknowledged and accepted. You can't start with letting go, so you have to start with acknowledging it and accepting that it's there because it's part of what Mm-hmm. The is-ness of the present moment, whether it's an external thing or an inner thing, it is what is. And to deny or to argue with what is creates suffering. So you acknowledge, you accept that it's there. Then how much time you need to be with it depends, varies from person to person and what kind of a feeling it is and so on. And then the question arises, what is the link between that feeling Mm-hmm. The person needs to find out whether the thought processes keep that feeling alive continuously, whether they renew by playing out, for example, By playing out a past scenario in their minds, by reviving memories from the past, by dwelling on certain narratives that are painful, repeating them in their minds, that gives renewed energy to the feeling.

Mm-hmm.

So the first, the most important thing is to be of both levels. What's the level of my thinking? How does that contribute to the perpetuation of what I feel? And so you also then acknowledge that, oh, these are the habitual thought patterns that go through my mind in relation to the feelings. And then you would begin to realize that The letting go, the most important step in letting go of feelings is to cut the link between your thinking and what you're feeling. How do you do that? You do it by being aware of your thinking and realizing that that thinking is pain. It feeds the pain. The old feeling and the narrative, whatever it is, is a painful narrative and you realize that you've been keeping it alive for some years and you— when there's some enough awareness, you realized that it has no purpose except to make you unhappy and to perpetuate that feeling. The Tao, or consciousness, in its pure form, is pure, no form, before it becomes something, before it becomes a thought or words. So right now, you're aware of sense perceptions because you can still see me. You're aware of the words, but more importantly, you are aware. That you are aware, you know yourself as this aware presence space. Without that space, that aware space. There would be no sense perception. It is the light of consciousness in which all the objects of consciousness are perceived. Most people are not aware of themselves as consciousness. They're only aware of the objects that arise in consciousness. And their sense of identity also, their sense of who they are, ultimately is an object that arises in their consciousness. That's me. That's me. This is my story, me and my story, my identity. I am this and that and that, and all those things together, that's me. But they're all thought forms or emotional forms that arise in consciousness. They are an object in consciousness. And this object in consciousness, for most people, is the foundation of their sense of identity. But that, unfortunately, is an enormous limitation and ultimately a misperception of who they actually are. Most people's sense of identity, therefore, is based on a misperception.

Mm-hmm.

Because who you truly are is not an object in consciousness. That's ephemeral. It is here for a while, then it evaporates. Who you truly are is the space of consciousness itself. And so you become aware of an underlying presence, just to use a word, an wakefulness, a certain alertness, a stillness, but not a stillness that is asleep. An alert stillness. That's the realization of consciousness, of yourself as consciousness. Let's just take a moment and become aware. Of the present moment. Vitally important in any endeavor that you undertake, no matter what it is, is not to lose your connectedness with the present moment. So before you start a new enterprise, a new activity, always good to take a moment for awareness. Basically, that's what it is. Sometimes people ask, well, what is the present moment?

How do you be Where is it?

What does it even mean to become aware of the present moment? And the first thing, of course, is that you become aware of whatever surrounds you. That's the entry point into the present moment, a very easy entry point into present moment awareness. Some people may call it mindfulness. Is to become more aware of whatever surrounds you here and now. Sense perceptions. Just be with what is. Give it attention, some attention. The room you're sitting in. Maybe there's a window, you can look out of the window. You can see trees behind me. I can't see them. I know they're there.

