June 21, 2019 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| No matter what your life circumstances are, the message is, wake up. | ||
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me on The Rubin Report today is the internationally bestselling | ||
| author of The Power of Now, which has sold 12 million copies worldwide since it was first | ||
| published with translations into 52 languages, along with his most recent book, A New Earth, | ||
| which has already sold over 15 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 50 | ||
| Eckhart Tolle, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I am truly thrilled to have you here, and I suspect this is going to be an interview like no other that I've done. | ||
| Do you have a preference for what language, since you've been translated into basically every living language on earth? | ||
| Is English going to be okay for the purposes of this? | ||
| I'll be happy with English. | ||
| I wrote it in English. | ||
| I do give talks sometimes in German and Spanish, but before I do that, I always prepare myself and I read the German and Spanish translations of the book. | ||
| Yeah, well, all right, we'll go with English, at least for the beginning portion of this. | ||
| So the way that you end up here, because I think people are gonna go, whoa, this is a little different than what's going on in Dave's garage usually. | ||
| You came here by way of seeing an interview that I did with my friend, my mentor, and really the guy that I think is the best interviewer of all time, Larry King. | ||
| I thought that would be an interesting way of starting, because that, I think, is how you got interested. | ||
| Yes, I've also been a fan of Larry King for many years and I happened to come across your interview with him on YouTube and I was very impressed not only by you as an interviewer because you have that openness that many interviewers lack and that of course Larry King also has and I was very impressed by some of the things that Larry actually said about how he conducts the interviews. | ||
| He always comes from a place of curiosity from a place of not knowing, from a place of wanting to find out the interviewee's perspective. | ||
| And most interviewers, of course, they have a mental position that they seek to protect or they are trying to prevail with their mental positions. | ||
| They're not really interested in what the interviewee has to say. | ||
| So, after seeing that interview, oh, I believe during the interview with Larry King, I actually mentioned he interviewed me a few weeks after I watched that interview, and that was another coincidence. | ||
| And when Larry King interviewed me, I mentioned having seen your interview with him and then our makeup artist connected us because she works for Larry as well as for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And here we are, and here we are. | ||
| All right, well, I guess a good way to start for the few people watching that don't know you, can you just tell me a little bit about your background? | ||
| And until you were 29 years old, spirituality actually wasn't your thing. | ||
| People are so associative of that with you. | ||
| But can you just tell a little bit about growing up? | ||
| Yes, I grew up in Germany up to the age of 15. | ||
| At 15, I left school. | ||
| I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I refused to go to school. | ||
| My parents had gotten a divorce, my dad had moved to Spain, and my mom didn't know what to do with me. | ||
| I was just hanging around at home, didn't want to go to school anymore, so I was sent to live with my dad in Spain, where I lived for four years, up to the age of 19, without going to school. | ||
| My dad was always a very unconventional person. | ||
| And he asked me, do you want to go to school? | ||
| I said, no. | ||
| And he said, well, then don't. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So what were you doing? | ||
| I pursued my own interests. | ||
| I read some, started reading the literature, of course, learning Spanish, learning English. | ||
| I loved languages. | ||
| I loved reading. | ||
| I loved literature. | ||
| At 16, I started working part-time as a translator of restaurant menus. | ||
| And then I became a tour guide. | ||
| When I was 17, I became a tour guide for taking people around from cruise ships around the Swedish town where we lived. | ||
| And then at 19, I moved to England to work. | ||
| In England, I immediately felt at home. | ||
| I had to feel some deep connection with England. | ||
| I worked in England for four years, full-time, and became more interested in intellectual things, so I took all the necessary exams that were required to get into university. | ||
| At the time they were called O-Levels and A-Levels and so on, so I took those exams. | ||
| And finally I got a scholarship to get into London University, where I studied modern languages and literature. | ||
| And so that's the external story. | ||
| On the inside, I experienced increasingly periods of terrible anxiety and depression, even while I was working and while I was a student. | ||
| Can you describe what that was to you at the time? | ||
| An inability to stop my mind. | ||
| My mind was continuously racing along and creating scenarios of where I failed, where I lost even the little that I had. | ||
| It went a lot into the past too, where I felt ashamed about things that happened in the past. | ||
| But not only that, there was a deeper existential fear and existential anguish that's hard to describe. | ||
| It is a kind of alienation from the world. | ||
| Alienation is probably the best word where everything that you come into contact with feels strange and alien, you're disconnected from everything and everybody. | ||
| And that is something that I believe many people these days suffer from. | ||
| Although it has also existed, it has happened to isolated individuals in the past. | ||
| If you want to read about that state, I recommend in the Old Testament, there is the book of Ecclesiastes, which starts with the famous phrase, As in the old translation, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. | ||
| But what it really means, if you used a modern term, I would translate it as everything is so effing pointless. | ||
| What's the point of it all? | ||
| To be deeply affected by the seeming meaninglessness of life around you. | ||
| So I remember when I went into a department store in London, or walked along the streets, it seemed so absurd that people were buying all these things and then going out with their shopping bags full of stuff. | ||
| Everything seemed so absurd and meaningless, almost producing a kind of nausea. | ||
| And that nausea is actually a novel by Jean-Paul Sartre where he describes that state. | ||
| So that's exactly how it is. | ||
| It is described in various places in world literature too. | ||
| For example, in Anna Karenina, at the end of the book, Just Before She Commits Suicide, the world, Tolstoy describes how she sees the world just before she commits suicide and everything is just, every human being she sees is despicable and dreadful and total disconnection from the world around her. | ||
| So that is the existential anguish that I also experienced quite frequently. | ||
| Did you have a sort of rock bottom moment with that? | ||
