Discovering Freedom Through Challenge, with Eckhart Tolle

A moment of stillness is always a good start to anything that you do, any activity. So it's important to become comfortable with stillness. There are many humans in this world who are made extremely uncomfortable by stillness. They can't stand it. So we are here at a higher education establishment, which means you've already been through lower education and have arrived at higher education. And higher education, of course, in most fields, it requires you to sharpen and to constantly use the conceptual mind. And that's fine because the conceptual mind is a wonderful tool. Conceptual mind means the ability to think and to apply thought. And so that's a wonderful thing. It's been an incredible evolutionary development this. The evolution of the ability to think. But as in anything in this world, there's always a downside. And we can clearly see the downside of the conceptual mind because millions of humans, and not just in the. In higher education, millions of humans are not so much using their mind as being at the mercy of their mind. So humans say things like, I think, and that sounds reasonable. They don't say things like I beat my heart. Because the heart, the beating of the heart, is something that happens to you. You are not actually doing it. But people think that when they think, they do it. But in most cases that's not true. It happens the same way that your heart beats. Thought happens to you. Thought suddenly appears in your mind, and there it is. Where did that come from? And so the current state of human consciousness is one in which, with the exception of those humans who are already going through a spiritual awakening, an awakening of consciousness, and I will come, I will talk about what that actually means tonight, in case you have some doubts as to what I'm talking about when I say awakening of consciousness. With the exception of those humans who are already going through the process of a shift in consciousness, there are millions of others who are still totally identified with the conceptual mind, totally identified with thought, this continuous stream of thinking that incessantly arises and that they mistake for who they are. And that's why people say, I think. Of course, especially with certain types of thought, like so called worry, you can see very clearly that it happens to you. So the mind goes and you cannot stop it. You wake up at three in the morning and you start thinking fearful thoughts, bad, possible bad outcomes. And it goes on and on, and you're trapped. Thought arises in you. So the beginning of spiritual awakening is to see a thought arise, to see a thought and not be completely identified with it, to recognize thought as thought. The awakening of consciousness. Then, when we Talk about awakening. People might say, well, I'm awake already. We're using awakening in a different sense here, as you probably know. Like when we talk about the Buddha, the word Buddha was not anybody's name. It was a title later given to this person. And the root meaning of the word Buddha in Sanskrit is bud, which means awake. So the Buddha is somebody who is awake. And in other. Many other spiritual traditions, the term of being awake is an important one. So what does that actually mean, to be awake? When we think we are awake, are we not awake here? Now, in ancient spiritual. In Indian spiritual philosophy, there's a term, a Sanskrit term, called turiya. T U R Y A turiya. By the way, we're at an institute of higher learning, so I'm just mentioning some Sanskrit terms. Turiya means the fourth. The fourth. They divided human consciousness into four stages. One is dreamless sleep, which of course you enter every night. One is the dream state. That's the second state of consciousness. Then there's the normal state of wakefulness. That's the third state of consciousness. And then there is the fourth turiya, which is the state of. This is a state that is beyond the conceptual mind. It is a state of being disidentified from the stream of thinking. And in modern terminology, we may call this awareness or presence. And this state is arising already in many of you, and that's why you are here. So what you experience here tonight may be perhaps a deepening of that state of awareness that's arising. If you're not aware, if you're not present in your daily life, then you are identified completely with the conceptual mind. And your entire sense of identity is a conceptual one. In other words, you derive your sense of who you are. And this is very important. Your sense of who you are is very important because that determines how you relate to this world. It determines how you react to things, how you interact with people. Your sense of identity is very important. So in the absence of awareness or presence, your sense of identity, your sense of who you are, is derived from the conceptual mind, which means you inhabit a conceptual reality, which basically is a narrative in your head that tells you who you are, and it is derived from your past. It's a way in which your mind has been conditioned by your past. And these are stories that you tell yourself. And basically, when you think or talk about your life and you say, my life, that is the conceptual mind. That is the narrative in your head that is derived from the past, and it has emotions that go with it. And that's fine. There's no doubt that there is a certain reality to that dimension in you. You remember your past. You remember things that have happened to you. Things, your failures, your successes, things that people did to you, what you did to others. You identify with things. You incorporate things into that conceptual sense of self. You incorporate possessions. You incorporate what other people think of you. You take that on board. You incorporate those concepts into your sense of self. This is, in spiritual terms, the egoic sense of self or the ego, spiritually speaking. The ego is a sense of self that arises when the mind is completely unobserved. The unobserved mind brings about the ego. In fact, the unobserved mind is the ego. These are mental structures which are energy formations, because every thought is an energy formation. Energy formations in your head that say, that's me. That's me and my life. And there are certain characteristics to this egoic state. One characteristic is that it exists in a state of frequent dissatisfaction, discontent. And there's an underlying. An undercurrent of something vital is missing in my life. I have not arrived yet. There are some people, or many people who feel they haven't started to live yet. They're waiting for that moment when it's really going to take off. Sometimes they have certain expressions that say, one day I'm going to make it. We don't know what they're going to make, but I'm going to get the big breakthrough or whatever it is. And whatever that may be varies from person to person. It could be to achieve financial success or recognition, or better both the two together. Fame. It could be meeting the ideal partner that is going to complete