This is—

you enter the present moment by becoming more aware of sense perceptions: auditory, visual, and perhaps others. And of course, what that does, you might notice, is there's less mental noise. The voice in the head that speaks and speaks, that talks to you, that you have a dialogue with, a monologue that comments and interprets and takes positions, mental positions, identifies with. likes, dislikes, yes, no, never stops talking. That's the mind, the voice in the head that most people are completely identified with, and that means they're not present. So the first step is take some attention away from that by simply becoming aware of sense perceptions. And if you can look at something natural, that's even better, because a natural thing— a tree, a flower, a plant, the sky— a natural thing lends itself to present-moment awareness more than a man-made, a human-made thing. So anything natural that you can look at for a moment, focus on, and give it attention, acknowledge it. You don't need to think about it. So it's just become aware of the present moment through sensory perception. And already, if you can do that, if perhaps a few minutes before you were very much immersed in the problem-making mind. It wasn't actually solving any problem because this continuous mind activity actually creates more problem than it solves if it's not focused, if it's unconscious. So already, suddenly, there's a certain amount of peace that descends Upon this, the world, your world, it becomes a bit more peaceful. You become aware of the aliveness of things. To practice self-observation implies that there is enough presence or awareness in you from where you can self-observe. And in almost all Yes. All of you, there is, maybe not all the time, but there is enough to have brought you here, and that is quite a bit. So is there enough presence in you so that you can self-observe your own motivations, your own thought structures? What are the habitual thoughts that I think so that you are not drawn continuously into every thought that comes and follow it where it wants to take you. One little thought comes in about your life, oh, and then another thought and you follow it, oh, oh no, and then before you know it, more thoughts come and then other conflicting thoughts, no, no, that's not how it is, yes it is, no. I can't take anymore. And you believe in that thought Or 2 that you can't take anymore. So the ability to observe non-judgmentally what goes on inside you, there is awareness, there needs to be awareness. So that is self-knowledge. Is there some type of discipline that is needed to be successful with Conscious Manifestation? If so, can you describe what the discipline is that is needed? Well, basically I have already described the discipline that's needed for— in your daily life to be aware of yourself and of your own state of consciousness. Also, an important factor perhaps that is implied in what we've been saying, but it's worth pointing it out explicitly, is the importance of what is conventionally called gratitude. But there could be other words. Gratitude is a very powerful transformational tool and also one of the most powerful tools for manifesting better things in your life. Now, what does that mean? Gratitude is to acknowledge the good in your life And it's surprising how many people don't do that, who can only see the bad in their lives or only complain. But it's extremely powerful to acknowledge the good that's in your life now. The ability to think, of course, was a wonderful evolutionary achievement. It is the associated also, it's linked to the development of language too. So gradually humans developed the ability to think and it was a wonderful evolutionary advance, but over many, many millennia the thinking activity began to take over and so Most human beings these days actually never stop thinking, so what they experience is what I call a voice in the head, which is the internal dialogue that most people experience throughout the day during their waking hours. There's this continuous inner dialogue. There's a dialogue taking place, monologue, dialogue, whatever you want to call it. There's a commentator in your mind that interprets immediately and judges situations and people and thinks— it spends much more time thinking about some other moment rather than this one, and usually it's the future. Some people, of course, dwell excessively on the past too. They carry around the burden of past in their minds and in their emotional field without knowing it, without realizing that it doesn't have to be that way, without realizing that they are allowing the past, which after all is only certain thoughts that they carry in their head, they are allowing the past to sabotage their whole life. They're carrying such a burden of past that they can no longer experience the present. So you're either burdened by the past or you're burdened by the future.

Mm-hmm.

Now the question of why is very important. What is the ultimate cause of this? And that is the— what one could call overthinking.

Yes.

Thinking was a wonderful thing and still is a wonderful thing, but it has taken over human beings. It has proliferated to such an extent that now thinking has become almost a parasitical entity that lives in your head that Yes. Won't leave you alone. You know, most people's sense of identity, most people's sense of who they are is bound up with their mind activity, with their thinking. So they derive their sense of self from certain stories that they're telling themselves in their mind, and that's to do with what happened in the past, what other people did to you, things you identify with, that these are thoughts, things that belong to me, these are my things. These are all thought formations.

Um.

So people identify with the voice in the head, and the voice in the head becomes, for them, impossible to detach from. Distinguish from who they are. So they talk to themselves in their head. Everybody has met people in the street who talk to themselves out loud, and usually people look at them and say, oh, there's a crazy person going. But virtually everybody does that, except that they don't do it out loud.

