Aging as a Path to Inner Stillness | Eckhart Tolle on The Secret Of Human Existence (Part 3)

Deep powerfulness, inner peace that emanates and affects people around you. Even if you don't say anything. And this is all old age is supposed to be. That old age is supposed to be opportunity for self transcendence. Because the self that you had identified with is coming to an end. You might as well transcend it now. That's the ancient saying, die before you die. That's what it refers to. Don't wait. The old age is a wonderful opportunity. Letting go, no longer needing the. The egoic consciousness. But if you reach the age of 70 and you've been so trapped in egoic consciousness, you've rejected any. Well, whenever anything even remotely spiritual or whatever came into your life, you immediately rejected it. Sometimes when you're so old nothing will free you anymore. You're trapped in an ossified personality and a crumbly but it's a grumpy old man, that kind of thing. Woman, I suppose. Leave me alone. I know everything. It's all nonsense. Don't give me that. I know it all, I've seen it all. It's just rubbish. Granted, there's a deep. You're just a personality, strong personality. And one day you suddenly drop dead. Thank you. So come into use your daily life, which is the best practice. Don't look for a ideal situation to practice with spiritual awakening. The ideal situation is the situation you're facing right now. That's the ideal for you. Use that. And wonderful. Use the time that we are moving into for deepening the already. Deepening, intensifying the already occurring awakening in you. When so called bad things happen, you look at it. Let go of adding any thought to it. What is bad on one level is no longer bad from a higher level of existence. There are different levels of truth. For example, incurring a serious illness is usually considered bad. Of course it is a life threatening illness. You would call it bad. But is it? It's an opportunity for awakening too. And I have met over the years quite a few people, many who were faced with a life threatening illness. And it drove them into disidentifying from all the stuff that they had identified with. And they began to awaken as pure presence. Some actually I saw a few that shortly before they died and they were luminous and absolutely there. The personality was completely gone. It was just an enormous beautiful presence. That is the ultimate possibility as you approach death. Interesting story from my own life. You were, as you know, twice our gathering was postponed. Twice was because of COVID The third time earlier this year, it got cancelled again. Not because of COVID but because I was diagnosed with, with a potentially life threatening illness and it required immediate surgery. So that is an interesting, very interesting story. When the, after the exam, the man, the doctor said, you have the big C word. You have cancer. Oh, a moment of my personality was disconcerted for a minute. And then I sense it very deep. There's usually presence in the background. But the presence that I sense usually in the background somewhere suddenly filled my entire being. And then several in the following days. I was just walking around as basically I had died already. I was just. Consciousness was left. And A few days, 10 days later, I had a big surgery and this thing was removed. And then the examination happened again and they said, well, you seem to be free now. It hasn't spread anywhere, it seems. That's fine, thank you. It's in, it's prudent. So this is. It came to me. I was already well prepared for that kind of thing. But it can be a very powerful opening for anybody if you know how to, how to approach it, if it happens. And death will come in one way or another. So you could say people love these concepts that they, they have self concepts. Say. I could say the ego always looks for new self concepts. Okay, what can I add? Okay, now I could say I'm a cancer survivor. Okay, I have another concept. I could feel good about that until something else happens. Conceptual identities. Again, be very careful with any. Also, if you're engaged in spirit, spiritual awakening, be very vigilant so that you do not replace one conceptual identity with another conceptual identity. For example, you might progress from being attached to your BMW or your Ferrari and derive an enhanced sense of fictitious identity from that. And then you go beyond that because you go to a talk by me and you suddenly realize, oh, my Ferrari is meaningless. Okay, I'm letting go of that. I'm now going on a bicycle just to show the world how spiritual I am. And then without knowing it, you have just as big an ego as before. It's just as shifted to something else. This is sometimes called a spiritual ego can be very, very strong too. So the ego is looking always be careful so that the ego doesn't come in through the back door as it tends to do. Oh, the other day I acquired another identity. I was walking in the forest, going for a walk, and a couple, young couple, man and a woman came the opposite direction. And the man looked at me and then stopped for a moment and said, I know you somewhere. What is your name? I said, eckhart. Oh, yes. I watch your YouTube all the time. And I watch you all the time on YouTube. Then he said to his girlfriend, look, this guy is a famous YouTuber. Great. I'm now a famous YouTuber. Very proud of that. My next ambition is to become an Instagram influencer. Now, you might think I'm too old for that, but there are many wonderful filters you can use. You won't even recognize me. Beware of conceptual identities. Again, people will want to. They give you. They want to give you identities. They will. They want to impose identities. Don't take them on board. Don't. Don't accept them. People call me a spiritual teacher. Again, it's a conceptual identity.