me and my story. Because right now it is not enough of me. I need somebody to complete me. And then you start looking for. And sometimes you find it seems that you found that person that the egoic sense of self was so longing for, and now there he or she is, and you're ecstatically happy. And for a little while, the ego feels, ah, I have arrived. The same way that would happen if you're offered a great job or you've just won the lottery, or you get some kind of recognition in this world. Not that there's anything wrong with recognition, but it's a wonderful thing. To achieve things is wonderful. To endeavor to achieve things is wonderful. But to look to these things and hope to find a more complete sense of self through it, to hope to find that a complete sense of fulfillment and a lasting sense of fulfillment, that doesn't seem to work because I Haven't met anybody for whom that has worked, except for brief periods. That these periods are brief. You may, even though many of you are young, you may already have experience that the initial stage of meeting the ideal person does not last very long. And at some point you realize that you met the wrong person and it was all a big mistake. Take. And at the latest, when you start living with somebody, you realize that the person that you first met and that you. That was so wonderful when you were having dinners together or going for a walk on the beach or wherever that person was looking at you like this. And then you start living together and suddenly that person no longer looks at you like. So there's something the ego longs for something to add to. The ego is always in a sense of insufficiency. Remember, the ego is a concept, ultimately a narrative in your mind, A conceptual reality that can never fulfill you, no matter how much you add to it. Which does not mean you should not strive to do things in this world. But do not expect this world to make you happy, because happiness does not ultimately derive from this world. This world is not designed to make you happy. It is designed to challenge you. And if you believe that this world is designed to make you happy, then you are going to get very angry. Because as the years pass in your life, you realize, why isn't my life working? Why is this reality seems to be always throwing obstacles in my path? The moment I say, oh, it's okay now this problem has been solved, another one pops up from behind you. And so you have these areas of your life. The main areas being your physical health, your financial situation, your living situation, your professional situation, your relationship situation. And one of these areas usually develops problems. You solve a problem in your financial area and then props up a relationship problem. You solve the relationship problem, suddenly you have a health problem. It's interesting that you're constantly being challenged. And you might have noticed one of the greatest sources of challenges are human beings. Because humans are incredibly challenging. And although humans look to other humans often for some ultimate fulfillment through other humans, more often what they find through other humans is, is that other humans turn out to be a source of suffering. And that is because you are stuck in the egoic mind. And you have the egoing mind has certain expectations of the world, which includes whatever you experience in this world has certain expectations that the world cannot meet. But if you believe that the world should, then that is a delusional reality that you will be continuously unhappy. The world continues to challenge you, but you believe the world is here to make you happy. That's a terrible dilemma. So it means your entire, all your expectations aren't illusory, but you don't know it. And that creates an enormous amount of suffering. Because then every challenge that you encounter in this world, and they come one after another, every challenge that you encounter in this world, you then because of that underlying expectation that something is wrong when you're being challenged. Every challenge is then turned, is turned into unhappiness. There's a big difference between a challenge and unhappiness. So when you have delusory expectations of the world, then the world will make you unhappy and not happy. But you continue to believe that something has gone fundamentally wrong in your life because life does not leave you alone. You want some peace, you want some, ah, you want a sense of I've arrived, this is it. And occasionally it comes, but it never lasts for very long. So that's the dilemma, the underlying state of ignorance. Not knowing that the function of this world is to challenge you. Because only by challenging you does it provide the necessary incentive to awaken you. And it is that you notice after a while that as you gradually begin to awaken out of the unconsciousness which is the complete identification with the conceptual egoic mind mind, you begin to realize that, oh, a lot of the unhappiness that you experience. And unhappiness is a generic term that could be many, many things, even a state of irritation is already unhappiness. Sadness is unhappiness, anger is unhappiness. Any state that doesn't feel good is unhappiness. Any state of unhappiness, you begin to realize that the greater part of it is not derived from the situations in your life. And when you realize that that's the beginning of an awakening, let's say 90% of the unhappiness that you encounter is actually produced by your mind. And that's an amazing realization. There remain 10% unhappiness. You might be very a loved one dies close to you. Of course you experience, you weep. That is of course normal. But if you observe the various forms of unhappiness in your life, from the very mildest forms of unhappiness to the more extreme forms of unhappiness, let's say I'm just two brief examples. A mild, very, very small little bit of unhappiness arises many times when things happen in daily life and you can't immediately get what you want. You're on the phone trying to get talk to your bank but of course there's no human being there. And even that is a. It's a minor form of unhappiness, but it is. You get very irritated and you don't. You think, well, this is caused by this dreadful bank that has no longer human beings that you can speak to or you're lining up. Airports are a great place to observe small forms of unhappiness because often so many things go wrong and you're lining up and this lineup is not moving. And of course these people are just so inefficient. I'm never going to fly with them again. You feel more and more and in any of these situations, if you observe, okay, unhappiness is arising, is it really coming from the situation or is it coming from the way in which I speak to myself about the situation? Does it derive from the mental commentary about this situation or is it the situation? And in most cases you actually find, and I suggest you start with little small forms of unhappiness. You will find that the unhappiness is derived from. The narrative is derived from your self talk in the head. It.