Mm-hmm.

If you could listen into—

when—

if you look You walk around in this city, if you could listen to what's going on in people's heads, you would realize they're all talking to themselves. A lot of chatter. Yes, and they are so identified with it that they kind of, they are it. The voice has taken you over. The mind activity, the conceptual mind, has taken you over. And then it becomes, virtually becomes you. So in that state, which in spiritual terms we call unconscious, when we use the word unconscious in spiritual terms, it does not have the same meaning as it has in conventional terms. Usually when we use unconscious in conventional terms, we're talking about somebody who is just—

Sleepy.

He's dropped off, he's unconscious. When we use the word unconscious in spiritual terms, it means, it refers to somebody who is totally identified with the stream, the continuous stream of thinking which is conditioned by the past.

Mm-hm.

The types of thoughts that you think, the stories that you continuously revive in your head, have been conditioned by your past and the past of the culture that you grew up in, the country you grew up in, all the things that make up your past, your personal past and the collective past of your environment. So a person who grew up in, let's say, Saudi Arabia will not be thinking the same kind of stories and will not interpret the world in the same way as somebody who grew up in Canada or in the West. But what they have in common, they are both identified with the continuous stream of thinking. They may be different stories, they may be a different sense of identity, but in both cases they are— They are identified. They cannot separate themselves from the voice in the head.

I haven't gone through physical death yet, as the Zen master who was asked about life after death said, I don't know, and they said, why don't you know? You're the master. And he said, yeah, but I'm not a dead master. But I've gone very deeply to what one could call death to identification with form, so in a way I have gone into that realm from where I can say and know that ultimately what we see as death is the dissolution of form, that the eternal in us, which I know firsthand, cannot be touched by that. So what exactly happens, I would say, depends on whatever state of consciousness you were in that was your predominant state of consciousness in this lifetime. If in this lifetime you were continuously identified with form, your body, or the psychological form of me, that means consciousness, this expression of consciousness, was still in a somewhat dreamlike state, which is identification with form, and you can easily extrapolate from Apart from that, if the tendency of consciousness to identify with form was still there, which in other words the awakening had not happened, this tendency will continue, there will be further identification with form, and the process will continue as the consciousness that is not yet fully awake will continue to identify with form again. And then gradually come to a place where awakening happens. Or, if there has already been a disidentification from form in this lifetime, then you can extrapolate from there that the compulsive urge to identify with form and to seek another form or another of form identification, this compulsion to seek further experiences through identifying with form then would either be much weaker or be completely absent, in which case the consciousness that you are is no longer bound to this realm and will not seek to re-experience the realm of form. But in either case, you really— I know, I can tell you that all is well. It does not really matter whether this person now needs further experiences of identification In which case this will happen, or whether he's already free of this urge, in which case he will move on and live in a realm that we can't even conceive of from where we are here. I get a sense deep within in the forms of what that is, but we don't need to talk about All we know is nothing— this is the beginning of A Course in Miracles, which is the entire Course in Miracles summarized in 2 lines: Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. That which is real in him is beyond form. Anybody can know that when you see a dead body, you realize that this is no longer whom you knew, this is not the being that you knew, this is only a shell. So, nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal ultimately exists.

That's right.

This is why sages from all traditions speak of this realm of form as ultimately illusory. Ultimately, it depends what level you look at. The important thing is all is well beyond the appearance on the level of form, which is the only level where death exists, it is the transition from one form Into another form or from one form into formlessness. That is what death is, no more than that. Nothing real dies, nothing real dies, which is to say, ultimately, there is no such thing as death, there only seems to be. It's a transmutation of form, either form dissolves or seeks some other Some other form, some other identification with form.

