Beyond the Mind’s Clutter: Finding Presence | Eckhart Tolle

when was the last time you saw somebody just sit there and look around because you have to get out your phone it clutters your mind even more so when I ask who are you if I ask that question don't go let's do this for a moment don't go into the past can you can you feel or sense who you are without reference to the Past in you you don't even need to remember your name right now what for you don't remember your email address or your phone number or what happened to you 10 years ago don't need to remember that can you still get a sense with without reference to your personal history can you get a sense of beingness or presence there's no past in that at all but but what is that you can't really describe it all you know is that you are I am you can sense the underlying beingness or presence of you and but to really sense it what needs to happen is that for a moment the stream of thinking needs to subside and it may be happening for many of who at this very moment the stream of thinking that is normal for most people that never stops except when they fall asleep the stream of thinking for a moment subsides and when I asked you whether you can be sense yourself without reference to the your personal history what I was really talking about was I was really asking was can you get a sense of your presence without thought ah and there's enormous Revelation here this question who am I does not have a real truthful answer on a conceptual level it's not in thoughts or words the true answer to who am I has no thought in it it is a sense of presence or beingness and it you can only sense that if for if even it's only a moment so the stream of thinking subsides and what happen is you are completely present without your mind saying anything you you can perceive everything you can still you can see you can hear you're fully there and your mind is still still does not mean that you've gone to sleep it's the opposite you're actually more alert in that Stillness than you would be if you were identified with this continuous stream of thinking that's the Stillness the inherent Stillness that actually every human has that you don't need to work hard to attain Stillness or think that if I follow the right course of action it might take me 10 years and then I'll be able to have a still mind uh no it's already there and if you're not totally miserable and unhappy every moment of your life that means without perhaps you knowing it anybody who is not extremely miserable all the time has a little bit of access without even knowing it to that Stillness within they don't know it all they know is from time to time they feel a little bit good they feel they don't know for 3 seconds they stopped thinking they might have some other explanation of why in that moment they felt good maybe they were looking at a dog in in that moment because the dog wasn't thinking anything about them because the dog doesn't think the dog is conscious but not conceptual thinking the dog does not have an opinion about you and so when you were petting the dog for perhaps you suddenly felt good good about petting the dog why because for a moment the dog freed you of the judgmental conceptual mind that otherwise would be very active if you were petting a human it would say something of course you can't do that because people would think you're insane you can't go up to human may I pet you that would be nice if they did that to each other but but the humans have judgments about you so whenever you go to a human you know that he was has certain thoughts about you so the other human cannot free you from your thoughts but the dog or the cat can for short moment free you from your thoughts and in that moment it feels good that's why people love their pets so deeply there's there's a reason a deeper reason why they love because the pet frees them little bit from their minds and there are moments when you interact with with your animal that there are you can experience brief moments of thoughtless awareness two seconds 3 seconds but it's enough to keep you going it's enough so that your life doesn't become totally miserable and then you might have other moments you might have moments when you engage in some physical activity you swim or you climb a mountain and then there are moments that your total presence is required by the activity so that there's not enough left for thinking and again you feel intensely alive oh that was so good why was it so good well it just I love it it's just so good I don't know why it's good well it's good because it freed you for a moment from the incessant stream of thinking and there was some degree of awareness or presence arising but you didn't even know that so it's always that that dimension of Consciousness is in every human now I must admit in there are still millions of humans where it's so deeply hidden in them that they have no access to it but there are others who can actually who are beginning to avoid Wen to this Dimension within themselves so now you don't have to wait for certain things to happen to briefly free you from your mind you don't have to wait for the next encounter with a lovely dog in the street or you don't have to wait for some beautiful moment in nature when you just go you take in the totality of a forest or this vastness of the sky ey and you you go or at night you look up into this this this clear sky the vastness of space the countless Stars which are Suns most of them the and the vast distances and the Stillness of it all and you go it still can still your mind too that was my first meditation when I was a teenager I didn't even know what meditation I didn't had at that time nobody talked about meditation in the west I looked up at the sky at night we were living when I was a teenager we were living in Spain so the sky was often in the summer especially totally clear and I sit on the roof of the house and go wow what I don't I realized many years later that while I was doing that there was no thought in my mind the the space the outer space created in me that Inner Space or inner spaciousness because so that's another word for it another pointer the inner spaciousness if you don't find that and and I'm say find or discover I'm not saying achieve or attain it's not an achievement or attainment because you already it's already there as the essence of who you are but you have to discover it that it that it is already there if you don't find it you are condemned for the rest of your life to live a very frustrated existence because life will be just one damn thing after another one damn thing and it never leaves me alone but what really doesn't leave you alone is your mind which reacts to every little thing that happens and amplifies every little thing that happens it's not so much what people call Karma is not so much what what happens to them it's how they respond or React to what happens and when you are unconscious you amplify every little challenge in your life becomes