An Important Lesson on Overcoming Challenging Times | Eckhart Tolle @ NYU

Why is the bird so alert? Because he needs to be alert. Because otherwise a thing could suddenly pop up and eat it. So the bird goes, this is a wonderful beginning of freedom, inner freedom, when you separate the interpretation from the actual thing. It could be a person, it could be an event, or just a simple sense perception. And suddenly you experience the very same thing that before was an unpleasant experience as actually not bad at all. Let's go back to the simple. You're standing in a lineup in the supermarket and it's just not moving and you get very irritated. Think all the things that you should be doing and you shouldn't have come at this time. And why are these people so inefficient? Can't they? And suddenly you're just standing there and you're breathing and you're looking around. Is that so bad? No, it's no longer bad because your mind isn't telling you that it is bad. It is as it is. Now, you might say that's very little. But what happens if something really bad happens? What happens if you come home and suddenly see the house that you live in has gone up in flames? What happens if you suddenly lose your home and you sit on a park bench? What then? It still applies. The same still applies. Are you adding a narrative to it? Are you taking this one? Oh, there's the house. It burned down. Now this, of course, is an adv. More advanced lesson. But you have to master the simpler lessons first. Then you get to the more advanced lessons because you will experience everybody does. Big loss at some point in your life of whatever kind, whether it's loss of a relationship, loss of a loved one, financial loss, loss of your job loss, loss of reputation. Who knows? It's easy to the Internet these days to lose your reputation. One wrong tweet, you can destroy your whole life. So you could experience all that. And you will. All these things will happen as you remember. Life is not meant to make the world is not meant to make you happy. It's meant to make you conscious by challenging you. And by challenging you. At first, the challenges become unhappiness. Then you begin to realize most of the unhappiness is derived from unconscious thought processes. And then suddenly, gradually, you awaken. And then the mind. The world continues to challenge you. But now the challenge is actually help you. And they intensify the awakening. They no longer bring unhappiness. Occasionally, you might still fall back into unhappy reactions, but you're no longer drawn into continuous unhappy reactivity. The world is here. Not to make you happy. And that's. Oh my God, that's so good to know. Because if I hadn't told you that, maybe you would have gone through the next 40 years thinking the world would be here to make you happy. And it didn't happen. Very frustrating. The world is here to the world challenges every life form continuously. Its life is precarious and challenging. Even for a blade of grass that grows. It's challenging for a tree, it's challenging for an animal, it's challenging for the cat, for the deer, for every life form is continuously being challenged. So it needs. But what that does, for example, to a bird, it brings about an alertness. In that life form, the challenge brings about an alertness. Have you observed how alert a bird is? A bird goes. There's an incredible alertness there. Why is a bird so alert? Because he needs to be alert. Because otherwise theism is called self, which is the conceptual self, the mind made self. As long as you derive your identity from that life. To again quote the Buddha, life is suffering, all life is suffering. So the basic teaching, for example, of the Buddha, is life is suffering. But the second part of the teaching of the Buddha is the possibility of the end of suffering, that the whole of Buddhism is there in that. So the Buddha said, I teach suffering and the end of suffering, which means I show you how suffering arises and I show you how suffering can end. It.