Your inner state does not have to be totally determined by external conditions. You're not at the mercy any longer of external conditions, which means, for example, also people. Some people are— I mean, people are very problematic. People, people, So perhaps somebody is rude to you or somebody fails to do something that they should do or should have done, all kinds of things that you can complain about in people's behavior. And a lot of the complaining that one does about other people is totally futile. It does not change them because you— when you talk to others about them, you say, well, do you know what Oh my God, he did that. Or you do it in your head. It's all futile. It does not change that person. So if somebody is rude to you, like, oh, he doesn't— you're carrying your— or in the supermarket, you're carrying your shopping and somebody slams the door on your face because It's rude. For many people, the triggers can trigger a train of negative thoughts that lasts for the next 10, 15, or 20 minutes.

Mm-hmm.

So that means, and if you're completely identified with the stream of thinking, you don't even know you think, you're now experiencing a bad reality. Because you have not taken a step back from your thinking, you have not become aware of your thinking, you are so in your thoughts that you are totally identified with the thoughts. So the key then is to be able to separate your mental interpretation of things from the simplicity of the is-ness of the present moment, so you don't add unnecessary suffering to situations. You no longer create unnecessary suffering for yourself because you realize the unhappiness that you're experiencing in a given situation in 90% of the cases is not It is not produced by the situation, it is produced by the way in which your mind tells a story about the situation. Our purpose here, beyond the personal purposes that we have— everybody has their personal purpose, the work you do, whatever it is— there's a deeper purpose that the personal purpose must be aligned with, and that deeper purpose is to live from that deeper place. The way I interpret— you know, the English language doesn't have a word that describes both men and women. The German language has Mensch, which is also used in Yiddish, which is a German word. Mensch means both man or woman. For a long time, I regretted that the English language doesn't have a word for human. I used to say human being, but now I'm happy that I have to say human being, because that describes exactly the 2 dimensions. The human is the conditioned self. It's the personality, your historical person, which comes from the past, based on past, who you are as a person. It includes your physical body and your psychological self. I call that sometimes your form identity. There's a physical form, and there's a psychological form of you. That's the human. And then there's the being. The being is the deeper self that is consciousness, unconditioned. And no human life is fulfilled unless the human has at least some access to this dimension, within them. That really is the ultimate purpose, to at least, maybe not complete access, but at least to have glimpses of that which transcends the self, to have glimpses of self-transcendence in your life. If you, no matter how successful you are in this world, if you have never had even a glimpse of self-transcendence, Right. Then your life is pretty purposeless, and it's very unlikely that you will be a happy human being.

Is the ultimate paradox with all of this that it's almost impossible to hold on to? So even someone that has spent their life trying to attain that state, that you can't— A, you can't— to function as a human, maybe not as a human being, but just as a human, It would be almost impossible to constantly be in that state in a world that doesn't exist in that state.

Yes, not constantly, but it is possible to not just have that when you are perhaps, let's say, engaged in spiritual practice or you're meditating, or when you're out in nature and some happy moments out in nature. It is our It's our task to, as much as possible, incorporate that deeper level of consciousness into our daily life. Even if we don't succeed all the time, that's fine. That's part of the practice. So, one could say then, our purpose in our daily life, beyond the personal purpose, which is also important, because we need to honor who we are as a person.

Yes.