| Was there a specific moment that then started your turnaround? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So I would often wake up in the middle of the night in a state of panic or fear and almost feeling breathless. | ||
| And one night I woke up again around three in the morning and my mind was racing along And then a strange thought came into my mind that said, I can't live with myself any longer. | ||
| I can't live with myself any longer. | ||
| And after thinking that thought, there was a kind of, this little shift occurred. | ||
| I was standing back from that thought, so to speak. | ||
| And I thought, what a strange thought to think I can't live with myself. | ||
| Am I one or am I two? | ||
| Who is that self that I cannot live with and who am I? | ||
| So a kind of inner separation occurred and I felt like disappearing into a kind of void. | ||
| And the next morning I woke up and I felt incredibly peaceful for some reason. | ||
| I didn't understand why. | ||
| It took me several years to understand why from that point onward there was always, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background, a sense of inner peace, no matter what my outer | ||
| circumstances were. | ||
| But now I can actually explain what happened that night. | ||
| There was a disidentification in my consciousness from the stream of compulsive and incessant thinking | ||
| that most people have absolutely no control over. | ||
| People say, I think, but that is usually not the case because thinking happens to them. | ||
| They have no control over it. | ||
| So it is actually wrong to say, I think. | ||
| It would be the same as you were saying, I'm beating my heart. | ||
| You're not beating heart. | ||
| It's done for you. | ||
| It happens to you. | ||
| So there was this, what I now call the voice in the head, that I was completely identified with. | ||
| So I was completely identified with the stream of thinking, which is quite normal. | ||
| Many people are. | ||
| And a lot of that stream of thinking was of a negative nature. | ||
| So, I did not experience the reality around me, except through the veil of negative self-talk. | ||
| The veil, the mental veil, of negative labeling and interpretations. | ||
| And I, my whole, what I consider to be my life, I hadn't realized until I disidentified, What I took to be my life was a narrative in my mind. | ||
| And it consisted of certain things from the past that I identified with, things that had happened to me. | ||
| It was a bundle of thoughts that recurred continuously that gave me my sense of self. | ||
| And it was an unhappy sense of self. | ||
| It was a narrative-based sense of self. | ||
| And that night, I stood back from this narrative, which is fueled by continuous thinking, I stood back and I realized for the first time a dimension of consciousness within myself that was deeper, one could also say higher, depends how you want to look at it, deeper than thinking. | ||
| Now, this dimension of consciousness that's deeper than thinking, I now call it awareness, or I sometimes call it presence. | ||
| And that exists in every human being, but most humans are not aware of it at all. | ||
| They don't know that there is a deeper dimension of consciousness in them. | ||
| And that dimension transcends thinking. | ||
| You experience it when the mind becomes still for a moment. | ||
| This is what people want to achieve, for example, when they meditate. | ||
| It can also happen to you when you're engaged in a dangerous activity like mountain climbing, that you cannot be involved in thinking. | ||
| Conceptual thinking stops, but you do not lose consciousness. | ||
| So the important thing is there is a state of consciousness possible in humans where you are fully conscious without the activity of conceptual thinking. | ||
| That's also the essence, for example, of Zen, and I would suggest that it's actually the essence of all spirituality, is to find that state of consciousness in yourself, where you can be alert and aware, but there's no conceptualization in your mind. | ||
| It doesn't mean it stays like that for a long time. | ||
| You then go back into thinking. | ||
| But if you're able to access that dimension in yourself, You are no longer possessed by your thinking mind. | ||
| You are no longer used by your thinking mind. | ||
| You are actually able to use your mind instead of being used by your mind. | ||
| As long as you're used by your mind, all your mental activity is a reflection of the conditioning that has happened to you. | ||
| So you take on the conditioning from a personal level, school, parental background, and so in that conditions the way that you think, then you have the collective conditioning around you. | ||
| You take on the conditioning of the culture that you inhabit that's around you. | ||
| If you watch the media every day, then you take on those viewpoints, and you think they are your thoughts. | ||
| They are not your thoughts. | ||
| You take these thoughts on from the outside, and they become Part of your identity. | ||
| So, identity is a key word because everybody is extremely interested in finding their identity. | ||
| One could say that after meeting the needs of food and shelter, almost immediately after that comes the search for an identity. | ||
| Which already starts with a child, when the child has a toy that feels it belongs to me, it's my toy, somebody takes it away, there's great suffering in the child, it cries, because the child began to identify with something and called it mine, and that's only the beginning, of course. | ||
| So, please, ask your next question. | ||
| Well, there's so many things there that I want to jump into. | ||
| Well, I guess first we are gonna get to some of the techniques that you use and that many other people use to attain this sort of level of peace and separation from that sort of endless stream. | ||
| But do you think that most people, whether they're conscious of it or not, are just all day long just sort of spinning like a top out of control where they bounce in and out of this at all times? | ||
| So you might do all sorts of things during the day that are distractions and you can get upset about politics | ||
| or do drugs or waste time with this or that. | ||
| But then we all have that voice in us that sort of knows more of the right way to do things | ||
| or more of a peaceful way to do things, but we don't have any way to really, | ||
| I don't know, is control the right word? | ||
| I don't know if control is the right word, but we don't have any way to really ascertain what's really happening. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Unless you're completely neurotic or even clinically insane, you probably have some access, I'm not talking to you in standard terms. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's okay. | |
| You can diagnose me at the end. | ||
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unidentified
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Not a big deal. | |
| If you're not continuously in a state of confusion or anxiety or depression, if you're not, if you occasionally you feel okay, you feel occasionally happy, you probably have some access to that dimension in yourself without knowing it, without recognizing it. | ||
| So there are actually, we could describe this as moments in your daily life Brief moments when you're actually not thinking, but they tend to be for most people very brief, but they're very significant. | ||
