A realization about success that takes the pressure off | Eckhart Tolle

As the Buddha said, whatever you do, wherever you go, you will find sooner or later, you will find dukkha. Dukkha is a Sanskrit or Pali term called suffering. Whatever you do, wherever you go, you will find unhappiness. Even your happiness will turn into unhappiness because the thing that makes you happy today makes you unhappy tomorrow, or it loses its capacity to make you happy. A relationship makes you happy, you fall in love, you start living together, you sign a contract, That's— you're definitely serious about it, contract says, and you get the person makes you happy. Honeymoon, yay, yay! 2 years later, 3 years later, the person that made you so happy is a person that makes you extremely unhappy. What happened? That wasn't supposed to happen. So it's the same person suddenly showed its— his or her— well, you then misinterpret it saying he or she showed me his or her true face. I realized that it was all a sham. It was all— and whatever your mind says. No, you encountered Human unconsciousness. And your partner encountered through you human unconsciousness. Perhaps he or she was more unconscious than you, that's possible, but it could also be a misperception. It's very easy to fool oneself. Self-knowledge is very difficult. So happiness, unhappiness, surface level of reality, And unless you go deeper, you cannot find lasting satisfaction. And there's another meaning to the cross that I mentioned earlier, the torture instrument that becomes a symbol for the divine. There's another meaning to it, and that cross shows the 2 dimensions of life: the horizontal dimension, which is the surface reality where the surface I lives, the personality lives in the horizontal dimension, and then you have the intersection, the vertical dimension, present moment. Horizontal dimension, past, future, then the vertical dimension, present opens up the depth. That's the awakening. And your task in life is to live in both dimensions. You become a kind of hybrid, one foot, so to speak, in the horizontal dimension where you as a personality lives, and there you have things to do. As a personality, there are things, there are new things to experience. There are things that you can— skills to acquire. You acquire new skills, learn a new language, learn a craft, this or that, or build up some business, hopefully a conscious business. So you have plans, you have goals, and you're active every day. You have to be. You have to do things. So you operate on the level, on the surface level of the horizontal dimension. You need to take some action. But the question is, are you losing yourself in the horizontal, in the horizontal dimension so that there's only one doing after another? You finish one thing here, then— and you're always grasping for the next thing. And not only the external doing this, also you're tortured by one thought after another. It takes— every thought takes possession of you. And Many humans live with enormous amount of unhappiness caused by the narrative in their minds that they call my life. My life, horrible. Something went deep, really wrong. And how is it going to end? Well, I can tell you how it's going to end. How is it going to end? Am I going to make it? No. You cannot make it on the horizontal. It's there, you need to deal with it. Do not have excessive expectations about the horizontal level of reality. This is— the suffering arises if you have excessive expectations, uh, which means you're expecting some situation or achievement Or person or possession to make you happy. And then it fails to— it does for a little while, and then you need another fix because you— it doesn't fulfill its function for very long. So the search for happiness and fulfillment on the horizontal dimensions Always leads to terrible frustration and suffering because you haven't left the horizontal dimension. But I'm not saying— it doesn't mean you completely— you don't deny the existence of the horizontal dimension. You have to deal with it, and in fact it has a function. All the dissatisfaction that arises, ultimately the unhappiness and the suffering arises when you only only operate on the horizontal dimension, that's the very thing that awakens you to the vertical dimension. So the horizontal dimension has its place. It's good because it makes you suffer, it makes you frustrated, and then, then the vertical dimension suddenly opens up. And that is a liberation liberation from the horizontal dimension. Not that it doesn't exist anymore, it's still there, you still have to deal with it, but there's no longer— one could say there's no longer self-seeking on the horizontal dimension. You deal with it and you can enjoy it But you're not looking for yourself in it. For example, if you have enough money, you can buy something nice. Not— I mean, you wouldn't, you wouldn't become a compulsive shopping addict if you're connected with a vertical dimension. You don't need that, but you can still enjoy the things that arise on the horizontal dimension. You can enjoy a relationship. And actually, it would— the relationship will work much better if you no longer have the expectation that this person should make you happy. And with any situation, you don't have the expectation that any situation or place should make you happy. Because every situation, every place has its shortcomings and exists in the world of polarities. So, and yet when this expectation drops away, you can actually enjoy things because you no longer have excessive demands upon things. And so you— but that can only happen If you're able to bring together the vertical and the horizontal, now that means in practical terms you are continuously or as much more aware. Let's put it in very simple terms. You are aware of the primary importance of the present moment, and that the secondary importance is future or past. And usually when you're doing something, you're working towards a future.