And we need to honor our identity as a person, because no doubt that exists. And whatever it is that makes up your identity, whether it's mostly of a personal kind, whether you identify with a certain collective around you, it could be your religion, whatever it might be, or the culture that you grow up in, that has its place. There's nothing wrong with it. But if that is all you know about yourself, that's very limiting. So, you honor it, but there's more to you than that. And that's why the ancient Greeks said, starting from Pythagoras, 500 BC, know thyself. The most— perhaps the most important dictum in ancient Greek philosophy, which was carved on the walls Yes. One of the symbols of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, know thyself. Very deep saying. Know who you are in your essence. So, because you have the form identity, which is the personality, the form, and you have, as I call it, an essence identity. And so, to know yourself as this essence is called in In Indian— some Indian spiritual philosophy is called self-realization. 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 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 the normal way of living, is the main part of People's attention is there, but in the meantime, they're here where they don't really want to be. They'd rather be there, as shown in the famous stickers on bumper stickers on cars, which say something like, I'd rather be fishing. The sense of being an outsider is also something that I have had. Throughout my life and the sense of not belonging here, watching my parents being engaged in continuous conflict, not because they were bad people, they did What they did, and they loved me as best they could, and they did what they did as a reflection of their state of consciousness at that time, which was a normal state of consciousness, egoic state of consciousness. But I sometimes felt, how did I get here? Somehow didn't There must have been a mistake. It's often outsiders, feeling an outsider on the one hand seems a terrible limitation that you can't participate as much. On the other hand, it's a great opportunity because Some of the most creative people in the world have been outsiders. They did not fit in. Misfits is the English word. Misfits. Now, the friendships I had when I was a child, and that's another interesting thing, I had friend. One of my friends was severely physically disabled, and nobody else wanted to be friends with him because of that. And he was probably my closest friend. And the other one was so weird that nobody wanted to talk to him. But he became my friend. So they were outsiders too. And, but the interesting fact here, as you know, I couldn't believe it when they told me that there are people here from 70 countries. It seems almost unbelievable, but it's true. I saw the list. 70 countries. Countries, and you may find, I'm sure you will find, quite often you can feel a bond or you have more in common with many of the people who are here than you have with your own people in your own country at home who are not going through any spiritual awakening. who are still totally conditioned, 100% conditioned by their culture. So you feel a connectedness here with other humans that transcends culture and conditioning and all this silly political stuff. It transcends that. And this is a wonderful thing. So to some extent, You can now connect with people even if you don't always see them physically. You might live— I don't know whether you live in a big city or a small village. A small city.

Small city.

Small city, yeah. Yeah. What city? Innsbruck in Austria.

Oh, yes.

Nice, very nice. I don't know how many people in Innsbruck are 120,000. And how many of those are awakening, we don't know. We don't know, of course. But this helps, I believe, being here and feeling you are not alone, you are connected. So this should be a help. For the rest, you just have to accept that this is how it is. And no matter how hard you try to fit in on the normal level, you probably won't, nor do you have to. So I know there are many people here who feel that, and be happy with it.

Yeah.

But don't make it into some kind of superiority, because the ego can always creep in before you know it. There's always a back door, and then the ego is back in. So you could go from feeling bad about being an outsider to suddenly feeling, okay, I'm an outsider because I'm superior. And then, so you have to be careful, don't go there. So that's just how it is. You probably would not be here if you had not felt like an outsider for many years.

Yeah.

So it worked. Certain actions take place. You do things, you know they're not the optimal things to do, but you can't help it. It's something acts through you. There seems to be There's some power there that makes you do things that you know are not right or not good for you, and yet you can't stop it. That seems to be the case. And that, of course, is often the case with people who are— with you, it might be many different—

Different things.

Different areas of your life, but this is also the case with addictions, for example, people who are addicted to a certain substance or who are addicted to eating too much or drinking. There's something that overpowers them in you that seems to obscure the awareness, or the awareness is pushed to the side. To recite, and this thing, this powerful thing does it anyway. And again, my answer is a little bit similar to what I said to the first questioner tonight. The power of presence.

Mm-hmm.