| These are moments perhaps you are looking at something, you might be looking at a tree or flower or the sky, and for a moment there's three seconds when you take this in completely. | ||
| Often it's something natural that you're looking at, and you're looking at the sky, and perhaps for the first three or four seconds you're looking at it, you feel a sense of inner expansion, almost like coming to a rest, and then perhaps after four, five, six seconds, the mind comes in and interprets what you have just seen. | ||
| I also find that people enter that state without knowing it when they relate to pets or to animals. | ||
| When you meet a dog, you look into the eyes of the dog. | ||
| Now, the dog is a conscious being, but the dog has no conceptual thinking. | ||
| So when you look into the eyes of the dog, you instinctively realize that the dog is not judging you in any way, because the dog had no concepts by which to judge you. | ||
| So you feel kind of, when you look into the eyes of the dog, you feel a moment of Liberation from your conceptual self, because there you have a being who has no conceptual self. | ||
| You're able to feel, so to speak, the beingness, the being of the dark, and in that moment you're not thinking. | ||
| A few seconds of inner spaciousness and then it feels good to be with this animal. | ||
| I call dogs guardians of being. | ||
| Another one is to look into the eyes of a one-year-old baby. | ||
| When this baby is looking back at you, and this baby has not yet arrived at conceptualization, but there is obviously a luminous consciousness there, and the eyes of the baby can be just amazing when the baby looks at you like this, and you feel, wow! | ||
| This touches you deeply. | ||
| In that moment, you are free of conceptual thinking, because the baby's not thinking conceptually, and you're connecting with this beautiful being at a deeper level. | ||
| So there are moments when you are naturally free of this stream of thinking, and those are the most worthwhile moments in your life, ultimately. | ||
| It could happen also when you're out in nature, you're hiking or you're doing some physical activity, and you're not thinking very much, you're taking in all the world that surrounds you, the sensory perception, you're taking everything in. | ||
| You're completely present whether you're in the forest or on a mountain or on the beach. | ||
| You're completely present and suddenly you feel so peaceful. | ||
| Why do you feel so peaceful? | ||
| Do you feel so peaceful because you are out in nature? | ||
| Well, indirectly, yes. | ||
| But the real reason why you feel so peaceful is that in that moment you are conscious and consciously perceiving but not thinking. | ||
| Do you think one way to describe it in sort of simplistic terms would be that when you're doing sort of what you're supposed to be doing that you can lock into that kind of thinking? | ||
| Because I can give you two quick examples from myself. | ||
| I've had a few moments in the hundreds of interviews that I've done where there's something where I can lock eyes with someone and we are so right here doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing. | ||
| That actually some of the background almost gets a little bit blurry. | ||
| I can feel, I mean, I can feel a little bit of it right now, actually. | ||
| And you can't hold it. | ||
| It comes and goes and all those things. | ||
| So I've had it in this very room. | ||
| And then the other time that I think I've had it was when I was doing standup and there was one particular night where I was killing. | ||
| I mean, I had the room in my hand. | ||
| And I remember seeing myself from behind myself. | ||
| I could actually see the back of myself. | ||
| And I don't even remember what I was saying, but it almost was like slow motion. | ||
| It was like, this is what I was supposed to be doing. | ||
| Is that a good way to phrase it? | ||
| Yes, that can happen when you're engaged in an activity and suddenly you're guided by an intelligence that is greater than the collected information that you have in | ||
| your mind. Now that intelligence, that is, I call it the unconditioned consciousness, whereas | ||
| the mind is the conditioned consciousness, that intelligence can use your mind and then your mind | ||
| becomes a creative tool. | ||
| So and then you can be spontaneous in, for example, in your presentation when you're on stage | ||
| and you will come up with things that you could never have thought of. | ||
| If they-- | ||
| They come because you're connected with a deeper level of consciousness within yourself, and that ultimately is the way to live. | ||
| As much as nobody is connected 100% of the time with that, But to be connected with that when you're engaged in whatever your main activity is, that's an act of grace if you're able to do that. | ||
| And then you are empowered. | ||
| Whatever you do is empowered by something much greater than yourself. | ||
| And what is that? | ||
| It is, I say, you have access to What I call, it sounds perhaps a little bit mystical, universal intelligence, of which the human mind is only one expression. | ||
| There are countless expressions of universal intelligence. | ||
| And all the ancient spiritual teachings, they actually point That way, if you don't mind, if I may interpret something that Jesus said, which I believe is exactly the same thing. | ||
| 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... So people think of it as apologize or something like that, but that's actually not what it is. | ||
| Yes, or beat yourself up, I'm such a miserable sinner. | ||
| 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 reverse, a complete turnaround, in other words, a shift in consciousness. | ||
| Now, 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 re-translate 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, 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 in my translation is spaciousness, inner spaciousness, which is the uncluttered mind, consciousness without conceptual, without thought, inner alert stillness. | ||
| The dimension of spaciousness. | ||
| Find that dimension. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And that's the essence of Jesus' teaching, to find that. | ||
| When you find that, then when you relate to other human beings, you can sense the same dimension in the other human, although they have a personality, which is a conditioned self, But underneath, so to speak, the personality, there is a deeper being, and that deeper being is their unconditioned consciousness. | ||
| But consciousness is not a personal thing. | ||
| So 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 is in me, this consciousness 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 connected, that you share the one consciousness, when you recognize that in the other, then you have suddenly An outflow of benevolence and goodwill and love, not the ego love, but true love, which in the New Testament is called 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 the teaching of Jesus. | ||
| So 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, in 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 to the German word. | ||
| It has mensch means both man or woman. | ||
| For a long time I regretted that the English language doesn't have a word for human. | ||
| You have to say human being. | ||
| But now I'm happy that I have to say human being because that describes exactly the two dimensions. | ||
