I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins. I'm a clinical psychologist.
And today, I'll be reacting to Eckhart Tolle: Addiction To Thinking.
Eckhart Tolle has had a very profound effect on my
thinking in a lot of ways. I really loved his book
The Power Of Now. And I highly recommend it by the way it's a way that we can
tap into some of the processes that are going on in our own mind.
As a psychologist, my job is to illuminate the obvious.
Which is cool because i get paid to tell people things they already know.
But there's a lot of obvious things that are completely unnoticed.
The processes of our own mind are in that category much of the time.
And I think Eckhart Tolle does a really great job of
calling our attention to some of the processes that are obvious
but unnoticed. And it was very recently that I actually picked up on
some videos where I got to hear him speak about some of these issues. Up
until this point, I had only read his words. So, I've
enjoyed watching some of these videos. The one that we'll be pulling up today
has Eckhart Tolle reacting to some questions that were given him by an
audience member and let's listen in and see what he had
to say. -Now, there's a lot of talk these days
about... Not just talk, actually. It's happening.
Addictions, many people are addicted to all kinds of things.
Substances.
But one of the greatest addictions or rather the greatest addiction never
actually you never read about it in the papers.
Because the people who are addicted to it. Don't know it.
It's the addiction to thinking. -Addiction to thinking.
I hadn't thought about it as an addiction. It's interesting
to think about it in those terms. As a psychologist, I'm
acknowledging and seeing that an addiction is something that we
can't stop doing. Maybe that's a simple way to look at it.
And because we're inside of our own head, we do.n't even notice it
Eckhart Tolle mentioned here that most people don't look at this as an
addiction because they don't even notice that they're doing it. We get
inside of our own head and it's kind of like thoughts are us.
We think that our thoughts represent who we
are. One of the things that I've appreciated
about his philosophies and writings is that he brings to our attention that
thoughts are going to happen and we can observe those thoughts. But we
are not our thoughts. So, it's an interesting thing to take a look at. I've
worked with a lot of my clients on understanding the concept of
metacognition and breaking that down. Cognition is
thinking. Metacognition is a higher level. It's thinking about
thinking. I think Eckart Tolle would even take it to a higher level than that
where we can get to a place where we're not thinking.
Let's hear what else he had to say about this addiction.
-And it's an addiction because it's...
First, it's been a drug. Almost just been around for so long.
And it's a pseudo sense of self. So, it's
a great reluctance on the part of most people to let go of thinking.
-So, he just confirmed what I was saying that there's a pseudo sense of
self. It's not truly you. Your thoughts are not truly you.
But we start to identify with those thoughts and he mentioned here that
there's a great reluctance to let go of it. You know, what occurs to me
as he's saying this is that we don't even see that that's a choice.
And until we see it as a choice, it's not. So,
of course, there's a reluctance to let go of it if we're not even aware of it.
I think that's part of the power of this philosophy to take us
to a higher level where we can think about our thinking
and start to see that it's not us. I think that separation
is going to help with a lot of mental health issues, relationship
issues. This is pretty profound. The main thing about it is presence,
presence and... -Presence. When he says presence,
that's a big deal. I've read enough of his writings to know that there's a lot
of meaning associated with that word. In the English language, present
has at least 3 definitions. It means here
in this place, it means now in this time. And it could also be a gift because you
can give someone a present. I just wanted to comment about that
because to hear Eckhart Tolle say the word present
means something. Pay attention to that. Let's continue.
-Presence is a space of no thought but presence can also be there in the
background even when thinking is happening.
You can still be not completely involved in the thinking.
Thinking loses the ability to create havoc in your life and confuse you.
-All right. I'm enjoying this quite a bit mostly because i'm familiar with this
man and his philosophies. He mentioned that
presence is not thinking. Think about that for a minute.
And he also said that it can be also kind of observing the thinking or being
separated from the thinking a little bit. Which is where it loses its ability to
confuse you or to disrupt your life. This implies that
every problem we have is a problem with thinking.
Interesting, If you go there for just a minute. this is true
based on my clinical experience. I think depression for example is very much
focused in the past. Things that have already happened.
You think about depression, guilt, shame. It's usually about things that
have already happened or at least our interpretation of what those things were.
Anxiety, fear. That's going the other direction
where we get focused on the future what's going to happen.
And really we don't know. Present is between past and future. Present is
now, present is here. I've had this conversation with a lot of
my clients where I ask them "Right now... Right now in this moment, what, if
anything is lacking?' Can you think of anything? Now, you might
think "Well, I don't have enough money." Really? You don't have enough money
right now? Think about it. You don't even need money
right now. "Yeah, but I'll need it in the..."
See? Your mind just went to the future. And that's what creates
the anxiety. This is a powerful concept. When he talks about present, being
present --here and now. That's really powerful.
Because here and now, things are good. You might be worried
about that thing that's going to see that's the future or you might be
concerned about what happened. Well, that's the past. That's not now.
Right now, we're good. Powerful concept.
Think about that. -Not to understand more or to bring some intellectual analysis
to the practice but to practice the state of not thinking which can be
arrived at by various ways as you probably know, if you don't think about
it. Just do it.
-Okay. That's funny. He's talking about
practicing the state of not thinking. This is not easy.
Check it out. Can you do it? Don't think. And you're thinking. Right? I mean, it's
almost impossible to do that. I'm not going to play the whole
video here but I know that a little later on he gets to an exercise.
In fact i'll just share it with you here. And what I was chuckling about by the
way when he said, "Don't think about it, just
do it." Don't think about not thinking
because then you're thinking. Just do it. Why do you do that? There's a couple of
exercises that you can try. One that I got from Eckhart Tolle's book,
the power of now is where you just watch your thinking. So,
instead of thinking, notice what thoughts you're having. And
the question that triggers this... You can try this as an exercise.
"I wonder what thought i'll have next."
And then watch and see what happens. What happened when i just said it?
Let's try it again. I wonder what thought I'll have next.
Isn't that interesting? There's a brief little
pause. Did you notice it? Here's another example. And he shares this later in the
video. Pay attention in your mind to what
happens from now
to now. What happened? Were you thinking?
Probably not. You're waiting to see, "What's Dr. Paul doing?
What is this?" Try it again. From now
to now. Did you notice? You were present. You were listening to me. You were
watching what was happened. The thinking quiets. And it's so
interesting in our mind that's a peaceful quiet
place. And I think as we think about our thinking and maybe
not even think about it. Just stop thinking so much. We can achieve
a state of presence and peace. There's probably a lot more to that that
we could get into. But I thought that was fascinating to
listen to this great philosopher and teacher
share some of his thoughts. Hope you enjoyed it.
You can probably tell from this video that i enjoy philosophy but especially
as philosophy impacts our real life. I don't know if you were even aware of
the resources that are available to you at Live On Purpose Central. There's a
link in the description.
go.liveonpurposecentral.com. That'll take you right there. We've got
discussion groups about topics like this going on on a
regular basis. Come join us at Live On Purpose Central.
I'll see you there.