Dealing with a Unique Spiritual Experience | Eckhart Tolle Explains

If you surrender to it, come to a different relationship with it, that can be the agent that awakens you into consciousness.

So my question has to do with what you're just talking about, about how ego death can be painful. So give a little background just to give context for my question. So since I was little, I had spontaneous satoris that I didn't understand. And ultimately it led to shame because it wasn't normal and it led to confusion about what seemed important. And I have my understandings about where it came from. But at any rate, so having experiences of formlessness and all of that is very familiar. And understanding certain understanding of identification and non identification. And I don't have fear of dying physically that I'm aware of. However, I have spontaneous, like how the satori came on. I suppose people would say it could be kundalini energy. Spontaneously, usually when I'm fully asleep, I will wake up and I will can have this absolute unstoppable realization that I am not going to exist. I'm not afraid of dying in that moment. It's that existential awareness of I'm not going to be here anymore. Yeah. So it's not about fear of death, but it is about ego death, I imagine. And I've tried to work with it in many different ways. I don't know if it's just simply being maybe a more than average narcissist and don't want to die. I don't know if it's that or if it's just. At any rate, have talked with many spiritual teachers and gotten very different kinds of responses, but mostly want to understand how to be able to face it because it feels intolerable and it comes on unbidden, unwittingly will come up and my body starts to run. Literally. I'll wake up out of sleep and I'll run. And sometimes I'll scream. This scream is the only thing that gets me out of that realization. I don't want that realization. Yeah. And so growing up with both of these, I would call it my agony and my ecstasy would have both. So anything you can offer I'd appreciate.

And as a child you had similar experiences. So wanting to run is just an impulse that you want to run. When this comes on, you don't actually stay in bed or you get up and run.

I wake up and I'm already running. And screaming is the most effective way to try to get it out of my consciousness.

And so the experience itself that makes you run, it exists as an emotion and a thought, or mostly a thought that suddenly triggers that. Or what is the thought? What's the element of thinking? You just mentioned a thought. I'm not going to be here. That's a thought. And that is always there when this happens.

Yeah, that's the. It's like a realization. Sometimes when I'm almost falling asleep and I see it's coming, I can direct my attention elsewhere. But usually when I'm pretty sleepy, it takes over and I can't stop it. Yeah. And then it's just like an epiphany. So it's a thought. Yeah.

So it's almost as if you were experiencing little mini deaths frequently.

Yeah. And I'm not afraid. And it's not like I'm afraid of dying. Right. Then it's nothing to do with that.

But what about the panic that you feel? Isn't that fear?

Yeah, it feels like terror.

Well, that's extreme fear.

Yeah, extreme fear.

So there is fear. So maybe at other times you don't feel the fear, but in those moments you feel it very strongly.

Right? Yeah.

So it's worth. Particularly in the morning or at nighttime, it happens when you wake up, it's night. Night.

Yeah. I mean, if I wanted to, I could consciously. And I have done this will it on. Like I can remember it. I can get myself into that space. Just I can get myself into Satori. It's the same.

Well, I was actually going to suggest that as a practice, if you can consciously bring it about, because then you have a bit more power. Because it doesn't. You're not. If you can. But before you do that, you have. There has to be a lot of conscious awareness, for example, generating a lot of conscious presence through inner body awareness, for example. Do that for 15 minutes or so, and then attempt to consciously bring it on so that you can surrender to what it is that you feel. And then once you surrender to the feeling, then it's no longer fearful. And then it could bring about. It's a very relatively. I don't have not many people who have this particular experience in the way you describe it, but it's very interesting. So it's. If you can bring it as a practice, do consciousness practice and then just experiment with it and see if you can bring it about consciously, because then there's more awareness in you, so that you may not need to run away from it anymore. And if you go into it suddenly, it will lose its frightful nature. And then that is a kind of death. It's like facing a monster. Some people have terrible nightmares where they Face monsters, and they cannot quite. The monsters are always coming from behind, and you have to run away. But you can't run anymore because you can only move very slowly or trying to run, but you can't. And the monster. And it's always when you face the monster, it becomes transformed. It's no longer a monstrous presence because facing it means consciousness is there. It's only when you run away from it, it remains a monster and can even get bigger. So you have to consciously face it. That is your monster. But that monster will become transformed into something completely different when you face it consciously. But in order to face it consciously, you need the power of consciousness. There needs to be preparation for that. So that there's enough consciousness in you to face it. And then you may find that it's actually a powerful spiritual experience. And what is preventing you was the fear. The fear of death comes up very strongly. Perhaps you don't notice it the rest of your life. As you said, in the rest of your life, you don't have a fear of death. But in those moments, you have an intense fear of death. Because death is very close. It's right there. And of course, it's easy to say for anybody, I have no fear of death. They are not facing death in that moment. So it's very easy to make a statement. But you face it regularly. It's there. Anybody else who says, I don't fear death? Well, maybe you're right. But you won't know it until you're actually looking. Death is right there. And then you'll know. And another thing is when you experience a great loss of whatever kind, that's a kind of death, too. So what happens when that. So then you know whether that perception is correct or not. Whether you fear death. This is potentially a powerful spiritual experience. But I would suggest that you, through the fear, the panic that arises, which is the personal self fearing its demise through that, you kind of stop it every time. Because you have to run away from it. You cannot fully go into it. But the possibility is there. If there's enough presence in you, enough consciousness, you can allow yourself to experience that fully without the need anymore to run away from it. And then the monster becomes transformed into an enormously helpful figure, so to speak. It becomes an opening. It is often the case there's a general. As a general rule, some people have one major huge obstacle in their lives. Which can be many different things. It could be a very serious physical thing, disability. It could be a very serious something in their emotional field. It could be a very serious external thing, that dreadful family karma that they are born into. Some crime that happens in childhood around them. Some people have to. They have one huge dreadful thing in their lives. And it is often the case that the worst thing in your life, that thing that would normally be regarded as unacceptable, that no human could accept, if you surrender to it, come to a different relationship with it, that can be the agent that awakens you into consciousness, that transforms you, that becomes the opening. Your cross becomes the opening. So, to use a Christian, medieval, almost medieval, Christian term, the cross. So I've seen people who've had one major thing that was the most dreadful burden in their lives, and that eventually became the opening. And they woke up through that. And so this can be the case with you. I believe it can. And I trust that next time we meet, you will stand there and tell us about it, and you will be perhaps awakened through it. Have been awakened. If not, what is total awakening anyway, but awakened. So that is my advice to you, and that's all I can say.

Okay, thank you.