| The human is a conditioned self. | ||
| It's a personality. | ||
| Your historical person, which comes from the past, based on past. | ||
| Who you are as a person 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. | ||
| No matter how successful you are in this world, If you have never had even a glimpse of self-transcendence, 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, 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 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, too. | ||
| And we need to honor our identity as a person because, no doubtedly, that exists. | ||
| And whatever it is that makes up your identity, whether it's mostly 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. | ||
| Perhaps the most important dictum in ancient Greek philosophy, which was carved on the Walls 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 a personality, the form, and you have, as I call it, an essence identity. | ||
| And so to know yourself as this essence is called in Indian Some Indian spiritual philosophy is called self-realization. | ||
| So you know, and then the practice becomes in daily life to as much as possible live from that dimension. | ||
| For example, now there are countless examples one could give. | ||
| Very simple things, like I recommend, for example, Whenever you are waiting for something at the elevator, or you're in the elevator, or you're waiting for a phone call, | ||
| Or you're waiting in line somewhere at the airport. | ||
| You're waiting. | ||
| There's quite a bit of time we spend waiting. | ||
| Traffic lights. | ||
| You're waiting. | ||
| Now, these days, mostly people get out their phone when they're waiting, because this means there's a... Continuously, your mind is being cluttered. | ||
| More and more, I call it clutter. | ||
| Clutter is useless information. | ||
| Often, they get out their phone. | ||
| They don't know why. | ||
| They get out their phone because somebody next to them is getting out their phone. | ||
| And then they start switching around. | ||
| There would be a moment whenever you're waiting, an opportunity in that moment to declutter your mind and create a little bit of inner spaciousness, the kingdom of heaven, the dimension of spaciousness. | ||
| For example, this is a very ancient and very simple method. | ||
| By becoming aware that you are breathing, you're becoming, I call it, it's a mini-meditation, one conscious breath, which is the in-breath, and you follow the breath with your attention. | ||
| You feel it, the air moving into the body. | ||
| You might even feel it even into your abdomen, the energy. | ||
| And then you breathe out. | ||
| And what does that do? | ||
| Why is it so important? | ||
| When you're aware of your breathing, you take attention away from thinking. | ||
| You cannot be completely aware of your breathing and think at the same time. | ||
| You can either think or be aware of your breathing. | ||
| So that's a quick way of having a little bit of spaciousness in your life. | ||
| One conscious breath, maybe two conscious breaths. | ||
| Everybody has time for one or two conscious breaths from time to time during the day. | ||
| Nobody is so busy that they cannot take six, seven, or eight seconds. | ||
| The mind might tell you, no, I have too much to do. | ||
| It's a lie. | ||
| Don't believe every thought that comes into your head. | ||
| And then you create spaciousness. | ||
| The more spaciousness you create, the more effective your thinking will be when you start thinking again. | ||
| Because then, thinking can link into this creative intelligence that is the unconditioned intelligence in you, and then it can be inspired by that. | ||
| I would suggest every creative person who create something really new, have some access to that | ||
| dimension in the area of their creative endeavor. Probably not in the rest of their lives. | ||
| They may be as crazy as everybody else in the rest of their lives. But when they engage in | ||
| their act of creation, they have access to that dimension. | ||
| Once you touch this power within you, which is not egoic power, it's not power over somebody else, it's primordial, the power of life itself, when you can sense that within yourself, that becomes the basis for your sense of who you are, and no longer the story in your mind. | ||
| And that's the shift, so you become free of having to completely identify with your past, deriving a consensus who you are from your historical past, which is, most people's past is just a very mixed bag, and there's a lot of it that you may not like. | ||
| Instead of that, your sense of who you are comes from a deeper place and that resolves all questions of what people are concerned with, self-esteem, self-confidence. | ||
| People go to therapists to build up their self-esteem because it's not kind of But once you touch that level of consciousness within yourself, self-esteem comes from there, but it's not comparative anymore. | ||
| Then you can sense the power that dwells within you, and you don't need to compare yourself to somebody else and say, I'm powerful because I have more than this person. | ||
| You know, in essence, every human has that, but most people don't know it. | ||
| But it's there as a seed, one could say, in every human being. | ||
| It's so wonderful, this realization. | ||
| Where does past guilt, which I think you're sort of referencing here, fit into this? | ||
| Because we mentioned right before we started that I've been on tour with Jordan Peterson, and during the Q&As, I see so many people that will say to him, you know, I just read your book, and I'm applying the 12 rules for life, and my life is better, my relationship's better, I'm not doing drugs, whatever it may be. | ||
| "I've mended relationships," et cetera, et cetera, but they have trouble getting over some sort of past guilt. | ||
| And I think what you're describing here is the first step in getting away from that, | ||
| but I think a lot of people think it's something that you can do like this, but it's not. | ||
| No, you need to recognize where it comes from, how it arises in you. | ||
| Of course, guilt is related to grievance. | ||
| Well, when it refers to another person, it's a grievance, you have a resentment or a grievance towards another person. | ||
| When it refers to yourself, then it's called guilt. | ||
| But it always refers to something that was, that either you did to somebody that you now recognize as bad in some way, not ethical. | ||
| You did something, perhaps when you were younger, perhaps you brought up your children in a way that you now recognize as dysfunctional in some ways, or you injured somebody, or you inflicted suffering on somebody, whether it's emotional suffering, mental suffering, even physical suffering. | ||
| In extreme cases you might even have killed somebody in very extreme cases and that brings about guilt. | ||
| Now guilt is something that you did that you now recognize as bad. | ||
| This becomes a thought form in your head and becomes incorporated into your sense of self. | ||
| What you don't realize is You did something because your consciousness, your level of consciousness at that time manifested that kind of behavior. | ||
| No human being can manifest behavior that's beyond their level of consciousness. | ||
| So if you inflicted harm on somebody, The ego tends to then make it into an identity for yourself. | ||
| And that brings about guilt when you see that this is your essential self is guilty. | ||
