Hvad siger dit stressbarometer og i hvor høj grad er du i stand til at være i nuet? Hvad gør du når du oplever stress i din hverdag?
Dette interview med Eckhart Tolle om stress, sætter fokus på hvordan du får mere bevidsthed ind i de belastende situationer der trigger dit stress mønster. (Af hensyn til nuancer i sproget har jeg undladt at oversætte det.)
Q: Eckhart, why is stress so common? And what are the consequences of
people living stress-based lives?
Eckhart Tolle: The whole world accepts that being stressed is the normal way to live.
In fact, people think you have to be stressed to be successful. They think if
you are not stressed, something is wrong with you.
But any action that arises out of
stress is of low quality, and it contributes to human suffering. You are making
yourself and others suffer.
Stress is a form of suffering. Look
at your body and see what stress does to the body and its functions — what it
does to the heart, the circulation, the immune system, the digestive function,
the liver. Stress is extremely harmful to the body. Even mainstream medicine
now is recognizing how many diseases stress causes.
Stress is a form of suffering, but
it is accepted as normal. And it is normal in our world.
But it is not natural.
Q: When people realize they are stressed, what is the best response?
Eckhart: First, you can be very much aware that when you are stressed, it
always is a sign you have lost the present moment. So, you can choose to
re-enter the present moment.
Even in a moment of stress, you can
say, “OK, can I enjoy the doing itself? Can I enjoy the flow of energy of this
moment?”
And of course you can.
Then the future recedes. It becomes
peripheral. You know it’s there. You need to get there, yes. But you can enjoy
the present moment, and you can be aligned with the doing.
A different state of consciousness,
then, is the foundation for what you do. Presence flows into what you do. Even
though what you do may be the same, there is a fundamental difference: The
energy that flows into what you do, although it may be high energy, is very
peaceful energy. It is not out of alignment with life.
So, that is for people to learn:
You can be effective in this world without stress. It is not necessary to do
things in a state of anxiety or anguish. That is not the way to be aligned with
life.
Q: How do you begin to align yourself?
Eckhart: Work to recognize the primary importance of the present moment. A
good little pointer toward that is to ask yourself, “What is my relationship
with the present moment? How am I relating to it?” These are temporary
questions, because the deepest truth is you and the present moment are one at
the deepest level.
But intermediate questions are,
“What is my relationship to the present moment? Am I treating it only as a
means toward an end, or is the present moment an end in itself? Is the doing an
end in itself? Am I enjoying what I am doing at this moment?”
These are important questions that
can bring you back to realizing the now is all you ever have. There never is
anything else. So, you might as well make the now your friend. Otherwise, you
are out of alignment with life itself.
When you live as a friend of the
now, many changes come into your life. When you are not making the present
moment into a means to an end, you also are not making every human being you
meet — in your business and even at home, in your family — into a means to an
end.
When you always want the next
thing, every human being becomes a means to an end. Even when people deal with
their children: “Have you done this? Come on, do this, you must get this done.”
If you go into some households, their whole lives consist of, “What’s the next
thing we have to do? Come on, let’s go.”
That is not the way to live.
Eckhart Tolle er en af de mest fremtrædne spirituelle lærer, kendt og værdsat for bl.a. sine to bestsellere: "Nuets kraft" og "En ny jord." Tolle blev for alvor kendt da han deltog i Oprah Winfreys talkshow på tv, der blev transmitteret ud til millioner af mennesker over hele verden og dermed har han banet vejen for en helt ny global spirituel vækkelse. Tolles budskab repræsenterer ikke nogen bestemt religion og udelukker heller ikke nogen. Derimod inviterer Tolle os til at gøre op med ego´ets vante forestillinger og overbevisninger for at gå hensides, til en dybere dimension af nærvær i livet og med højnet livskvalitet. Budskabet er enkelt og udgør en nøgle til personlig transformation.