Needs to grow in you so that it is strong enough not to— it's not willpower, because willpower is not the best way of dealing with these things. But what I'm talking about could sometimes be confused with willpower, but willpower includes the application of a force to hold something down. Let's say if your addiction is to have a— to indulge in intoxicating beverages, in other words, booze is the British word, then— and you can feel it, it comes on, there it comes, you know the bottles are there, there they are, and you feel your You have to go there and you have to reach out and you have to pour yourself a drink. Now, when you're not aware at all, you don't even know what you're doing. You're so unconscious that you're already holding the drink and you're drinking. Then you, at that point, you even know that you're drinking. The same with food. I've spoken to people who have had addictions to food. They often say— They don't know. They wake up when they've already eaten in the middle of the night. They've already unconsciously gone to the fridge, taken out the chocolate cake, and then they're already halfway through the chocolate cake when suddenly they're like, what am I doing? So awareness comes in at a very late point. Willpower would be to hold an urge down. Let's say they have to pull Or even what the example you gave, you want to turn on the TV and you know it's not right because I'm not here for that and he actually told us not to do it. But I can't help it. I have to go. I can't, I can't. No willpower, you would say, I'm going to hold this down. I'm not going I'm not going to do it. And I can feel the urge, but you're holding it down. When you hold things down, often after a while, an explosion happens. It's like a boiling kettle. Can't hold it for that long. And then you have some kind of rationalization in your Why? You'll do it anyway. The mind will give you a reason. First, you see the need to be a victim identity also, unfortunately, is a form of ego, because any conceptual identity is a form of ego. And even though you seem to be amply justified in having a victim identity because of the things that other humans did to you, you yourself are finding yourself in a kind of prison created by your mind. So there's no denial of that bad things happen to you. Yes. Now, question is, how do you exit this mental prison? The first step is perhaps to see that unconscious human beings, unconscious human beings in the grip of their own conditioning, their own ego, they have virtually no free will. When you are unconscious, you are controlled by The mind patterns that are lodged in your psyche. You cannot really speak of free will by somebody who has zero awareness, and yet their entire makeup is conditioning from the past. So the famous sentence, phrase used by Jesus, In connection with forgiveness on the cross, he said, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Now, these 2 interesting— these points put together, forgive them. Why forgive them? They know not what they do. In other words, if he had spoken these days using our terminology, He probably would've said they're completely unconscious because that's what it means. They know not what they do. They're completely unconscious. So when you see nobody can act beyond their level of consciousness, then you see that it's almost like— it becomes almost like the evil that was perpetrated becomes It's almost like a natural phenomenon that is like you've been hit by lightning or something, or lived in very unpleasant climatic conditions that injured you, near a volcano. My dad had problems with anger, huge outbursts of anger quite frequently. It was living Like living next to a volcano that could erupt at any moment. And he could not help it. It was impossible. There was no possibility of being different. And so these humans are run by unconscious conditioning, usually goes back to their childhood and what happened there. I know why my father was angry. I realized much later that it all originated in his childhood, the reasons why he was so angry. And also, for a while, also I felt a resentment towards that. And only when I was able to awaken out of egoic consciousness, I saw that there's nothing that he could have done differently because there wasn't enough awareness. Now, when you see that, then you don't personalize or you don't create an identity for other humans out of their unconsciousness, because in essence, that's not who they are. The recognition that— there's first recognition, then Step 1, you recognize that no human can act beyond their conditioning in the absence of awareness. If there's awareness, they can transcend their conditioning, and then they begin to become conscious of their own conditioned mental-emotional, dysfunctional mental-emotional patterns.

Yes.

So they couldn't, they can't help it. So that's already a useful step in forgiveness, but you may not yet be able to arrive at full forgiveness because of that. Another, before I continue with that, does that mean then, a question may arise in your mind, Does that mean then humans are not really responsible for what they do? If they're unconscious, how are they responsible? And does that mean then that we shouldn't punish them for what they do? If they commit a crime, are they not guilty? That's an interesting question. The unconsciousness That operates in human, even if you are able to forgive a human, and we'll come, we'll go more fully into that in a minute, even if you're able to forgive a human for their transgressions or whatever they did, this does not mean, and even though the human is not responsible for their unconsciousness, and yet— It is built into the structure of human life. They still need to suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness. Usually happiness exists as part of the play of opposites. You experience the happiness because something makes you happy, and then that That thing that made you happy either leaves you or the very thing that made you happy suddenly makes you unhappy. Marriage, for example. Or a relationship. Before you start living together, you're happy. When you start living together, you're unhappy. So what is— if it's not happy, what are we talking about?

The—

there's a— if you let go of Thinking and remain as the awareness, then there is in that— that awareness emanates a certain peace, alive peace, joy, peace, a peaceful, joyful sense of aliveness. Inner peace may be a better word than happiness.

