Breaking Free from Thought Identification | Eckhart Tolle

By recognizing that there is, let's say, irritation, anger or anxiety in you, you are no longer completely identified with it. Whenever you are impatient, trying to get somewhere, waiting for something impatiently, what's the next thing I have to do? And I have to do that. And you're pulled in all kinds of directions. What's now? Oh, now I have to do that and that and that. And there's always a pull towards the next thing. That is, I call that sometimes you lose yourself in doing. Doing is necessary, obviously you need to do. But to lose yourself in continuous doing is. Is a serious dysfunction. But it's so normal that nobody realizes it. So if you lose yourself in the doing, there's always another. And this is how stress arises. Stress is the gap in the gap between now and later, the projected. Then now and then in that gap arises the stress arises. So the mental projection towards future creates the stresses between I'm here, but I want to be there. And for many humans, that is their predominant state. They are always they are here, but they really want to be there, either there in space or time. It's amazing. And even you awakening beings may still sometimes or often find yourself in that state where you'd suddenly realize that the whole day you've been stressed about this, that and that and that the world makes so many demands upon you. You need to deal with this and this and this, amplified by the gadgets that we now use, which is an amplification of the dysfunction through this. And you lose yourself in the doing. You become completely uncentered and basically lost. It happens even to children already at an early age these days. And many children are suffering from attention deficit disorder and so on, which means their mind is being pulled always away from the present moment. So lost in doing, lost in doing really comes back to lost in thinking. Thinking underlies doing. So you are lost in your thoughts about the world, and then you engage in all kinds of activities propelled by thought that I know I need to do this now I know to do that. So the basic condition still for most humans on the planet, so fundamentally, yes, they are lost in doing. They lose themselves into. But basically it means they are lost in their mind in the movement of thought. You identify, then they identify with every thought that arises. Many thoughts are about future or the past, not that many thoughts are about the present moment. And if they are about the present moment, then it is an interpretation of the present moment that is completely determined and colored by your past conditioning. So very interesting to observe in oneself this tendency to deny devalue disregard. Reduce the present moment to a means to an end. It's always a means to an end, but it's never recognized for what it is in itself. And often it is more than a means to an end. For many humans, this is a very dysfunctional way of being. For many humans, the present moment is actually regarded unconsciously as an obstacle that they need to get beyond. There's a continuous underlying unease. And what's the next thing that's going to go wrong? I know it's going to happen. Lost in the mind, lost in thought. There was an Indian teacher who described the essential human condition as lost in thought. And of course, that's how it is. This is, then this movement of thought gives you your sense of identity, the uneasy narrative, the problematic narrative of me and my life. I have to think about this when I wake up in the middle of the night, and I carry this heavy burden of my problematic life. For many humans, their identity is unconsciously regarded as a problem to be solved. I am a problem that I'm looking for, a solution to, this problem that I am. And of course, then you go to a therapist. Now, if the therapist is good, he might be able to take you beyond that. Depends. If he or she is not good, then you get more deeply entrenched, and 15 years later, you are still undergoing psychoanalysis and find ever deeper layers of complexity in your past. And there's no end to it. So the present moment is devalued, not recognized, regarded either as a means to an end or an obstacle. That is for many humans, that is their predominant state of mental emotional state. And as I said, the identity is derived from that. So the error lies in identification with thought. Now the question arises, who or what is it that identifies with thought? If I am not the story that I tell myself about who I am, if I am not ultimately that, then who or what am I? And what is it in me that identifies with the story? What is it that creates this sense of identity that is mostly exists mostly in a state of unease or very often discontent, because it cannot acknowledge the present moment. That is the ego, by the way. That's what we call it, the egoic sense of self. There is a very simple spiritual practice to get you to the realization of who or what it is that identifies. I suggest at this moment that observe yourself internally right now to see if there's any lingering emotion in you, perhaps from earlier today or an hour ago or yesterday or the past two years or the past 10 years. Can you feel, for example, is There an irritation somewhere? Is there some kind of anxiety? Is there kind of heaviness, A certain heavy mood, a despondent mood perhaps? Is it lingering there? Is there anger? Anger, big thing, Some residue of anger from what happened earlier, is that in you. And then normally humans would say, I am angry. Or they would say, I am anxious, I'm fearful, I am in a bad mood. Now, there's already a delusion when the moment you say I am angry or I am anxious that indicates already that you have identified with the emotion of anger or the emotion of sadness or the emotion of fear, you have identified. You equate I with what arises in your field of consciousness. So you say I'm angry. It would be more correct to say there is anger in me right now. Now, it may sound a trivial difference between saying I am angry and there's anger in me. But there's a significant difference which goes beyond mere syntax, how you put words together. Because when you say I am, you equate I with whatever condition is there in you. This applies to emotion and it also applies to thought. Because anger is often not just the anger as emotion. The anger also exists as angry thoughts. And then they reinforce each other. It's a vicious circle. When you are trapped in irritation or anger, the emotion feeds the thought and the thought feeds more energy to the emotion. It's a vicious circle and you don't want to get out of it. You might notice when you observe an angry person or despondent person or an anxious person, they don't really want to be free of the anger. They don't want their. If you suggest it to the angry person, you can be free. You will not get a pleasant answer. And you've seen angry people who they are in the grip of anger or irritation. They cannot help it. Then they shout at you, and then they leave the room and a minute later the door opens, they come back because they saw to something else to shout you with. They are in the grip of it. There is complete identification with thought and emotion. They are lost in thought. They are lost in emotion. But who or what is it that is lost? If I am not the thoughts and the emotion, who or what am I? Okay, I just asked you to just have a look inside yourself and see what it is. If there's anything there that's jarring and doesn't feel good, but it's there. And I'm not saying try to get rid of it. No. Acknowledge the present moment. The present moment is what is externally or internally. That's what is. But there's a huge difference. Now, you've already, by recognizing that there is, let's say, irritation, anger or anxiety in you, an additional element or dimension has come in. And that dimension we could call awareness, or we could call it presence. And the moment awareness comes in, you are no longer completely identified with it. One could say, I sometimes describe it as, let's say there's the anger. And as your awareness of the anger comes in, there's a little bit of space around it. That's the awareness. The awareness knows that there's anger. The anger may still be there. It may not immediately disappear, but the awareness knows that.