I've only found a couple of places where Eckhart talks about eating and when I run across the other segment, I'll add it to this one. He is basically saying that it is easy to lose presence, or consciousness, when eating; and so that makes eating a good entry point into the Now. (It seems that the points at which we become more unconscious are also the same places to awake up, and become even more present.)
I did a talk at Toastmaster's called "The Watcher Diet." The idea is to become The Watcher of eating, and the thoughts and emotions, therein. 1. Watch the thoughts, 2. Feel the emotions, 3. Notice the energy shifts that take place in the field of awareness with the interchange of thoughts and emotions. I do this, and even lost some weight - along with doing the Cabbage Soup Diet for about three weeks. Actually, I don't know if The Watcher Diet works so well for losing weight (a future oriented activity, anyway), but it does help with acceptance of the Now, which includes accepting those extra rolls around the middle. Jordan
Eckhart Tolle, Pura Vida Retreat, Jan. 25, 2001 – Tape 8 Side A.
Question: After hearing of your difficulty finding a restaurant that was not noisy, I decided to eat at a table that observed silence during mealtime. Eating took on a new dimension. I actually tasted my food and used the physical sensation as a means of coming into the Now. Much like any other sense, like listening can do.
ET: Of course, that’s true. Any activity can become a vehicle for presence to flow into. And eating is interesting - when you observe people eating - quite a few people become quite unconscious when they start to eat because it’s a primordial activity. It’s a very uh, our ancestors, uh, uh, eating started a long time ago. You often revert back to a primeval activity of <snarl, snarl> and I can often observe people, even people who at other times are relative conscious, the moment they put something in their mouth their level of consciousness goes to a relatively low level. And then when that’s finished it rises again.
Interesting to observe. You can first see it in others, and then with more alertness, perhaps, occasionally in yourselves.
So, particularly like, that that often tends to be unconscious can be a good vehicle for presence. So the very activity that usually would pull you into unconsciousness can then allow presence to flow into.
And that would be the same as becoming aware of your breathing, which is usually unconscious, which is a beautiful vehicle for presence. To couple your alertness with the in and out going breath. The alertness follows the breath – a very ancient meditation. The alertness follows the breath. So there is the, basically you’re reducing the manifested world to just the breath, and bring attention to that. And it subsides, and it contains in microcosmic form, the whole universe is there because it’s the outflow, and the ingoing breath and the outgoing breath. The ingoing is birth, maturation, maturity, and then finally it subsides, and becomes the outgoing. It’s a form, every time you breath out, it’s a form of letting go, and a form of death. The cycle comes to it’s conclusion of life. And there’s a beautiful point at the end of every out breath that is very still, when you haven’t started breathing in yet. So there’s a great beauty in simply bringing presence to your breath. And presence arises through that.
So, bring it to your eating. Breathing is there, of course, all the time, [and] you’re taking in food continuously, on that level. And it’s a half way between voluntary and involuntary functions. You couldn’t stop your breathing completely. You can hold it a little bit. Breathing, eating also. You could stop, but it’s half involuntary. Similarly all kinds of Tantric* practices have to do with bringing presence into sexuality, which otherwise would pull you, because it’s again, like eating, maybe even more primordial than eating, is the pull towards sexuality. Which usually means unconsciousness, something takes over, and you’re bringing presence into that.**
A beautiful meditation. To what? To be alert. Bring the alertness to it. So it’s no longer a desire movement reaching its end. Needing to get to the final orgasm, conclusion.
So, to even - it starts with a simple thing, to have a sexual feeling arises, and simply to watch it. It’s beautiful in itself. It doesn’t have to be come a desire movement. That means you bring presence into it. On all levels everything can become a vehicle but particularly those things that usually would be a pull into unconsciousness. Pain-body, also.
So food. First when you bring presence into eating there’s a self-consciousness sometimes around it. There’s an image of “Okay, I’m eating now.” “I’m chewing.”
That’s not presence yet, it’s the mind telling you what you’re doing. But there maybe some presence coming in a second. Now the mind is telling you, “Okay, I’m chewing, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” [It is the] Beginning perhaps of presence arising, and then suddenly the mind becomes still and the eating is happening. And eating is usually a means to an end, that’s why it’s so unconscious. And it becomes that everything you put into your mouth is sufficient, an end in itself. Eating is then no longer a means to an end. Sex is no longer a means to an end. It is an end. The Now is not reduced to that.
*Tantric – definition: Any of a comparatively recent class of Hindu or Buddhist religious literature written in Sanskrit and concerned with powerful ritual acts of body, speech, and mind.
** Passionate Marriage, David Schnarch, Ph.D., gives the answer to bringing consciousness to sex.
END