This is a YouTube video titled "Coping With Anxiety And Illness | Q&A Eckhart Tolle" containing a monologue or talk by Eckhart Tolle recorded in November 2020. In this content, Eckhart Tolle discusses coping with serious illness, mental suffering, presence, and consciousness, emphasizing the potential for spiritual awakening through illness and the importance of living in the present moment. The content is reflective and instructional rather than conversational.
My prostate was cancerous and I had surgery on it. I had been cancer free, or so I thought. But after seven years, cancer has once again reared its ugly presence in the region. I'm having difficulty coping with this. Plus type 2 diabetes. Well, it is, it seems, the destiny of many humans to be confronted with something like that at some point or something similar. So I will just explain what I have addressed before a few times with regard to serious illness. And that is not to as much as possible avoid the mental. I'm not saying don't recognize reality like in the previous question, but what I'm saying is avoid an excessive mental dwelling on either the condition that has a name or me as the one who suffers from that condition, so that your mind does not continuously strengthen that mind form of the illness. Mind form or me as my identity as a sufferer from that illness by thinking about it, which of course creates a lot of fear and won't make you feel good. In other words, in order to become free. Now it is a secondary thing what kind of treatment you go in for, whether it's conventional treatment, whether it's alternative treatment, whether it's no treatment at all. All that only you can know. But what is your state of consciousness. And it's a wonderful. It sounds strange for me to say that it is a great opportunity to have an illness like that. And this has been confirmed to me by a number of people that I have known who have had similar illnesses. One or two seemed to get cured, others did not. But that was secondary. They said that it forced them into very intense presence because they noticed when they were not present, they were very unhappy. So the illness forced them into just living more and more in the present moment. An extreme example of that was I read last year, I sent it to. I read it on the BBC news, my app. There was a musician in England, popular music. I had never heard of him, but apparently he was quite well known in England who got diagnosed with cancer. And he reports in an interview that when he left the doctor's office he felt ecstatic. This is very rare. He felt ecstatically happy and he couldn't quite figure out why. And now he says, I now realize all the problems that I thought I had are completely meaningless. And he lives completely in the now. And the rare thing with him was that happened immediately as he left the doctor's office. I've never heard that before that somebody. So can you be. Allow the illness to push you into the awakened state? Your motivation is very strong now and it could happen to anybody who is Nuganti. I have not had a serious illness my whole life. I haven't even seen the inside of a hospital. But who can say that it's not going to happen? Everybody is one heartbeat away from death. Well, the death of the physical body. And most if you don't die in an accident. If you die, you might die of old age, if you're lucky or unlucky, depending what your old age looks like. Or as somebody once said, old age isn't so bad if you consider the alternative. So it's either that most people here, including myself, will probably die of something which would be heart attack, cancer, stroke. I think those are the main things. Could be an accident too, of course, or something more rare. Something eventually comes. So ultimately, how long your life is. Although I must admit, if it comes to a very young person, it may be more difficult. One person hasn't lived completely, but even there the shift is possible. So that you allow the condition, the illness, to force you into just absolute present moment awareness in which you do not suffer. A lot of the suffering of the illness arises from what your mind is saying. Of course, with some illnesses, pain eventually comes. That is pain. When I use the word suffering, I really refer to psychological suffering. If there's pain, then perhaps something is done to alleviate the pain. And you also need to surrender. But there may be many conditions where there is actually no pain for quite a long time. But you know, there is that illness. So go away from focusing excessively on the idea of illness in the mind. And in order to get out of the idea of illness, which is not a denial that it's not saying, I don't have it. No, you're just not going there. You're just being in the present moment. And several people that were part of came to me over the years, especially at a time when I still had more personal contact with people who would come to me. I've seen several who had developed fatal illnesses and in the last months of their lives became quite radiant, quite awakened, really. The flowering that is meant to be the purpose of human life, the flowering of consciousness happened. They didn't need another 25 years of life, which means 25 years of eating, 25 years of taking the dog for a walk, going on vacation, seeing a few more sunsets, and adding more life experiences. You can add more and more, but is that the real purpose of your life, to add more? And they are good, but then you need more and more and more life experiences and add more? No, there's something else that is more vital, more important. That's the flowering, the shift in consciousness. Then time becomes immaterial, whether you have a few more months or another 20 years or 30 years. So it was wonderful to see those people becoming radiant and becoming in a way, like little children. Because the whole personality collapsed. The ego could not survive knowing that it had no future. If the ego really knows, it has no future. Either it goes into intense suffering and complaining and victim identity, why this happened to me, to me, or it dissolves. And sometimes it happens to people spontaneously, even without any spiritual teaching or teacher. It just happens that they can't stand the pain anymore. And then they just go, oh, there's nobody left. Nobody who says, I have an illness. No, there's just presence. And then they look at you as if they had just been born. So a deep shift happened inside them. So that is the potential awakening that's there. That illness, so called fatal illness can help you with that. There are situations that force you, if you allow, that force you into the present moment. And those are good things. They force you into the present moment. As you know, some people seek out activities that force them into the present moment. Dangerous activities where you have to be so alert if you think you die. So you have to. Some sports events are like that. Most of the people participating in the Olympics, the sportsman, they have to be while they do performing their. Whatever it is the discipline is they all, and they love it. They love that aliveness. They may not realize that they could have the same aliveness sitting by a fireplace. And that is the same aliveness that can be there when there is a threatened life, so called life threatening illness. But it's longer. It's not just a moment, like five minutes. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation. It.
