Mindfulness Anytime, Anywhere | Eckhart Tolle on The Path To Enlightenment (Part 2)

Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to be slow to be mindful. All that probably helps, but you can be in a rush and still be mindful. It's actually a lover experience of high energy, which means you're still present with every movement and not excessively focused on some future point. And then you just go. It's wonderful. That's contained in the ancient Zen saying, hurry slowly, seems to be a contradiction. Of course, what it means is on the outside, you hurry, but on the inside, you rest in being. Doing, being. You don't get lost in doing, nor do you get lost in being. But if I had to be lost somewhere, I'd rather be lost in being, of course. It varies from person to person, to what degree you're more drawn to what's doing, to what degree you're more drawn to what's being. Almost nobody's right in the middle. I'm more drawn to what's being, as you might have noticed. But I'm able to do, talking is doing, traveling, writing, speaking is doing. But the strange thing is, in my case, all the doing that I do, well, not all, but all the significant doing that I do is concerned with pointing the way to being. Speaking, the writing, traveling. But you may have a business, or you may have some function in this world, and everybody has to find some balance between doing and being, which doesn't mean, the important thing is that you, initially, perhaps, it happens to many people, you have a compartment in your life when you become still and present. Sometimes it's associated with meditation, meditation practice, or it's when you go out in nature, or when you're sitting alone in your room, and then you are able to become still, and that's already a huge gain in consciousness. You're able to become still and present and feel the being dimension of you. And then you go back into the world and you start doing again. And for a while, you easily lose yourself again in the doing, and you're just as lost as everybody else in the doing until you come back to your meditation practice or to your room or into nature, and then you go back into being. But eventually and gradually, the two merge. So when you're doing, you're not totally lost in it. You're not totally dragged along by your mind and by external things that demand, continuously demand your attention. You're able to deal with things, but don't become crazy. And when you're in being, the danger with being, we know what the danger with doing is. You get, the primordial doing is in your mind. Thinking is doing, so that's the place where you really get lost, and then it gets externalized. You get lost in stuff. But the, in being, when you go into being, when you're present, you're above, as I put it, you're above thought. Here's thought. This is where the human dimension, and then there's being. Being is not just above, it also, it envelops it all. But let's, for a moment, let's look at it like this. It's helpful. You rise above thought, and your dog is here, below thought. Doesn't mean the dog is not conscious, but the dog does not do thinking the way you do. The dog does not have an opinion about you or about him or herself. So the dog exists below thought, and when you become present, you rise above thought. And below the dog, there's the tree and the plants. They are very deeply still connected with being. The tree is, there's a consciousness in the tree, but it's impossible for us to conceive of it. You can be sure that it's very slow, and it's a, nobody knows how it is aware. It has no self-awareness, of course. But the tree is even more peaceful than the dog. So the tree vibration, this is why a tree is, now, this has been recognized in ancient, many ancient cultures, and certain trees were considered sacred. So people had a special relationship with trees, because before they became so mind-dominated, they had a little bit more sensitivity towards energy fields, and they could sense something in the tree that they called sacred. They could sense the deep stillness within which the tree exists. Whereas modern humans, those who are completely identified with mind, do not have that deep relationship with the tree, except when you become present, because you look at the tree through your mental concepts. And that's, even the moment you name it, the veil has already come up between you and it, and that veil is the concept, the label that you give it. And then the illusion arises that once you have named something, then the illusion arises that you know what it is. So you've attached a label to something, and you think, now I know what it is, it's a tree. It's an oak tree, what else do you want to know? Or you can go more deeply and attach other labels, so you can cut it into little pieces and put these under a microscope, add more labels. That's the conceptual knowing that we've been talking about. It covers up the other dimension, the deeper knowing, when you can be with a tree and join with the tree in that, become aware of that space of stillness in which the tree exists. And then as I put it in this little book, which if you, that I wrote, if you haven't read it yet, I recommend it, it's a very good book. Stillness Speaks, it's to be recommended for meditative reading. And there's a, I wrote in there, allow nature to teach you stillness. And so that applies to, here we have a flower. Yes, it is a flower, just making sure it's not plastic. It is a flower, and this is also real. And you can contemplate it and become aware that it is, it sounds almost weird to even say this, you become aware that it exists within that deep stillness. And yet there is somehow, behind it, there is an intelligence out of which it has come.