Many people think that changing their life is difficult or practically impossible.
People engaged in spiritual development believe that they are capable of it. They know that they themselves create their own reality.
Indeed, everything depends on us ourselves.
All that is necessary for positive changes to occur in life is a strong desire to make it better, and to regularly apply spiritual tools. And, of course, to confirm all of this with concrete actions.
In this article, we will share with you simple practices that Eckhart Tolle recommends in his book “A New Earth”.
They will help you improve your health, get rid of anxiety and bad habits. By applying them in your daily life, you will gain inner harmony, peace, self-confidence, learn to listen to your body, and raise your level of awareness.
9 Practices from Eckhart Tolle That Will Change Your Life
1. Feeling the Inner Body
Most people identify with the body. The body is me. Spiritually awakened people know that they are not the body, but the soul living in the body. But few of them are aware of this constantly, every second.
Often people are dissatisfied with their body. They are unhappy with their weight, the size of their nose, the color of their eyes or skin. Sometimes people reject it entirely, avoiding looking at themselves in the mirror.
It doesn’t matter how your body looks on the outside; behind the external form, it represents a rich and living energy field.
To go beyond the body and understand that you are not the body, you need to enter into it.
This practice allows you to accept and love your body, to establish contact with it. Thanks to this practice, you will learn mindfulness; you will be in the present moment.
2. Feeling Abundance
Many people complain that they are not treated well enough: “I am not respected, I am not paid attention to, I am not praised, thanked, or acknowledged. My opinion doesn’t count.”
And in kind treatment from others, they suspect some hidden motivation and think: “People around me want to manipulate me, they want to use me. Nobody loves me.”
They consider themselves a “needy little self” whose needs are never met. This fundamental misperception of who they are causes a functional disturbance in everything related to their relationships.
They are convinced that they have nothing to give, and that the world or those around them deny them what they need.
If the thought of lack — whether it be money, recognition, or love — has become part of who you think you are, you will always feel a sense of scarcity.
Instead of feeling gratitude for the good that is already in your life, you only see the lack.
In reality, if you think the world is denying you, it means that YOU are denying the world, because deep inside you consider yourself small, with nothing to give.
You don’t need to own anything to feel abundant, although if you constantly feel abundant, things will almost certainly come to you.
Abundance only comes to those who already have it. This seems almost unfair, but it is true. Both abundance and scarcity are inner states that manifest in your reality.
Check if your channel of receiving is balanced.
3. The Practice of “Don’t Answer the Offender”
The ego is always on guard and always ready to defend itself against anything it perceives as an attempt to weaken it.
When someone reproaches or criticizes me, the ego sees it as an attempt to diminish it and immediately tries to restore its sense of self to its previous level, resorting to self-justification, defense, or judgment.
It doesn’t care whether the other person is right or wrong. It is more interested in self-preservation than in truth. A powerful spiritual practice in moments of ego manifestation is to consciously allow it to weaken and not try to restore it.
Of course, this does not mean that you invite others to insult or scold you, or that you become a victim of unconscious people. Sometimes the situation may require you to stand up to someone in very specific terms.
When your words contain no egotistical need to defend yourself, then power stands behind them, not reactive compulsion.
What the ego perceives as weakness is actually the only true strength.
See also: 5 factors that block your power
4. Being aware of yourself as the aware one
A way to discover inner space is to be aware of yourself as the one who is aware. What is the benefit of this practice? You stop the flow of thoughts, look deep within yourself, and come into contact with your higher aspect.
Say or think, “I Am” — and add nothing to it. Be aware of the stillness that follows “I Am.” Feel your presence, your naked, uncovered, unclothed existence.
Neither youth nor old age, neither wealth nor poverty, neither bad nor good, nor any other things have anything to do with it. It is the spatial womb of all creation, of all forms.
This practice by Eckhart Tolle fits perfectly into your morning awakening ritual.
5. How to feel peace and tranquility
This practice will help people who suffer from obsessive thoughts and constant anxiety.
