Can You Overcome Anxiety through Presence? | Eckhart Tolle

what does it feel like to be you at this moment there is a powerful sense of presence there which has no particular form and that's you and at that level you are connected with something far deeper and more powerful than the little [Music] entity hello aart hello um I'm so honored to be here step closer and I'm a little bit nervous that's fine nothing wrong with that um I I really have two questions and I'm wondering if I can sneak one in really quit an extra one um um I work at the University of New

England um and we have a center for Global Humanities and we have speakers come it's like a public forum for the discussion of problems um that humans face and we'd be absolutely honored if you would speak there so where is that it's located in Portland Maine oh a University of New England of New England yes oh okay and I organize the speakers so [Laughter] [Music] um oh thank you and and we would just be we have a really good group of followers who would just uh be mesmerized by you so I hope you would consider

that okay please mention it to Stephen or Greg and give your contact I can't make any promises but uh I've never been to Portland Maine of I've been to Portland Oregon but not in Portland Maine and well we have some really beautiful places in Maine yeah yeah thank you and the next [Music] question I'm wondering um you talk a lot well you know being present and you talk about conditioning and how we are conditioned and I think about my own negative thinking and and how some of that is conditioning and then you know people who

they just seem to have this all so Soul this spirit and so I wonder about nature versus nurture and what your thoughts are is there like a short Gene for anxiety that causes that causes all I guess for me being in the present when you when you have that fight or flight like how do you tame that how do you um H how do you tame that you know the fight or flight when your heart is racing and you're is it just doing it and being in the present uh when you are anxious we mean

or nervous anxious and then it causes all that negative thinking negative thinking how to go beyond that yes okay well there are various ways uh which I sometimes call portals into the state of presence I just for the previous questioner bre really similar questions how do I get out of my mind for the previous questioner I talked about feeling the inner energy field of the body but for you I will talk about a different portal and that is a very Universal portal all portals are closely related to each other uh so this portal is called

the present moment moment and Present Moment awareness or attention to the present moment more than anything else it's a redirecting of your attention as soon as you discover within yourself you realize that you're entering a nonh harmonious State of Consciousness through irritation upset nervousness worry anxiety uh anger subsisting for long period of time in any kind of dysfunctional nonh harmonious State of Consciousness or to descri describe describe it in other words unhappiness in whatever form because unhappiness can take many forms the moment you realize that ah and for you to realize that already requires a

small amount of awareness because the people who are really deeply unhappy almost as their normal State and there are many in this world they don't even know it because they don't know anything else so there are many there are millions of people running around this planet in a state of unhappiness and whatever form this unhappiness takes and if you ask them are you unhappy they say no I'm not unhappy what are you talking about I'm not unhappy they don't it's very it's like a it's like listening to some machine that goes on even let's say

a noisy refrigerator that is always running in your room you don't know it's running until something happens to it and it suddenly stops and you say what happened suddenly that that Dreadful noise is gone and suddenly it's so beautifully still here I never knew there was that noise is going on all the time so for you to recognize that you are in a non-h harmonious State requires already a small amount of awareness because it's only from the awareness so the the we need to presuppose there's already some presence there where you can recognize that you

don't want that you don't want the disharmonious state then you go into present moment awareness the disharmonious state arises usually because you are not you lose the present moment and believe something else is more important than the present moment it also often usually implies there's some form of resistance to something so present moment awareness is a conscious redirecting of your attention away from the thinking mind into the direct perception of present moment reality ity and Present Moment reality starts with you coming to your senses coming to your senses means you sit so let's say let

me act it out you are you're trapped in your [Music] go and you get more and more unhappy or anxious or you can feel the anxiety and life is there's a heaviness there and then you know is oh do I want that do I need that does it have a useful purpose no redirect attention to the present moment okay where is the present moment okay the present moment always starts with sense perception you looking suddenly what's around you look start look carefully then you go and to really look you it's you need to just be

silent while you look it's the silent looking and this is you beginning to enter the present moment and then incorporate another sense listen so in you begin to take in what surrounds you in the present moment become aware that you're breathing it's all aspects of the present moment visual perception be where you are be here fully be here now inhabit the present moment be present to because that's all you there ever is there is nothing else except the Pres the mind will tell you that there many many things much more important than the present moment

but it's a lie it's a delusion because there is nothing else even when your mind tells you there are many things more important than this moment it can only tell you that in this moment so there is nothing so give more importance to the present moment and so bring attention to the present moment first through sense perception through be becoming aware of your breathing and then the next step can be at a as you perceive the world around you also feel the energy field inside the body at at the same time so you're more and

more more and more present and you this is already a shift in Consciousness very different from few minutes before you were immersed in useless thinking so there's already a shift in Consciousness happening and you can notice the difference in the energy field as the Consciousness shifts from being absorbed in thinking to being becoming present and so that is the you're waking up basically it's a process of waking up out of not out of sleep but out of what is like sleep which is being totally immersed in the in the voice in the head totally identified

with the voice in the head so you become present so sense perception feel yourself breathing and feel the inner body and then you can go one step deeper into what is the actual the deeper reality of the present moment because the present moment has a surface appearance which is fine it's often the first step it's what is around you through sense perceptions then you go into the body and then you go deeper and become aware that as you are perceiving being the world around you there is a presence in you which you can sense as