| That can be a huge ego boost. | ||
| It can also be a huge ego boost to declare somebody else is guilty and somebody who did something to me. | ||
| So people carry a grievance or resentment sometimes for many, many years. | ||
| And then again, what they are doing is They're transforming somebody's, I call it unconscious behavior. | ||
| When you inflict suffering on another human being, except of course self-defense or whatever, but you inflict suffering on any life form or a human being, you do it, it's unconscious. | ||
| As Jesus is supposed to have said on the cross, forgive them for they know not what they do. | ||
| Translated into modern terminology is they are unconscious. | ||
| They know not what they do. | ||
| So people do all kinds of things, sometimes in states after they've taken drugs, they become even more unconscious, or they've consumed alcohol, that makes you more unconscious, even more unconscious than normal unconsciousness. | ||
| By unconscious, by the way, I perhaps need to explain what I mean by unconscious, which is in spiritual terms, In conventional usage, unconscious means obviously you are of lost consciousness. | ||
| But in spiritual terms, unconscious means you are at the mercy of the conditioning of your mind and your emotions. | ||
| The ways in which your emotions have been conditioned, you are being run by that conditioning. | ||
| There's no way that this human being has any awareness of their conditioning. | ||
| There's no awareness whatsoever. | ||
| And a human being who has zero awareness Perhaps not throughout their lives. | ||
| In moments when they are very unconscious, they get triggered by something. | ||
| As I said, they take drugs, whatever. | ||
| Zero awareness. | ||
| And then they do what they do. | ||
| Later you look back on that and then you erroneously incorporate That time of your life when you weren't even there. | ||
| You were run by an automatic program in your mind and in your emotional field. | ||
| You weren't even there. | ||
| But the ego will transform it into an identity and says, I did, this is now part of who I am. | ||
| Or it will do to somebody else. | ||
| 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. | ||
| We got these intense rages, would suddenly come several times a week. | ||
| So I lived in a constant state of background anxiety. | ||
| When is this bomb going to explode again next? | ||
| And then for a long time, in my twenties, I had a resentment towards him until I went to 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 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. | ||
| Now a question may arise, This is an interesting point. | ||
| Now, does that mean people are not really responsible for what they do? | ||
| So that's an interesting question. | ||
| In ultimate terms, it is true they are not responsible for what they do, but they will have to suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness. | ||
| Because we humans are meant to become more conscious here. | ||
| And one of the ways, or even perhaps the main way in which a very unconscious human evolves eventually, or potentially, is by suffering the consequences of their unconsciousness. | ||
| And sometimes the consequences might be they have to go to prison. | ||
| Even if you meet a prisoner, it's important, if they did something in the past, let's say they killed somebody in the past, of course they have to suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness. | ||
| But when you meet a human being like that, you may be able to sense that there's more to this human being than this unconscious person. | ||
| How does that play into your perspective on free will then? | ||
| 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 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, why, you're no good enough, aren't you? | ||
| And then the other part of yourself is, well, I'm doing my best, I'm just, I can't, I can't do it, 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. | ||
| At 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 surrender it. | ||
| Or you breathe it out. You don't need it. | ||
| An emotion, sometimes people are in the grip of strong emotions, | ||
| but if there's a little bit of awareness there, let's say it's anger, 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 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 one or two or three 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. | ||
| It's... What do you make of that life, actually? | ||
| So if there's someone that exists in that state all the time, but then becomes a world-changing scientist or mathematician or athlete or whatever it takes, they have to stay in that, whether it's consciously or not, they have to stay in that mode of thinking. | ||
| What do you make of that life that maybe doesn't How do you lock in to hearing the inner voice? | ||
| Well, it can be an extremely unbalanced life, no matter how intelligent they are. | ||
| There are some people who are very creative in one area, but the rest of their life is completely unbalanced. | ||
| And then some people are almost destroyed by the lack of balance in their lives, like famous people, some famous pop artists who were quite creative in the way, | ||
| Michael Jackson for example, as a person he's just, he's passed away now, but I remember | ||
| seeing him in an interview He's got much to say and he's timid. | ||
| But the moment he moves, he makes a dance movement. | ||
| Power flows through him. | ||
| And I saw that. | ||
| The important thing is that this creative intelligence needs to come into the rest of | ||
| Your life needs to become a work of art, a creative work of art, not just a little area in your life. | ||
| So what the world needs is actually not more intelligence. | ||
| It doesn't need more knowledge. | ||
| I mean, we're just drowning in facts and information. | ||
| We don't need more of that. | ||
| To use an old-fashioned word, what the world needs is wisdom. | ||
| Wisdom is inseparable from awareness. | ||
| It arises out of awareness. | ||
| Without wisdom, you're torn, you may be identified with the polarities of life, perhaps worth mentioning here, You know the ancient yin and yang, Chinese way of looking at the world. | ||
| The yin is the feminine principle and the yang is the masculine principle. | ||
| So the polarities are everywhere in life. | ||
| Western mind is a very strange way of looking at things. | ||
| But the Chinese philosophy, ancient Chinese philosophy says there's a play of, the world is a manifestation of the play between yin and yang, the feminine and masculine principles. | ||
| You may remember the symbol of yin and yang, the birth. | ||
| And here, too, you can be in the grip of a particular energy movement, without awareness you can get into the grip of yang and then you would become quite destructive if you go to an extreme. | ||
| A country can be in the grip of yang energy like Germany was, Russia, China, any country where there's dictatorship is in an extreme grip of Yang. | ||
| Traditionally, society, at least in the West, has been dominated by the Yang energy. | ||
| With occasional interludes of yin in between, but relatively insignificant. | ||
| For example, the Romantic movement in the 19th century in art and literature was some yin coming in, but not for too long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Would you put the Enlightenment as a yin state of being? | |