You learn to slow down and calm your mind. By practicing this exercise regularly, you will gradually let go of evaluative “good-bad” judgments, which will expand your consciousness.
You can do it at any convenient time, for example, while sitting in line at the doctor’s office or at some government institution.
Find out the reasons for anxiety in the article How to Cope with Anxiety.
6. Being aware of your breath
Become aware of your breathing. Notice your sensations while breathing. Feel how the air flows in and out of your body. Notice how your chest and abdomen gently expand and then fall with each inhale and exhale.
To create some space where there was previously a continuous stream of thoughts, just one cycle of inhale-exhale is enough. One conscious breath cycle, repeated many times throughout the day, is an excellent way to bring space into your life.
Breathing happens on its own. All you need to do is observe how it happens. But this involves no strain or effort.
Observe the brief pause, that special point of stillness between the exhale and the inhale, just before the next breath begins.
For many people, breathing is unnaturally shallow. The more you become aware of your breath, the more natural depth it gains — it begins to restore itself.
Awareness of your breath pushes you into the present moment — this is the key to all inner transformation. By being aware of your breath, you are fully present.
You will notice that you cannot think and be aware of your breath at the same time. Conscious breathing stops the mind.
See also Heart Breathing + 5 techniques for working with heart energy
7. Breaking Free from Harmful Habits
Long-ingrained compulsive behavior patterns can be called an addiction — a kind of energy field living within you as a pseudo-entity or pseudo-personality, occasionally taking you over completely.
It takes over even your mind, the voice in your head, which then becomes the voice of the addiction.
If you have compulsive behavior patterns, such as smoking, overeating, drinking, watching TV, internet addiction, or anything else, here is what you can do:
Remember that you need to catch every thought aimed at justifying addictive behavior the moment it comes into your head.
Ask yourself: “Who is speaking here?” And you will realize that it is the addiction speaking. As long as you are present as an observer of your mind, the likelihood that it will succeed in deceiving you and making you do what it wants becomes smaller.
8. The Practice of “Lose Yourself to Find”
When you stop giving special importance to who you are at the level of form, then who you are beyond it is revealed more fully. By diminishing, you become greater. To the ego, this will look like you are losing yourself, but in reality, the opposite is happening.
Here are a few ways in which people unconsciously try to emphasize their identification with form. If you are alert enough, you will be able to detect some of these behavioral patterns in yourself as well:
- You demand recognition for your efforts and get angry or upset if you don’t receive it;
- You seek attention by talking about your problems, recounting your medical history, or creating a scene;
- You offer your opinion when no one asked for it and it has no effect on the situation;
- You are more focused on how you appear in another person’s eyes than on that person themselves, meaning you use others to get an egoic reflection or to strengthen your own ego;
- You try to make an impression by showing off your possessions, knowledge, good looks, status, physical strength, and so on;
- You temporarily inflate your ego through angry reactions and outbursts against something or someone;
- You take things personally, get offended, make yourself right and others wrong, expressing futile and useless discontentment mentally or verbally;
- You want to be noticed or to appear important.
If you discover such patterns in yourself, run an experiment. Feel what it is like, and what happens, when you let go of that pattern. Simply drop it and see what occurs.
This is another way of generating consciousness. By ceasing to give special importance to your form-oriented persona, you unleash a tremendous power that flows into the world through you.
9. Awakened Doing
Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose (what you do) with your inner purpose (awakening and remaining in an awakened state).
Through awakened doing, you merge into one with the outer purpose of the Universe. Consciousness flows into the world through you. It flows into your thoughts and fills them with inspiration. It flows into your actions, guiding and inspiring them.
There are three ways in which consciousness can flow into what you do, and thereby come into the world through you: acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.
Each represents a specific frequency of consciousness vibration. If you are not in a state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will see that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.
All of these practices are aimed at knowing your true self — who you really are.
They allow you to uncover all the traps of the ego that we fall into every day, in order to make a choice — to take your life into your own hands, rather than being led by a restless mind.