A Realization About Life That Will Set You Free | Eckhart Tolle

Do you have recurring thoughts about yourself, about your life? Have you already come to a conclusion about what, how your life is? Have you reached the conclusion that your life has failed? You have failed in some, in the endeavor of your life? Your life has been a disaster? You've missed out on everything? Is the narrative in your head, what's it telling you about yourself? What is the story of my life? What is it saying? Is it pleasant? Is it unpleasant? Now the question is, what reality does it actually have? Of course, it's connected with your past, your historical past. You remember the past, you remember the things that went okay, you remember the things that didn't go according to expectation. And out of that, a narrative forms, and you call that my life. Now, a great degree of unhappiness in humans that they live with on a daily basis does not arise from the situations they find themselves in. A greater amount of unhappiness arises that is created by an unhappy narrative in their minds, which they call me and my life, and they don't know that. If they could look through that and see that a large amount of unhappiness in my life— and unhappiness could be anger, it could be sadness, it could be resentment, unhappiness can take many forms, even a slight irritation is a small form of unhappiness, And so many people are unhappy with themselves, or they put all the blame on others, which is still part of your narrative, and then you're unhappy with all those people who have messed up your life. I'm not saying that things are done to people that are bad. But I'm talking here about deriving an identity from your historical past or the way in which your mind interprets your historical past. It may not be the actual events because if you ask your sibling about a similar thing 20 years ago, he or she might have a completely different story of the same event. Happens quite often. So me and my life And people are trapped in the conceptual 'my life' and the problematic 'my life,' and they carry around this burden of 'my life.' I hope it's going to work out in the future because I still have years left. I could still achieve happiness. That's the hope. But then the hope has a downside, and that is, what if it gets worse? And so you go from hope to fear. And of course, I can tell you it might get better for a while, and then it will get worse because you're going to die. Die. And the body, either you just die suddenly, or the body gets older and older, and then you try hard to walk anymore. And you get retired, and you don't have an identity anymore that's to do with your social function. And there you sit, and really it's getting worse now. Who am I now? I don't have the job anymore. Nobody tells me who I am. Of course, eventually there's always the form begins to dissolve. I'm not saying that you should not try to improve the conditions of your life, but more importantly is to realize that you do not have a life. Because people say, 'My life.' Now, if you look at the structure of that sentence, 'my life,' there's a duality there. Because if you say 'my life,' that implies that you have it. It's mine. So it implies two, duality. If you say 'my life,' there's you and the life that you have. It belongs to me, it's mine. So this thought, this language creates a duality in your mind. Call it my life. That's interesting. So there's me and I have a life and then the fear comes in. If I have a life, I might lose it. And of course then you visit the cemetery and they say, yes, they all once had a life and they lost it. They lost their life. That's going to happen to me too. Not realizing you are trapped in certain mental formations that create an illusory identity and actually create delusion. You don't have a life. Because there is not a duality. Without life, there's no you, so you can't have it. You are one with life. There isn't you and life. You are life. You can't— you don't have it. Now, if you are it, you can't lose it because you are it. But of course, we'll have to see more deeply what we mean when I say you are life. But let's for a moment stay with that. You are life. You don't have a life. You are life. So you can say it for yourself in your mind. I don't have a life. I am life. This is the end of duality. You realize there's a oneness of you and life. And when I say life, we can use another word: the essence of being alive. What is the essence? Let's go there slowly. What is the essence of who you are? What is the essence of the life that you are? Okay, now, Normal humans, which means unawakened humans, say, well, the essence of my life is my— whatever they identify with in there. It's my possessions, my— what I have, what I know, what I— my body. All those things that I identify with, that's the essence of who I am, is whatever I derive my identity from. It could be the physical body, but, or it could be my car, or my house, or my work, my function in society, or it could be friends that I have, things that I have attained, It could also be— these things are all in the mind also. Because when you identify, let's say, your sense of identity, which is you compare yourself to others all the time. This is what you do when you're in your mind, you compare yourself to others. Let's say your body looks better than other people's body. For a while. This too will pass. But for a while you can get in there and then you become, this is my body. That also is a mental formation. So it's not so much you identify with the body, you identify the thought of my body. That's what you identify. You don't identify with your Ferrari, if you have one. It's the thought of my car which makes you superior to others who only have a little car. Or your body makes you superior to others who have a puny and weak body. So you can display for a few years, you display your body on the beach and feel good about yourself. And after a while, the day comes when you look in the mirror and say, what happened? There's something wrong with the mirror. In the past, the mirrors that people made were so much better than the mirrors now. So for a while you identify with this or that. That is quite normal. And so when you ask, what is the essence of who you are? Most people would tell you, well, I am— this is who I am. This is what my identity is derived from. This, this, this, and this, and this bundle of things is who I am. It's not always positive. Because I was just talking about having a body that looks better than other people's body. You could have a body that looks worse than other people's body. And so that serves too. You could either, either you look for something else that gives you an identity, like actually you're more intelligent than all these stupid beach bums. So you can say, look at these people, but you have so much more knowledge and intelligence, you can look down on them. Or you can be more spiritual. So if you, I can't afford a Ferrari, I'm on my bicycle, and you say, look at this materialistic person in the Ferrari. So you can still, or if that doesn't work, you can see how unfairly treated by life you have been and how much more so much more miserable you are than most people. And you've really been a victim of circumstances. You've been a victim of your birth and of your parents that did a dreadful job with you. Maybe if your parents had been more conscious, things could have worked out. But they weren't. So, but that also gives you a strong conceptual identity. So if you can't have a positive one, The negative ones can be just as strong, if not stronger. You can have a huge victim identity. It's a favorite thing. Sometimes in the collective, certain egoic things become fashionable for a while. Nowadays, the victim identity for certain groups of people are very fashionable. So people can feel, oh yes, we are all being victimized by those people. And of course, there's some truth in it. In some cases, but that doesn't— but to derive an identity is a delusion. To derive a sense of identity from that is a huge delusion. That is not who you are. That's all my life, that's all. So if you are not all those things, So when I ask, who are you? If I ask that question, don't go, let's do this for a moment, don't go into the past. Can you feel or sense who you are without reference to the past in you? You don't even need to remember your name right now, what for? You don't really remember your email address or your phone number— or what happened to you 10 years ago. Don't need to remember that. Can you still get a sense without reference to your personal history? Can you get a sense of beingness or presence? Oh, there's no past in that at all. But what is that? You can't really describe it. All you know is that you are. I am. You can sense the underlying beingness or presence of you. And but to really sense it, what needs to happen is that for a moment, the stream of thinking needs to subside.— and it may be happening for many of you at this very moment— the stream of thinking that is normal for most people, that never stops except when they fall asleep, the stream of thinking for a moment subsides. And when I asked you whether you can sense yourself without reference to your personal history, what I was really talking about What I was really asking was, can you get a sense of your presence without thought? Ah, and there's enormous revelation here. This question, who am I, does not have a real truthful answer on a conceptual level. It's not in thoughts or words. The true answer to 'Who am I?' has no thought in it. It is a sense of presence or beingness. And you can only sense that if, even if it's only a moment, So the stream of thinking subsides, and what happens is you are completely present without your mind saying anything. You can perceive everything. You can still— you can see, you can hear, you're fully there, and your mind is still. Still does not mean that you've gone to sleep. It's the opposite. You're actually more alert in that stillness than you would be if you were identified with this continuous stream of thinking.