| Enlightenment, there was a bit of yin coming in, yes. | ||
| But the first half of the 20th century was an extreme manifestation of Yang, the world wars, the genocide in Germany, in Russia, in China, Cambodia and other places. | ||
| Absurd unconsciousness of Yang. | ||
| Then the world, the Western world especially, experienced as a reaction to the extreme Yang an influx of yin. | ||
| It started in the 60s actually. | ||
| A very strong influx of Yen and with that came The women's movement and all those things, more empathy towards other human beings came in. | ||
| Also an openness towards spirituality. | ||
| Instead of the rigid patterns of institutionalized religion, there was an openness towards an influx also of Eastern spirituality coming into the West. | ||
| There was an empathy. | ||
| This is where the Empathy with disadvantaged humans came from an empathy to the suffering of people who are physically disabled, mentally disabled, or the so-called marginalized, all those things. | ||
| This is a wonderful thing. | ||
| Humans could sense their suffering, so more empathy came up. | ||
| And this was a great thing, and a necessary thing. | ||
| Education changed completely from being dominated by the young energy, discipline and young, and now education became more and more permissive. | ||
| You do your own things. | ||
| It became so permissive that eventually there was no structure anymore at all, and schools became chaotic, and many families became totally chaotic. | ||
| And so the wonderful empathy towards other human beings turned into political correctness. | ||
| Quickly, the world was moving towards an extreme of yin, to counterbalance, but there was no awareness. | ||
| So people first were in the grip of the yang movement and identified with that as a collective, and now a significant portion of Western civilization, not all, but a significant portion of the population, is in the grip of a yin movement, and it's not stopping. | ||
| It's going to an extreme. | ||
| Something that was initially good and necessary, now anything that goes to the extreme becomes destructive. | ||
| Another ancient saying in Greek philosophy is, nothing in excess. | ||
| Nothing in excess. | ||
| So now the collective is in the grip, not all of it, but to a given part, especially the media, universities and so on, are strongly in the grip of yen. | ||
| Germany is an interesting example. | ||
| They like to go to extremes. | ||
| They were an extreme of Yang. | ||
| They became the most aggressive country in Europe. | ||
| And now they're going into an extreme of Yin. | ||
| They are the most compassionate country in Europe, except Sweden. | ||
| They open their borders completely. | ||
| They say, please, we want to help you. | ||
| This consists of two things. | ||
| There is the compassion that arises when yin comes in. | ||
| There is another element that needs to be mentioned. | ||
| Yes, there is also guilt, which plays its part too. | ||
| It's a combination of guilt and yin energy. | ||
| So, yin is symbolized as this This is yin, receptive, open. | ||
| This is yang. | ||
| You can see yang is the masculine, the thrusting principle. | ||
| It's almost a sexual yin. | ||
| Yang. | ||
| So, yang says, let's close the borders. | ||
| Or an extreme form of yang says, let's expand our country and then close the borders. | ||
| Let's attack the neighboring countries and then we'll be even bigger. | ||
| The extreme of yin says, no borders at all. | ||
| It feels so good to be able to say, how can we deny human beings who want a better life? | ||
| How can we deny? | ||
| It feels so wonderful to say that. | ||
| But what's lacking is wisdom. | ||
| Compassion is there, and it's wonderful. | ||
| So you have Yin and yang, what's missing is, instead of two polarities, you need to be a triangle. | ||
| At the apex of the triangle, you need to have awareness. | ||
| If there's enough awareness, then you don't need to go to an extreme of either yin or yang. | ||
| You know, it's so interesting because I wasn't really planning on doing anything sort of political with you, but actually I think in the last few minutes you've given me as good political analysis to sort of where we are. | ||
| So without getting into the nitty-gritty of politics, if your premise is basically right, And this is why I always say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. | ||
| The people that I'm frustrated with right now that you're describing as yin, I don't believe they're evil people. | ||
| There can be bad actors within that, let's say, or people that aren't acting in their conscious, but I don't believe that the bulk of them are. | ||
| But if right now we're caught between this, how does the good, decent person that I think most people are, that can check in and out of their higher self and all of those things, but that want a decent world, How do we help these sides to get to that place? | ||
| Well, first you have to be careful with yourself so that you do not get drawn to either one or the other extreme. | ||
| Because now the reactive mode of going too far into yin would be to go too far into yang. | ||
| And so a society that goes totally into yin would would produce fascism again. That's the danger. So the | ||
| individual needs to be aware that they don't go into reactivity so that you remain aware, so that | ||
| you don't contribute to the polarization in the world. | ||
| So what you contribute, whether it's on the social media or in person, when you speak to somebody or you write something, be careful that you do not confuse also somebody's mental, emotional position, which may be either there or there, with who they are, and then regard them as an enemy. | ||
| The ego field strengthens, the more enemies it can have, the stronger it feels. | ||
| There's always a tendency, the unconscious ego, to make others into enemies. | ||
| So, we need to develop enough awareness to be able to conduct a conversation with another human being without regarding the other who might hold very, very different mental positions as an enemy. | ||
| I was very happy to see recently, happened to see an interview on YouTube with a guy who has come quite a long way. | ||
| Russell Brand has come a long way. | ||
| He's doing great things now. | ||
| Anybody who hasn't seen him for a long time should see him again. | ||
| He met with Candice Owens. | ||
| Oh, I saw it. | ||
| I saw it. | ||
| It's actually pretty incredible. | ||
| They had an interview. | ||
| He's on the left. | ||
| She's on the right. | ||
| They were in many ways Opposing and opposite viewpoints respected each other as human beings without making the other into an enemy. | ||
| If they can do it, why can other people not do it? | ||
| It just requires a little bit of awareness so that you can then I have a conversation, and it's only by having a conversation that you can find somewhere a middle way. | ||
| This is a Buddhist expression. | ||
| Buddhism is called the middle way. | ||
| You find the middle way somewhere. | ||
| If we don't have conversations with others who have different viewpoints, then there will be deterioration and eventually there might even be violence. | ||
| So it's interesting because I know you talk a lot about the collective conscious, which obviously, I mean, look, you happened to see me on YouTube. | ||
| That brought us here. | ||
