The Power of the Present Moment and Conscious Living | Eckhart Tolle

ultimately their opinion they are beginning to defend their identity sense of identity is derived from the movement of [Music] thought and so whenever somebody questions something that's connected with your thinking it is regarded as an attack on your identity Why not start with a good spiritual practice especially for people in the back rows and it may sound a little bit funny but it's actually a very powerful spiritual practice uh and that is to become aligned with the present moment obviously this is I'm Mr now so I'm talking about the present moment become aligned with the

present moment and uh re refrain from complaining for example that you are too far away mentally po very powerful spiritual practice so then you become [Music] okay with the isness of things and the isness of things happens always in the present moment you might have noticed nothing ever happens that's not now one could almost say the word happen must imply present moment and most people completely underestimate the incredible importance of the present moment and of living in [Music] a harmonious relationship with the present moment and you would be surprised how many people in this world

live almost constantly in an antagonistic relationship with the present moment and that of course causes a lot of unnecessary suffering and unhappiness so one of the most important things in life to be aware of is your relationship so to speak with the present moment and this is now of course is the present moment welcomed or appreciated or at least accept it for the way it is because it already is the way it is that's the weird thing about the present moment it's already the way it is no matter how you argue in their mind with

it the isness of things is already the case and that's all there ever is in your entire life your entire life this is not something to just understand intellectually but to grasp at a deeper level your entire life unfolds in the present moment that's all there ever is that's all there ever is is this moment and most people live as if some future moment whether it's a minute from now or tomorrow or next year they live as if some future moment were always more important than this moment that isn't implied they don't tell themselves oh

the next moment is more important than this one no it's an assumption an underlying assumption it's a mindset and that mindset is a form of con conditioning cultural conditioning and that mindset by implication if not literally always says there something more important coming and I'm on my way to [Music] it and that is a dysfunctional way to live because you're never Fully Alive you you never feel at home you're always looking for your home in some future moment or when you get old enough and you realize there's little future left then you think about the

past more than the next moment this is why many old people talk continuously about the past so coming into alignment with the present moment brings about a shift in Consciousness and this is so simple and yet so profound now this shift in Consciousness is what our evening here together is all about it is about a transformation of Consciousness in you and the reason why you're here most of you is that this transformation of Consciousness is already happening it's a process for most people it's already happening in you and you're here because you know that this

or you hope that this is an opportunity for deepening this sift in Consciousness or accelerating the shift in Consciousness there are other terms we could use we could say it is about an Awakening of Consciousness it is about a spiritual awakening and this is a term that in several spiritual traditions is used and has been used for a long time the term of awaken which implies that the ordinary the normal state of consciousness of most human beings is a kind of dreamlike state it is a kind of sleep but people if you tell that to

somebody says what are you talking about dream I'm completely awake this is just nonsense and then I might say have you noticed that there is a voice in your head that almost never stops talking and commenting and analyzing and interpreting and judging and liking and disliking liking and it all the time it talks and talks it's in your head and if he talks out aloud and there's nobody there then you're crazy but it's it's in your head and there's it talks about you about other people it has comments about thinks a lot about the future

sometimes totally imaginary things that they going to go wrong especially at 3:00 in the morning when you're in a warm bed you can start thinking about all the things that are going to go wrong in your life and that's the voice in the head and most people are so identified with the voice that they they are they become the voice they become the compulsive OB almost obsessive thoughts that continuously roll through their heads and if I say to somebody have you are not awake they say what what the hell are you talking about and I

say that's it that's the voice that keeps you asleep identification with that voice is a kind of hypnotic trance that you live in on a daily basis what the voice says varies from person to person from culture to culture that uh the it's the conditioned mind and the way the mind has been conditioned depends on the surrounding culture that you grow up in if you had grown up in a totally different part of the world somewhere in Africa or in uh Asia or Saudi Arabia or South America you would have different types of thought to

not not all of them would be different but there there's a different type of uh conditioning that goes with that particular culture but what everybody has in common no matter what the voice says is that they are identified with the voice which means apart from The Voice they are not there apart they are the voice they are their mental POS their mental positions you notice it for example when you start discussing something with someone and you have a disagreement which happens very quickly of course when you start talking to somebody you then quickly you find

