Why trying to love people doesn't work, and what does | Eckhart Tolle

An old man sits in a café in a small town. A stranger asks him what the people here are like. The old man asks what the people were like where the stranger came from. Dreadful, says the stranger, dishonest and full of envy. "It's very much the same here," says the old man. The next day another stranger asks the same question, and says the people back home were kind and helpful. "It's very much the same here." Eckhart Tolle tells the story because the old man is right. Your conditioning decides, to a large extent, how you experience other people. And when you go beyond your conditioning, you can give the greatest gift one human can give another: pure attention. Not labelling, not sorting them out, just looking and listening. Attention is energy, an outflow toward the other, and something comes back. Most parents, he says, rarely give it to their child, because there is always something to do, brush your teeth, get ready, come here. Those things have their place. But a child can feel the difference when someone simply looks at them. In its deeper sense, attention is a form of love. It does not come from you; it comes through you, from the one consciousness, and you become an opening for it. That is why "love your neighbour as yourself" cannot be done by effort. You try, and there is always that guy, and that one. When something is living through you unobstructed, kindness is no longer a thing you do. The talk closes on what the now really is: not what happens, but the space in which it happens, and that space is you. Eckhart goes much further into this in the full session. Join Eckhart Tolle Now to watch. 👇

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Eckhart Tolle is widely recognized as one of the most inspiring and visionary spiritual teachers in the world today. With his international bestsellers, The Power of Now and A New Earth —translated into more than 50 languages—he has introduced millions to the joy and freedom of living life in the present moment. The New York Times has described him as “the most popular spiritual author in the United States,” and in 2011, Watkins Review (now Watkins Mind Body Spirit) named him “the most spiritually influential person in the world.”

Eckhart’s profound yet simple teachings have helped countless people around the globe experience a state of vibrantly alive inner peace in their daily lives. His teachings focus on the significance and power of Presence, the awakened state of consciousness, which transcends ego and discursive thinking. Eckhart sees this awakening as the essential next step in human evolution.