Accepting Your Unhappiness to Be Happy | Eckhart Tolle

So whatever it is, realize that the primary factor in any situation is your inner state. So there are quite a few people who are joining us from other parts of the planet. I don't know where they are. I think it's over there. Now, all of you here, luckily, have escaped the polar vortex. Especially if you're from places like Chicago, you'll be very grateful to be here. However, if you are in Chicago or similar places, be grateful that you're experiencing one in a lifetime weather phenomenon. But don't forget to dress up warm enough when you go out. Be grateful for whatever your experience of this moment is. And if you cannot be grateful, at least allow it to be, because it already is. You might as well now, if you did this little thing, it sounds very little, and it is very little. Allowing your experience of this moment to be the way it is, just this little thing, would remove. Well, it's hard to put it in percentage terms, say 95% of the suffering from your life. I don't know about the rest. The 5%, we'll get to that sometime. That would already remove a gigantic chunk of unhappiness in whatever form. Unhappiness is the most generic term one could use. The Buddha called it suffering. And so for the next six months, then that obviously is one of the practices not to internally resist your experience of this moment. Now, of course, many times, possibly you forget that, and that's fine. The moment you realize that you forgot it, it's there again. And then you can accept the experience of this moment as the unhappiness that is arising in you because you forgot to accept your experience of this moment. And so you feel this unhappiness arising in you. And you, where does that come from? Oh, I forgot to accept my experience of this moment. And then you accept the unhappiness. And the weird thing with unhappiness is when you completely accept the unhappiness, it cannot survive very long. It doesn't like, it cannot actually coexist with acceptance. So the weird thing then arises that you say something like, okay, I'm unhappy, It's okay, I don't mind being unhappy. And then the unhappiness goes, what's going on? That's not supposed to happen. The unhappiness cannot survive for very long with the acceptance, even the acceptance of unhappiness, not indulging in unhappiness, but the acceptance, not the acceptance of unhappiness. It presupposes that there's an awareness there that knows that you are Unhappy. Now that might sound like something very natural, but it isn't. Because the most unhappy people, and they're still millions and of course they have reasons for being unhappy. Yes. And it's not necessarily the people who you'd think would have the most powerful reasons for being unhappy. It's often those who you would think, well, they, there are many millions, you have it worse than they. But these are more unhappy than those. It's often the case. So the unhappiness is something that when it's recognized as unhappiness and accepted, something happens to it, it begins to dissol. But the really unhappy people are so identified with the unhappiness, which is a combination of certain recurring thoughts in your head. A certain narrative that is not pleasant. Whether it is about my life, whether the narrative says my life, oh, dreadful thing, my life, why did it all go so wrong, so wrong, wrong, and now it's nothing I can do. Or whether the narrative is about somebody else, you know, what he did, what she said and did, and what. And the narrative may be about something that hasn't happened yet and it goes on and on. Or something that happened in the distant past, or not so distant past. So there's a narrative and then there are emotions that are reflection of the narrative. The narrative is thoughts, certain types of thoughts, certain thoughts that have a certain frequency. And then that awakens the emotional frequency because the body thinks. The narrative in your mind is reality. That is the reality that you're experiencing. So the body reacts with an emotion. Simple example. At night you can't sleep because you're extremely worried about what's going to happen to you or somebody close to you or even the world. And it all sounds very critical. There's a crisis in your head, not outside your head. There's a pillow and there's a. A blanket or even something big and fluffy and soft down duvet. And there's no unhappiness there. And if you look around the bedroom also where's the unhappiness? The plant is okay, it's not unhappy. No, it's all happening in here. And then the body, since that is the critical reality that you inhabit, you are. There is a crisis in your life. The body doesn't know the difference between what's actually happening and what's happening in your head. What's happening in your head is taken to be the absolute reality. And then you experience the emotion that goes with that kind of narrative. And so there's no awareness. And when you're trapped in that you don't even really know that you are unhappy because you are the unhappiness. The unhappiness has become your identity. So when you become the unhappiness, you don't even know that you are suffering. Let's use the Buddhist term, suffering. Suffering. When you are in this deep suffering, you don't even know you're suffering because the suffering is a gigantic huge chunk part of your sense of self. You are a suffering entity. And as all therapists know that, once the patient or the client or whatever they call the people that come to them according to their school, they reach a point where there's a possibility of going beyond the deep seated patterns, unconscious patterns, and then there's a huge resistance. Very often because the person is afraid of losing a very important piece of their identity. And sometimes it's the most important part of their identity. If they have little, lived with an unhappy sense of self for years and perhaps even decades, they don't want to let go. And again, they don't know that consciously. They never say, I do not want to let go. If they could say that, then that means there's already some awareness. So lack of awareness, lack of presence, that is the unawakened state that still, unfortunately, millions of humans are trapped in that. But the moment you know, you recognize your inner state, that means there is an awareness which there is another dimension of consciousness that has emerged in you through you, a deeper dimension of consciousness that is not the conditioned thinking. So we can call it awareness, we can call it presence, you can call it the unconditioned consciousness. And then the beginning of freedom, the possibility of freedom arises. And it's from there that you recognize your inner states as they arise from there, that you recognize your unhappiness and say, oh, you can feel the unhappiness. But the moment you become aware of suffering or unhappiness in you, you're no longer feeding it with your thoughts. As long as you're not aware, you're feeding it as a vicious circle. You're feeding it with your thoughts, with your narrative, and you're trapped in the vicious circle. Your narrative creates more unhappiness, the unhappiness creates more thought. And you're trapped in that. So for the next six months and hopefully beyond, because it's a much more pleasant way to live, you make it your practice to be aware of your inner states and meaning. No matter what situation arises in your life, whether it's little things, big things, difficult situations, difficult people, challenges, problems, because the next six months are not going to be free of challenges and problems. So whatever it is, realize that the primary factor in any situation is your inner state. Because that determines how you respond. So no matter what it is, your primary responsibility is to be aware of what goes on inside you. And that means whatever arises in your life is actually to be used in your practice. So that you do not become dependent on what's going on externally in your life. So your inner state gradually is no longer determined. Perhaps still a little bit, yes, but not completely determined by outer events, people, situations and so on. Inner freedom arises that's awakening. So there is a disidentification from the movement of thought and the fluctuating emotions. There's a stepping back. You're not repressing anything. You're allowing it. But you can only allow it because there is an awareness. And that awareness is you. Ultimately, that is what I sometimes call the deep I as opposed to the surface I. The I meaning not this I but that I is impressed. Interesting too. It's an analogy for consciousness, the I of awareness. But now I'm talking about the pronoun I first. There's the surface I, which is the conditioned person, the entity that you are for a while. And there is the deep I, which is the consciousness. My usual analogy, which probably you heard me say, mention quite a few times. The ocean, the surface of the ocean, the wave or the ripple is the surface I and the ocean, the depth of the ocean is the deep I. And an awakening human is a ripple on the surface of the ocean that until recently had been completely identified with its ripple existence on the horizontal dimension of the surface of the ocean. Looking at every other ripple as another other ripple. Not me. It's another. And always you have to be very careful with the others. And the ego actually likes the others to be as other as possible. And then the little ripple begins to realize that it is the. There's a depth. The moment it stops thinking about its ripple existence and there's a thinking subsides and something else remains. Something else that is very deep, has no form, is just a presence. If we can even call it anything, a presence.