something to disagree with and you then might notice in the other person it's always easier to notice the unconscious in the other person you might notice in the other person defensiveness and aggression arising and emotion arises they're getting upset because you're questioning their their opinion their Viewpoint which they they don't even know it's a Viewpoint to them it's the truth that's how it is and you question it and they what they are beginning to defend not ultimately their opinion they are beginning to defend their identity because identity is bound up with thought identity sense of

identity is derived from the movement of thought that's and so whenever somebody questions something that's connected with your thinking very quickly it is regarded unconsciously of course this this is why we call that the unconscious state it is regarded as an attack on your identity it's almost as if somebody was physically attacking you and of course in some cases in very unconscious people even a disagreement can lead to physical violence incredible so the voice in the head is what most people derive their sense of self from all the people who are not yet be at

least beginning to awaken out of that voice and so that is in the larger context for this is that the evolution of human beings and the evolution of the consciousness of human beings has not come to an end humans are not yet a finished product they are a work in progress if they were a finished product that would be very sad and a terrible tragedy if you look at human history up to now is that the best you can do it would be a tragic thing then you say well God must have made a huge

mistake to create beings that create so much unnecessary suffering for themselves and for other human beings that they kill each other by the millions millions and millions just read the first history of the first half of the 20th century it's insane it's and that's on that is the manifestation of the unconscious State on a collective level and then you have the manifestation of the unconscious State of Consciousness on a personal level so on a collective it might manifest as violence between nations and so on but the same mechanism is at work when two people are

having an argument and they are beginning to hate each other because they have different opinions you'll be surprised surprised how many people when somebody expresses an opinion that conflicts with theirs whether it's political or religious whatever kind political is a good example somebody questions their Viewpoint and immediately they have an emotional meltdown and the other no longer a human being the other becomes the enemy and this has been going on for thousands of years but of course now with the miraculous Aral of advanced technology called the internet this disfunction that is in every human being

that makes other human beings into enemies because they hold different mental positions now you can uh get on your keyboard and send out your hatred towards all these Dreadful people who have different opinions from yours and then you be satisfied and you don't know that you are completely unconscious spiritually speaking unconscious is that complete identification with the conditioned mind and the emotions that accompany the conditioned mind and it's the now complete identification with the conditioned mind is what in spiritual terms we call the ego the ego is it's very simple definition the unobserved Mind complete

identification with the mind is your egoic identity and for millions of people on the planet that is who they not who they are but who they think they are now that's amazing thing so that is it's been an evolutionary development in human consciousness the ability to think was an amazing development in human consciousness it's of course bound up with the arising of language the ability to think uh it was not a mistake it was an incredible step forward in the evolution of human consciousness and has created civilizations and so on but there is a heavy

price to pay as there always is in this world of polarities there's a heavy very heavy price to pay for the power to think the ability to think and that is that gradually your entire sense of self your sense of who you are becomes bound up with thinking and this happened over a long period of time at first humans started to think from time to time there was they were surprised some anthropologists believe that when humans first started to think and use language they two happen at the same time they were surprised that suddenly there

was a voice in their heads talking and they thought a god some God was talking to them and so they heard this voice go and kill these Dreadful people in the other tribe okay and so but you may have you may know that in many ancient uh cultures there's a mythological uh tale of called the Golden Age you have it in India you have it in the old beginning of the the Old Testament the Garden of Eden and other cultures as if there were some distant memory in human consciousness in the collective consciousness of something

a state along long long time ago that was lost and that is the myth of the golden age and this of course some people say that's a complete fantasy see that something humans are longing or some people might say oh it's a longing to return to the womb you before you were born and so on or it could be as I believe the an actual distant memory of a state that humans lost and that was the state of connectedness with a totality connectedness with being to be to have the ability to be rooted in the

being of yourself and that is of course how everything in nature still has that when you look at a tree if you can if you really look at a tree really sense the presence of the tree the beingness of the tree tree then you can sense that the tree is not only rooted in the soil but the tree Al also rests in itself it is very still when you really give yourself a moment and and contemplate a tree without formulating words about it Concepts about it just be with it then you can sense that the

tree exist exists in this field of deep Stillness it just is if the tree could speak it would probably just utter the the ancient sound of ancient India which is oh let see oh by the way just a little aside uh as you know the the languages that we speak in Europe are called indoeuropean languages and there's a link with Sanskrit the ancient language of India and it is my personal theory that the English word home is related to the OM sound and because home the deepest meaning of home is not your external home the

deepest meaning of home is to be rooted in the being of yourself