| Now your message You can get out to tons of other people and all of that stuff, which is absolutely incredible. | ||
| So that's the great part of the internet that I think has fed the collective unconscious. | ||
| But then there's another part of it where we seemingly are just fighting all day long. | ||
| And you mentioned before, we're distracted all day long. | ||
| So if we're standing on a corner, we automatically go to our phone. | ||
| Do you think that level of distraction and technology and our Our adolescence, relative to knowing what is really going on by having the world in your pocket at all times, do you think that is leading us to a sort of strange existential crisis that actually could have never happened before, just because of the speed with which we can communicate and learn and hate and all of those things? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, there's both what is communicated through these devices, but the very fact that there is this device, Many years ago there was a book by Marshall McLuhan that said the medium is the message. | ||
| It was about television. | ||
| But the nature of the device itself, we need to be very careful because what it does is it contributes to the clutter of our minds. | ||
| So potentially it can be a very beneficial thing to connect with humans through these devices. | ||
| But at the moment the dangers that might be destructive are greater I can see what it does to children who from an early age interact with these. | ||
| They're no longer able to have personal relationships. | ||
| Increasing number of children have attention deficit disorder. | ||
| Now what is attention deficit disorder? | ||
| They can't focus on anything for very long anymore. | ||
| What does that do to human consciousness? | ||
| What does it do to a civilization? | ||
| If humans grow up now without the ability to focus on tension for very long, | ||
| because any creative act requires you to be present with something for a period of time | ||
| to give it attention. | ||
| And if humans lose the ability to give attention, then they lose the ability to be creative. | ||
| If they lose the ability to be creative, they lose the ability even to solve their problems, | ||
| because the problems that they have created, it requires wisdom and true creativity | ||
| to solve those problems. | ||
| So all kinds of scenarios are possible. | ||
| The scenario of a breakdown of civilization within two generations is a possibility. | ||
| But these things, if these things, we need to learn how to use these devices. | ||
| In the same way that we have to learn how to use our minds because they are an extension of our minds. | ||
| So, if we become more aware of what our mind is doing, then it might be easier also to handle these devices, because they are an extension, an amplification of the mind. | ||
| And the dysfunction that we see on the Internet, with all this dysfunctional behavior and so on, it's just an externalization and an amplification of the dysfunction of the human ego. | ||
| You can just see it much more clearly now. | ||
| It's all for everybody to see. | ||
| And that might be a good thing to see it, because then we become really aware of it. | ||
| What are we doing to ourselves? | ||
| That's a good question to ask. | ||
| What are we doing to ourselves? | ||
| This is becoming insane. | ||
| And the moment you see that it is insane, then there's some sanity in you. | ||
| Because nobody who knows they're insane is completely insane. | ||
| The really insane people don't know they're insane. | ||
| So if you see the insanity in the way that we collectively communicate, you say, OK, I'm not going to be part of that. | ||
| It's necessary to see it. | ||
| And then your responsibility as an individual is not to feed it, to stay conscious, to stay present, so that your input is conscious and does not Seek to destroy other human beings and demonize other, dehumanize and demonize other human beings. | ||
| So you view that really as the antidote, let's say, to the mob culture that we have. | ||
| Because there is this, you can feel this. | ||
| You know, it's funny, this morning I was scrolling your Twitter feed and your Twitter feed is basically a breath of fresh air. | ||
| It's like, When I was reading it, there's like a breath, and it's pleasant, and there's some of your sayings, and some of the ways that you wanna help people think clearly, and all those things. | ||
| But that's so the reverse of the way most of Twitter is. | ||
| And I'm part of that other world, and sometimes I feed it, and I try not to, but I'm not perfect either. | ||
| But I do see this thing where the mob is sort of moving around on Twitter, and sometimes it comes to get me too. | ||
| And there's an innate human feeling. | ||
| You see something, and it has a lot of attention, and it's shiny, and 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 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 if other people post negative things about you. | ||
| In many, 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 attacks you, not physically. | ||
| It's an analogy. | ||
| It's a parable. | ||
| To turn the other cheek means just to be free of reaction. | ||
| And that very quickly deflates even the other person's ego. | ||
| The ego needs the reaction, it needs the reactivity. | ||
| So that's a powerful thing. | ||
| But 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. | ||
| 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 a game?" | ||
| $2,000 I need. | ||
| I know I still owe you $20,000, but I need some more. | ||
| And then not to make the other into an enemy, says, no, I'm sorry, can't do it anymore. | ||
| It's of high quality. | ||
| No. | ||
| 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. | ||
| What gives you the most amount of joy in your life now? | ||
| The little things in life, the little things, walking around in nature, sometimes sitting quietly in a room, just being. | ||
| I love being. | ||
| Nature. | ||
| I still enjoy traveling, and the greatest joy is teaching, giving talks, because that's my life purpose. | ||
| And so every time I'm engaged in my life purpose, then I'm really in a state of joy and heightened aliveness. | ||
| And that's why I'm still doing it. | ||
| Are you an optimist inherently? | ||
| As far as human destiny is concerned, you mean, or humanity or in general, Yeah, I don't mean it personally, actually. | ||
| I mean it just in the wider world. | ||
| Are you hopeful? | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| Well, I sometimes call it I'm a long-term optimist. | ||
| I always say world-weary optimist. | ||
| Short-term, I don't know. | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| Who knows where humanity is going right now? | ||
| Nobody could predict where it's going. | ||
| The individual can only take responsibility for their own state of consciousness, but that matters very much. | ||
| Because your state of consciousness determines the way in which you experience reality. | ||
| And that has many repercussions. | ||
| You affect many other humans through your state of consciousness. | ||
| So don't underestimate the importance of your state of consciousness in the present moment. | ||
| There's so much more we could do here, but I wanna be respectful of your time, so I'll ask you one more, and then when we end this, I'm gonna beg you to come back. | ||