Yes.

But one would have to add to it, it's an alive peace. It's not the peace of having deadened yourself to emotions or anything like that. It's an alive, intensely alive peace. You can sense it, even if it's only just a glimpse right now. Surrender thought, And of course, right now, if you're not thinking about the problems of your life, there are no problems in this moment. There's only a sense of beingness or aliveness, and that is the connectedness with being. And so you transcend the opposites. Between happiness and unhappiness.

When the Buddha was teaching 2,500 years ago, he told people to seek out a quiet place in the forest and meditate there. That was an essential part of his teaching. So nature was an essential part of his teaching. And of course, as you know, probably the story goes that the Buddha sat under a tree when, as the story goes, he awakened spiritually or became enlightened. So his enlightenment is associated. With the tree. A tree— don't believe what science tells you. There's more to the tree than that, and you can know that and sense that If you become still enough and give it your attention, looking, almost sensing its stillness. So, but it is a reciprocal movement. It goes both ways. Yes, nature becomes conscious of itself through you, but nature also helps you to realign yourself with stillness.

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 is, I am that I am.

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 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 the 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 called 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 that, yes, be still and know that I am.

I am.

It is the I Am of being. God. Okay, here we come to a difficult word, but they're 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, you what?

You do who? Okay, now tell me the ultimate secrets of God in the transcendent universe. Ooh, ah, oh, me too. 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 relates to who you are. And that image is— I— that I prefer is the image of our— 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, 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 an 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 analogy of water. Then it becomes vegetative life. Then again, 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. 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, the presence, then you are— 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.

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 send 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. Be aware of the conceptualizing your life And allowing an unhappy story in your head to make you unhappy. People think they're unhappy because of the circumstances of their lives. In most cases they're unhappy because of what they're telling themselves, or what the mind is saying about what's going on around you and has happened, will happen. So that's a— it's a suffering, the origin of suffering. To a large extent is there. And even in extreme situations, having lost your home, for example, not knowing where to live, even there it applies. You do not, in the face of a challenge, if you are present, you don't convert the challenge into suffering. You just be with what is. And you start experimenting with little things in your life that cause you irritation or a little bit of anger or some impatience. Situations that are very common every day. And you look at the situation, you become aware Suddenly that there's irritation arising or anger arising, and you become aware that it doesn't actually feel very good, and the body knows it doesn't feel good. The body doesn't like it. There's irritation arising, and you think it's because of what's going on, but if you look more closely, you think, now, is this situation causing this, or is what I'm saying about it causing it? this? What my mind, the commentary of my mind? And in most cases you will find it's the mental commentary that you had been identified with that causes the unhappiness. And then you say, let's experiment with removing the commentary. How would I experience this situation if I did not add the mental commentary?

Yeah.

