The Resilient Mind - Overcome Fear by Staying Present (w/ Meditation) - Eckhart Tolle

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Eckhart Tolle, a renowned spiritual teacher, is celebrated globally for his inspiring vision. His bestselling books, including "The Power of Now" and "A New Earth," translated into 52 languages, have introduced millions to the joy of living in the present.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to, Overcome Fear by Staying Present, with Eckhart Tolly. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Wherever you are in your life, you practice every situation, every moment is the two dimensions. And that's the end of fear comes with that. Fear being a normal human condition for most people, sometimes buried under something else.

Fear in its many manifestations, nervousness, tension, anxiety, anger really comes out of fear. Stress really is a form of fear. All many forms of fear, quite normal. Why? That's all you know. That's fear. You don't know that.

Once you know that also, it's the end of fear. Because there nothing can be destroyed. That's why the course in miracle starts, which is all you need to know, the prologue, the first before it all starts. It says this course can be summarized in the following words.

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. herein lies the peace of God. Nothing real can be threatened, and that is here, because nothing unreal ultimately exists in the world of form. The form is ultimately not real in itself. Nothing unreal exists.

Herein, which means knowing that, lies the peace of God. God, of course, is the formless, timeless, eternal unmanifested, that is both within and beyond the world. Some of you, as I mentioned earlier, are able to step out of their mind, and you can practice that through a conscious choice. Be present.

Nothing to think about right now. Just be present. You don't carry your history with you when you're present. Your life situation. I use that word in power of now. Very important. Your life situation, everybody has one. Past.

Future. Relationships, job, health, finances, where you live. what happens to you and all your life situation you have a life you're here with you have a life situation of course you do but you also have

it's not that you have a life you are life itself and when your life situation is all you know about yourself which is another way of putting that's all you know then you miss life now you're very good at dealing

with your life situation but you miss life. You do all the right things but it never really gets you anywhere because you miss life. Life is now and life is not in the doing. Life is in the being.

Now. Step out of thinking into alert stillness if you can and also in other ways not to completely believe in everything. thought that comes into your head. Realize it's a thought. It's a position. It's a judgment. Not completely identified with it. It's a story that you are telling yourself.

It's amazing how many stories people tell themselves in their head. Many are completely distorted. It's not the reality. It's the stories. How you see the reality. The reality usually is much more simple and more benign than the story. One of the early lessons in a course in miracles says you're supposed to look at things around you in the room and say, nothing that I see in this room means anything. This table doesn't mean anything. This glass doesn't mean anything. This hand doesn't mean anything. This floor doesn't mean anything. Now what does that lesson mean? It doesn't mean anything. What it means is

it's attempting to erase the continuous conceptualization of reality like scribblings on a blackboard. Because whatever you think it means is a concept in your mind. And if you deny the continuous and compulsive conceptualization of reality, it's like erroneous.

raising the conditioning of your mind. And coming to the place where the Dalai Lama is, don't know. So this lesson in the course of miracles, all it's teaching is to come to the place of spacious emptiness, alertness, no longer trapped in conceptual thinking. Doesn't mean anything.

And of course, that's another... You're moving into a different dimension. By living in this way, it's just you inhabit, suddenly life opens up. And all the narrowness that the mind had imposed on it dissolves. And life becomes spacious, because you found the space within.

There's suddenly a spaciousness to life, not a threatening place anymore. What's life going to do? Where is my next threat coming from? And again, the same thing, for example, there's an entire spiritual teaching based on denying the reality of your story. And Byron Katie's teachings

is based on the simple fact of denying your story. How do I know, do I really know that this is true? No, I can't really know that. So it gets you to the same place where the Dalai Lama is? Don't know. So it's a wonderful thing. You can enter that not knowing and then, but it's only not knowing from the viewpoint of the conceptual mind.

You're actually connected with a deeper intelligence, unconditioned, and if you really need to know something, it comes. But it comes out of the spaciousness of not knowing. Well, it's a little bit like jumping off a... cliff and then seeing if you can fly to the ego it's a little bit like that the ego says don't go there because the ego has worked it all out it explains the whole it has its philosophy of life it might be very defective limiting philosophy but it has some kind of philosophy of life every person has their story through which they interpret reality and usually it's a it's not a pleasant

work of fiction, but at least you think you know it gives you some illusory foothold. And of course the ego thinks, if I let go of that, I won't know anything anymore, which in a way is true, but not completely true. In a deeper sense, it's only let go of a distortion of reality created by the conditioned mind. which is part of the collective human mind in its present state of evolution. And so the collective mind, of which your mind is part, has created this human-made world, which is full of problems,

and they seem to be, they pop out one after another. When you think one thing is better now, suddenly, oh God, now it's the economy, and then it's that, and then it's that. Another war. Welcome to our live meditation, wherever you are. Whatever the time is, where you are, it's the present moment. There's nothing else ever. We're here to become comfortable with something very precious.

That is both within and without, within you and without you, outside of you. and that is stillness. If you lose touch with that, as many millions of people in our civilization have lost, touch with that inner stillness, if you lose touch with that, no matter what you achieve or attain or do, it's always going to end up in frustration

and some form of unhappiness because the foundation will be missing from your life stillness of course is only a word we use it here as a pointer we could use other words

other pointers to that same reality within you that is usually overlooked, covered up. Everybody has stillness deep inside, no matter how mad their mind may be. The French philosopher Pascal must have

realized this important truth when he said, all of men's misfortunes derive from one single thing and that is their inability to be at ease in a room. Of course that implies stillness, their inability to find that inner place. And so they cannot be at ease in a room, as he put it, which is at ease with themselves.