your very own being through which you are perceiving otherwise you couldn't if you were not here as a conscious presence you would not be able to perceive this room and the plants and the flowers and whatever is in this room you would not be able to perceive it if you were not here as a Consciousness so whether what you're perceiving is a reality or dream is immaterial the fact is whether it's a dream or reality it requires your presence the light of your presence in which everything appears now can you become aware of the light

of presence or the presence directly in you in other words can you sense your own beingness right now as I'm talking about it I can feel it very strongly in me the fact that I am before anything else arises in Consciousness I am so I know that I am not this or that not that I am a man or woman or have particular age or a particular function deeper than that before you add anything to I am the I am is there before you add any sense perceptions to it the I am is there so

another give you another little pointer to point to that place what does it feel like to be you in its most in its most fundamental its most essential way what does it feel like to be you and as I said before don't remember no need to remember your personal history for that in fact that becomes an obstacle it's nothing to do with anything that ever happened to you nothing to do with past or future it's only to do with this moment what does it feel like to be you and he doesn't have a conceptual answer

so don't answer it what does it feel like to be you at this moment what is the innermost self what does it feel like and you will notice that there is there is a powerful sense of presence there which has no particular form you can't say much about it or anything really about it and that's you that's the being the self the I am that I am and at that level you are connected with something far deeper and more powerful than the little entity the physical entity or the psychological entity it is there where you

connect it to something vast you're you're connected to the very core of the universe and every human is that's the Atman as the in in India it's called the the divine within and the divine within connects you to the soul of the universe the the outer the Brahman the Divine without the what does it feel like to be yourself and then you suddenly has yeah and you can't say anything about it it's just a presence it's the presence of Consciousness it's Consciousness another way of putting it as you can see I give you little many

different pointers because one work certain pointers work better for certain people another pointer now you become conscious that you are conscious right now you suddenly realize that you are conscious that's an amazing realization and to put it even more accurately because if I say you realize that you are conscious in that putting it like that there's still some duality in there I realize that I'm conscious no you realize that you are Consciousness better way of putting it you realize that the essence of who you are your sense of self is consciousness not anything that happened

ever or could or will happen ever and then this as you at first perhaps it comes to you in little glimpses and then gradually it is becomes the backdrop of your entire life that continuously no matter what situations you go into or whether you're thinking or not thinking there's always a part of you in the background that can that knows that you are Consciousness you know your not you know yourself as Consciousness Consciousness knows itself is another way of putting it and that is the Transcendent Dimension that can always be there in the background of

your life and sometimes it will come into the foreground when it obliterates every thought I'm talking from my personal life the non-personal life it obliterates it can it obliterates every thought and you just go you are nobody in particular when it comes to the Forefront then the human it shines away the human Dimension temporarily and there's only the being when spiritual teaching happens the being takes over for me when spiritual teaching doesn't happen the human to some extent comes back but it doesn't o obliterate the being so there's always the being in the background there

when I talk and I'm say talking about this because you will experience the same and some of you already know exactly what I'm talking about then the being talks the words come it shines through it's just a so you there you will observe in your life as you become familiar with dancing between form and formlessness between the human and the being and bringing them together you will notice that sometimes the being becomes very strong when you get very still you may be surrounded by Nature you go or somebody comes to you who is in deep

Agony or suffering and suddenly you find yourself becoming totally alert and still and and perhaps you start even saying something to that person which is just right for that moment then the being takes over and then in other situations you become the human takes over and there's just 10% of being in some uh and that's fine you still there's all there there's still some awareness that of consciousness of space in you this is a wonderful process and the many of you are already beginning to EXP experience that in your life this this shift from the

mental self the usual self as I sometimes call it the human form self to the Transcendent self which the Buddhists call the no self and other Traditions call the higher self these are just words uh somebody who's never had a glimpse of it as many academic who study religions they say there's a total contradiction between what the Hindus believe and what the Buddhists believe because the Buddhists say there's no self and the Hindus say there's the higher self totally different they don't realize they just use different words to talk about the same thing or no

thing if they've had a if they had a glimpse of it within themselves they would know that but because they only approach it to the conceptual mind all they see is the differences this is the this is the practice and hopefully as I've been talking you and everybody here has at least perhaps to some extent been experiencing what it means to shift from the human to the Deeper Self what I call the being self right now even if you don't know it mentally if you are attentive here if you are not D dying from boredom

as you sit here listening to me that means it's working for you it's that simple but if your mind is saying when the hell is he going to stop talking that means it's not working for you and but you've probably left already by now if you're here and there's actually there's something that captures your attention that's the truth in you that's the being level in you that recognizes itself and is coming Force that's all it is because what I'm saying otherwise unless you have some access to it within yourself what I'm saying otherwise would be

absolutely boring and meaningless I'm not saying anything to to the just the mind what the hell is he talking about being so you need to have some access to it in order to find this interesting or makes you feel more alive being here means yes you have it it's there that's it even though your mind might say oh do I really understand what he's talking about if you enjoy being here and listening and something in you feels alive then you understand it you don't you don't need to understand it conceptually you can't you get it

thank [Music] you