So in other words, you're just now with the is-ness of this moment without anything, mental stuff, being added to it that says, this should not be happening, I don't want to be here, and many other things. Suddenly, you're fine. A minute ago, you were extremely irritated and angry, and you couldn't differentiate between the circumstances, external circumstances of your life, and the inner commentary about the circumstances. And this is the essence of unconsciousness, unable to differentiate between the circumstances The circumstances and the commentary. So the circumstances and the commentary become a single— are experienced as a single phenomenon. And then when you suddenly, you can separate, this is the is-ness of this moment, and it is as it is. An enormous power is suddenly arising in you, which is the power of the present moment, which is the power of unconditioned consciousness. Also the power of dealing with the situation if there's something that you need to do. Suddenly right action, as the Buddha calls it, right action happens. Or non-action, if action is not possible, then right surrender happens. But you allow this moment to be as it is without— but what does that mean? It means you don't add unnecessary mental baggage to it that argues with the is-ness of this moment. Now, yeah, there may be one or two people being with us here, there, who perhaps are stuck somewhere in a room and can't get out because of physical disability, or they may be in prison, and they say, what can I do? What can we do? We can't get out into nature. Well, you need to remember that your body also is nature, so you can start there. Every time you take a breath, that's nature. Nature is breathing. The air that you are breathing is nature. The very fact of breathing Breathing is a natural process. It's not choice. It's done for you. It's not so much that you breathe, although we say, I breathe, but you're not— the body breathes. So it's a natural thing that happens. You wouldn't say, I'm beating my heart. You don't do that, but that's the same thing. The body does it. It's a natural process. For some reason, we say I'm breathing because breathing is semi-voluntary. You can stop it for a while, but not for that long because if you stop it for too long, nature takes over and you go. So nature takes says nature. You live with nature, with your body. So even if you can't get out, you can start by being aware of. That level of yourself, the physical level, the natural part of who you are, the body. And not just by saying, okay, I'm looking at my hands or my feet, not just the physical, not the external image of the body, but you can go into the body with your attention and that's Yes. You're in nature. Even if you're in a prison cell, you can do that. And even if there's no opportunity, you might be in an office block in Manhattan and you look out of the window and all you have is maybe a little bit of sky. Okay, there's a little bit of nature there, you can look at that. But you have more nature than that in yourself, so as you sit in your office, wherever it is. Go within first. Be conscious that breathing is happening. The body is breathing. Be conscious also of the, the preciousness of the air. It's such a precious substance. So to acknowledge that is actually part of It's a matter of what sometimes is called to live in a state of gratitude. Now, some people say, what can I be grateful for? There's nothing in my life that I can be grateful for. Well, are you breathing?

Yes.

Well, you start there. Is religion necessary? It depends who you are on the level of the form. For some people it can be necessary or helpful for 2 reasons. It can provide— the more superficial reason— it can give your life a certain amount of structure, which for some people can be helpful. Regular practice. Gives you a feeling of comfort. Some people have too little structure in their lives and others have too much already. If you have too little structure in your life, then religion can provide that. More importantly, on another level, Religion can either obscure the spiritual dimension within yourself, and often it does, or if used rightly, if approached rightly, if understood on a deeper level, It can help you access and stay in connectedness with that deeper level of yourself or the transcendent dimension of consciousness. Whether or not you need it, only you can know whether you find it either helpful or a hindrance. It can be either. Depends on you as a person, your past, what function it had in your past, and so on. It is a hindrance if religion becomes an ideology, then it operates only on the level of the mind. And it's very similar to any other kind of ideology that you may believe in, whether it's communism as an ideology or any political theory or anything that explains the universe. It could be a metaphysical system that you completely believe in. Philosophical system and so on. So an ideology is something that takes possession of your mind and exerts a controlling function, and it can influence almost your entire mental functioning if it becomes something of overwhelming Power in your mind. It's a little thought that grows into a huge thing in your mind, and the tentacles reach into every aspect of your mind. And there are religious people like that. Usually you can recognize that it is an ideology by the fact that they are not peaceful human Human beings, and by the fact that they have enemies either even within their own religion or another religion. Anybody who does not agree with their ideology becomes an enemy in the same way that people who were— not nowadays that Many were deeply believing in communism, which was a wonderful idea to start with, of course. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It was a beautiful idea of equality. Everybody the same. That is wonderful. No personal possessions. That's wonderful too. And the only mistake was it was imposed. From outside by people who themselves has not gone beyond the egoic state of consciousness. They just played it in their mind as, that's a good idea. And then it was imposed on other people who also were not in that state of consciousness. But most importantly, those who imposed the idea on others forced them to live it out. the ideal became contaminated with ego. So when these people came to power, their egos became inflated to an enormous degree, almost to absurdity. And without realizing it, they reenacted the same evils, in some cases worse than those that they were fighting against. To learn some more incredible Wayne Dyer wisdom, check the video right there next to me.

I think you'll love it.

Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. You get back from the universe, from the world, what it is that you put out there in the world.

No one ever dies from a snakebite.

The snakebite will never kill you. You cannot be unbitten. Once you're bitten, you're bitten.