They haven't touched that sense of inner being beingness or rootedness. That is the foundation of all spirituality. So this is what we are here to realize, not to do, because we're not doing anything. We are not doing a meditation. If you have the idea in your head that we are doing a meditation here, that will detract you from being.

We're not doing anything. We're not even saying, okay, now we have to become still. We don't have to become anything. We just have to be with what is in this moment. And then find that underneath all the stream of thinking that usually gives you your sense of identity, there is something more vital that, however, cannot be defined through things.

It is here, particularly in between the words, you encounter it as the space in between the words, which to the conceptual thinking mind is completely uninteresting and completely unimportant, important, completely meaningless. So to the extent that you are completely trapped in your stream of thinking, our meditation here is meaningless to the conceptual mind. And if you are trapped in thinking, you are the conceptual thinking mind.

You're unaware of any other dimension. So you are trapped on that surface level of who you are. Or you could be aware of the gaps in between the words and just notice that there are gaps in between the words. What does that mean? What happens when you notice, for example, now there's a gap? Nothing is happening in that gap. What is there in that gap? Is there anything in that gap between two words or between two thoughts? No. There's just a space.

And yet, there must be something because there is an awareness that there is just a space. In this gap, there's still an awareness, an awareness that there's a gap. But there's nothing happening in that awareness. It's just a spacious awareness, an awareness of no thing, nothing.

And what happened inside, you when you're aware of the gap, suddenly you've become still. Or you've realized that dimension of stillness that's always there in you. No thought. For a moment you're aware of the gap between two thoughts, or in this case, a brief gap between sentences or words, or even in between words. So in that gap, something arises within you. that before was covered up by thinking or emotions that go with thinking. We could call that stillness, you could call that being, a sense of being or beingness, a deep sense of I amness, I am being of course the same as B,

is the first present singular of the verb to be. the realization that you are, I am, that you are, without any definition of who or what you are. In that space there is an awareness. You are that, essentially. It is the very foundation for everything else. When a thought comes, it can only come because there is an awareness in which the thought appears.

When a sense perception comes, It can only be there because there is an awareness in which the sense perception appears. What you see, what you hear, what you touch, feel, taste, smell. There is an awareness in which the world appears, a light in which it appears, you could say. A consciousness in which it is. A field, a space. The words don't matter. The realization matters. That foundation of who you are is that space.

or that light of consciousness. It has no form. You have no form on that level. Everything else is form. Thought forms, emotional forms and sense perceptions of the physical forms around you. It's all form. Now, to most people, that's all there is. Their life consists of absorption in forms.

Thought forms, sense, perception. emotions, emotional forms. That's their life. They pursue form. What's the next form that it can be more fulfilling than this one? Because this one isn't fulfilling enough. It never is. Never for long. No form can be fulfilling for that long. It cannot serve as a foundation for your life.

It's ephemeral, fleeting, short-lived, impermanent. Comes and goes. But what is it that enables it to be? it to be. You, the entire world, arises where you are. An entire world, an entire universe arises at that focal point. But you are essentially not what arises. You are the space. You are not the form. That's a temporary aspect of who you are. So the most vital thing in your life on this planet it here is the realization of who you are in essence and that essence has no form. It's just spacious consciousness.

And that word is only a pointer. Stillness. Just a sense of being with no particular content. Now does it have to be lost? Let's say you have glimpses of it here or perhaps more than glimpses. connectedness with who you are on the level of the formless, and that you are the formless, the timeless, the timeless, it goes together.

Now, does this have to be confined to brief moments like this, or can that be active and active realization in your daily life? When the world of form makes continuous demands on you, the demands made by the thinking mind. Give me attention, says every thought, so that I can become bigger, and so that I can give rise to lots of little children, which are other thoughts.

Give me attention. I am so important, says every thought, and pulls your consciousness into it, and your consciousness becomes form, the thought form, and more thought. and more thought. And every emotion says, give me attention.

I want to grow. You can observe it even with anger. How the anger takes you over and wants to grow and use your mind, add more thought to it. I matter. Give me attention.

And in the outside world, every event, every situation says it's so important. It may be important relatively, but it's not important in absolute terms because whatever the problem is now won't be the problem in a few years or tomorrow or in a hundred years. Everything changes. The people that lived on the planet a hundred years ago, everybody had their life problems and dilemmas and difficulties and things they had to worry about and think about continuously. even at night where are all their problems now

gone with them the forms have dissolved and everything was so important so important my life but it was only a tiny aspect of what it wasn't truly my life their life

they thought it was but most of them and perhaps very few realised the deep dimension where the problems and the preoccupations and the whatever makes demands upon you on the level of form is secondary is not of absolute importance as Jesus puts it only one thing matters he says to Mary while Martha her sister is preoccupied with lots of things and busy Only one thing matters and you have chosen that one thing. Many parables in Jesus is about the one thing.

He finds the one valuable coin and so it's everything else. The one thing that truly matters. Everything else will be added is an addition. But there's a one thing. But of course the one thing is not a thing. We have to call it thing because words reflect things. things, like the words in themselves things, but that one thing that matters, absolutely, is not a thing, it has no form. It's not subject to decay. It's nothing to do with time.

It's inseparable from who you are. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.