Achieve True Freedom by Leaving Your Form Identity | Eckhart Tolle

Now, this pointer is very significant. It points to the essence of who you are, that is deeper or higher, one could say, than your form identity. If somebody, when I was in my twenties, had told me I had a big ego, more on the unhappy side, the victim ego side. But anyway, big. If somebody had told me, like, say if I had gone to a psychic and that psychic said, you will be one day a great spiritual teacher, my ego would have gone, wow, yeah, I'm going to be significant. Now, if the psychic had been a good one, he would have added, but you have to die first, and it's not going to give you any personal satisfaction. What? That sucks. What do you mean I have to die first? Well, perhaps he would have explained, your entire conceptual identity has to go. So when you become a spiritual teacher, you're not going to be proud of being a spiritual teacher. So on that level, it's not satisfying. And so I probably would have said, I don't know if I still want it. So we have the my life. And it's a conceptual identity in the head, and it's huge limitation to be trapped in it. Again, you can honor your history. It's coming back to accepting and honoring who you are. That's part of who you are. On the level of form, it's fine. You can remember your past, you can look at the photos, you remember stories, what happened, but there's no longer a sense of getting your sense of self from that. So how do you not get your. How do you not identify? Now we come to the core of it. How do you not identify with your form identity, your conceptual self? Well, here we come to the ancient Greek dictum, know thyself, know thyself at the deepest level. Now, interesting fact is, at the temple of Apollo in ancient Greece, there was that know thyself. But of course, most people didn't know what to do with that. Okay, well, they went to the Oracle at Delphi and asked questions about, am I going to meet the right person? And then the Oracle would say, so I said, I lost this ring. Where did I leave it? And then the Oracle would say something, please tell me where I'm going to be in 20 years time. These are all very superficial things that people were seeking. And this is why there was this inscription, know thyself. But nobody knew. But they had put a key there, a secret key on this building in order to show people how to know themselves. And that secret key, for several hundred years, nobody knew what it meant. The secret key, in ancient Greek, it was the letter A, E, E, E in Greek and just one letter on the building. And see, what, what does that mean? And several hundred years later, the philosopher Plutarch explained it in one of his writings. It's the second person, quite simply, it's the second person singular and it means you are, you are. And that is the secret key to the saying, know thyself. What does that mean? You are. So when somebody reads that, somebody reads that you are. So how would you. When you say to yourself, of course, you say, oh, I am. Yes, you are. I am. I am what? Now the interesting thing is nothing was added to it. It just said you are. It doesn't say you are Greek, you are a man or a woman, or you are this or that, or you are a Democrat or Republican. It just said, or you're rich or poor or old or young, or whatever it said you are. This is a pointer. It's a pointer. Not an explanation or anything. It's a pointer. So when you read you are, you translate it as, I am. I am what? Now, this pointer is very significant. It points to the essence of who you are, that is deeper or higher, one could say, than your form, identity. And let's go through this now. Right now, we are sitting here. You are sitting here. Ultimately, there's only one eye and it's sitting there. And here there's only this one, I. You are sitting here. You are aware of your sense perceptions. That's part of the present moment. You are aware of this room. You are aware of the lights, the screen, man sitting on a chair, talking. You hear the voice, you hear the background noise. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I think they call it music. It's noise. It goes with the beer fest. That's fine. You perceive the totality of this room and yourself, the body. You're sitting on the chair. And that's the present moment, one would say. But it's not the depths of the present moment, it's the surface of the present moment. The surface of the present moment is sense perceptions, hearing, seeing. If you are. If one of your sense perceptions is missing, either you don't hear or you don't see, that's fine. You have the others. And so you're aware of sense perceptions. You're aware of what you hear, what you see, perhaps even what you touch. And is that all there is to this moment? Is that all there is? Well, you would say yes. Haven't you forgotten something? No, just a second. How is it possible for you to perceive these things? How is it possible for you to have these sense perceptions. You might also have a thought may come into your head. What am I going to have for dinner later? How much longer do I have to sit here? I don't understand a word of what he's saying. Or what you had for breakfast this morning. Thoughts can come and go. Sense perceptions, thoughts. I mean, your entire life consists of a mixture of sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions. That's basically. You mix them in a particular way that becomes your life. You mix them up in a pot. Sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions. My life. Is there more? Have you forgotten something? Yes, of course you have forgotten something. You've forgotten that if you were not conscious right now, there would be no sense perceptions, there would be no thoughts, there would be no emotion. If you were not conscious at this moment, none of this would be. And if there were nobody here, no perceiving consciousness, would there even be a room? That's debatable. Or would there just be certain molecules and atoms floating around in space? It only becomes a room when a perceiving consciousness makes it into a room. So you are the consciousness, without which there wouldn't even be a room here. You are the consciousness, without which there wouldn't be a man sitting on a chair. You are that. That is the. The essence of who you are is consciousness. You are now the air become to the. You are the. You are conscious right now. This is one way of putting it. But it would be more accurate to say you are consciousness. That's the essence of who you are. If I say you are conscious, I have created a duality. There's you. And consciousness is something that is added to you. But the essence of who you are is consciousness. And when you are aware of yourself as consciousness, then you become self aware. Awareness arises. Awareness is when consciousness, which is who or what you are in your essence, when consciousness becomes conscious of itself, that is the miracle of awakening and that's the arising of awareness. And in that arising of awareness, you have transcended thinking. You can come back to thinking and think much more effectively and creatively when you access a dimension. But you have transcended thinking. When you realize, experientially, like right here and now, the silent realization that who or what you are is this conscious presence and underlies everything. And that you sense as yourself, that you sense as your own presence, I call it your own, but of course it's not your own. It's the presence of the light, of the world in you. You sense your presence. This underlies everything. It's a little to give an analogy. I could give two analogies. Let's say there's a painting. The painting is painted on a canvas. And let's say you are whatever is painted on the canvas. That's you as a person. And when the thing that's painted on the canvas, the picture is totally identified with the form of the painting. That is unconsciousness and ego. But let's say what's painted on the surface becomes aware of the canvas on which it is painted. Strange analogy, but it works. For a moment, it might work. If you are the painting, you become aware of the canvas without which the painting could not be. And that means you become aware of the substratum in yourself, the consciousness without which nothing else would be. Wow. You are that. Now, instead of canvas, I prefer to use the expression space. You are the space of consciousness, the inner space. But ultimately, there's no division between inner and outer. The inner space of consciousness. Consciousness pervades the entire universe. But, of course, it becomes focalized, for example, through the human brain, which is an instrument that consciousness uses to express itself through and to create this dimension that we inhabit.