| But if someone's watching this right now, and is really in what Jordan Peterson would describe as the state of chaos, or the state that you were in in your late 20s before you had your awakening, And they hear you and they say, well, just taking that first breath isn't gonna do it. | ||
| If they're really just out of sorts right now, what would be some way that you think you could help shake them out of it? | ||
| Give them something concrete that would help them click, you know, stop on this thing and fix themselves. | ||
| Or begin the process, let's say. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, the best starting point is the present moment. | ||
| Now, whatever I say, Any advice I give, it's quite possible, if not likely, that their conditioned mind will deny what I say, and it'll say, that's not going to work. | ||
| So don't believe what I say now. | ||
| If your mind says, this is not going to work, don't believe what your mind says. | ||
| Just try what I'm saying now. | ||
| So become more fully conscious of the present moment right now, because that's all there ever is. | ||
| Your entire life is experienced and unfolds in the present moment. | ||
| Most humans don't seem to even realize that because they always live as if some other moment were more important than this one. | ||
| You need to honor this moment. | ||
| It's the basis For the future, how that unfolds, which never comes. | ||
| Because when it comes, it's the now. | ||
| And the past never happened except when you remember it. | ||
| It's over and you remember it now. | ||
| So come into the present moment. | ||
| Be aware of your breathing. | ||
| And another one I recommend anybody, this is actually very powerful. | ||
| It sounds almost too simple, but it's very powerful. | ||
| Feel the aliveness inside your body. | ||
| And if you don't know what I mean, usually I advise people to close their eyes, hold their hand like this and ask themselves, without looking at my hand or moving my hand, how can I know whether my hand is still there? | ||
| That question requires you to direct attention into your hand and then after a few seconds you'll probably feel a little bit of tingling or liveness in your hand. | ||
| That is the beginning of being able to feel what I call the inner body. | ||
| This is the energy field that pervades every cell in the body. | ||
| You can start with the hands, then you feel your legs, your feet, your hands simultaneously, and then you incorporate the totality of your body, and so your attention is moved from your mind, you have taken consciousness into the body. | ||
| So one could say you're now inhabiting your body consciously. | ||
| It's a very lovely feeling, and you'll notice that you're no longer thinking very much. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| And all the problems that you have, to a large extent, were created by dysfunctional thinking and the emotions that accompany dysfunctional thinking. | ||
| Most of the problems reside in your mind. | ||
| So if you are able to become more present, then you access a higher or deeper dimension of consciousness. | ||
| And to become more present, you have to be able to step out of your mind without losing consciousness. | ||
| So the consciousness goes into the body and the body becomes an anchor. | ||
| You can hold it for several minutes at a time. | ||
| It becomes an anchor for being present. | ||
| Become as present as you can. | ||
| Also present of sense perceptions. | ||
| It's very important. | ||
| Sense perceptions can also bring you into the present moment. | ||
| An expression you could use is, come to your senses. | ||
| In both meanings of the word, expression. | ||
| Come to your senses. | ||
| Look around. | ||
| Consciously take everything in without needing to label it mentally. | ||
| And then you're suddenly aware of your surroundings. | ||
| You're aware of your inner energy field. | ||
| You're in the present moment. | ||
| And in the present moment, there's no problem. | ||
| There's not an emergency sometimes. | ||
| Yes, then you have to act. | ||
| But it's not an emergency. | ||
| He is no problem. | ||
| Then your ability to deal with your so-called problems becomes much greater if you're able to access the power of your presence. | ||
| Then, when you choose to deal with your problems, say, okay, now I apply focused thought. | ||
| What can I do? | ||
| Then you return to presence. | ||
| It's always going, thinking, back into... Learn what presence is. | ||
| It's there. | ||
| It's... The kingdom of heaven is at hand. | ||
| It's right here. | ||
| It's right here, don't look for it elsewhere. | ||
| And then you realize a lot of the unhappiness in one's life, the Buddha called it dukkha, suffering. | ||
| He says every human suffers unless they have awakened. | ||
| And a lot of the suffering is not due to your life circumstances, although most people think it is. | ||
| The larger part of your suffering is due to your mental commentary about your life circumstances. | ||
| Your mind is telling you something that creates the unhappiness. | ||
| You can test it out in a simple situation. | ||
| You're in line somewhere, you get irritated, it's taking too long, you're waiting. | ||
| You get very angry and irritated. | ||
| And then experiment, how would I experience this situation without adding any thought to it? | ||
| If I didn't add any thought to this moment, just, and then suddenly, oh, it's actually fine. | ||
| It's not, before you were unhappy, but you were not unhappy because you had to wait, you were unhappy because of the narrative in your mind. | ||
| So there are millions of people who carry very toxic narratives in their mind, and they call it my life. | ||
| It's a terrible burden they carry around. | ||
| It doesn't have to be like that. | ||
| And the essence of all spirituality is to be able to step out of that, realize if only a little bit of self-transcendence, which is inner spaciousness, and then that grows. | ||
| And then you can begin to sense there is a power in you. | ||
| that transcends the person. | ||
| And that is also the place where you can transcend the feelings of happiness and unhappiness, which fluctuate continuously. | ||
| I'm not saying... It's not happiness that you ultimately find. | ||
| Happiness is a little bit superficial. | ||
| Yeah, I made it! | ||
| And the next day you're the opposite. | ||
| It's something that transcends happiness and unhappiness. | ||
| It's a deep sense of rootedness in being, a deep sense of inner peace that really has nothing much to do with your personal circumstances. | ||
| I've had letters from people in prison who have written to me and said, I feel free now because I've read your book and I've practiced it and my life is transformed and now I'm teaching others. | ||
| I have many letters from prisoners. | ||
| So no matter what your life circumstances are, the message is, wake up. | ||
| Wake up out of complete identification with your mind. | ||
| And so that's the ultimate purpose in life, is to awaken. | ||
| This has been an absolute pleasure. | ||
| I think that I, not I think, I know that I had a few of those brief fleeting moments while we were here, and I thank you for that. | ||
| And I think if my audience gets even 1% of that through the internet waves that go out there, I think this will be something that I will always remember. | ||
| I hope we can do this again because we just started here. |
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