Does Adversity Strengthen or Weaken the Ego? | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

To summarize the question, of course, as you mentioned at the beginning, adversity can either it can strengthen the ego, or it can gradually or in some cases suddenly dissolve the ego, or at least diminish it. It can go either way. And I must agree with you, I don't know whether you literally said it in perhaps still in the majority of cases it strengthens the ego because nobody knows. People don't know the opportunity that every adversity represents. So why does it happen? How does it strengthen the ego? You can see it sometimes with people who are sick or people who are disabled. Let's say I've met disabled people, people with physical disabilities, for example. And in some cases they are very really angry with the world and bitter because look at what happened to me. They say, why do. I can't move anymore. I've been afflicted with this. What have I done to deserve this? And these are questions that are justifiable questions. The question what have I done to deserve. Why has the world, or whatever they say, God, the world, the universe, or whoever, done this to me? And then they become bitter and angry and the ego becomes more and more rigid and hardened. And that is one way it could go. And then I have met people with disabilities who through their disability, at some point, whether through a spiritual teaching and in some cases never come into contact with any spiritual teaching, it just happened that at some moment they realized intuitively that all the suffering was generated through resistance. And then the resistance to the isness of their life. This moment they were able to let go because perhaps the suffering was getting too much. Something happened, something clicked inside, or even if it didn't happen completely, they were able to have moments of inner peace. An inner peace that is not caused by an external condition, an inner peace that seems to be in contra contradiction to an external condition. So that they would. How could a person who is suffering this feel so peaceful? And so also that applies to people who are approaching the end of their lifespan because they have some illness and they have been to the doctor and the doctor Sundays, you have six months or one year, and suddenly something in and opens up. And all that remains is the person already dies, there's no more future. And all that remains is the present moment and the aware space. So I've had the privilege of working with when I was still seeing individuals.

With two or three people to whom that happened. And they became luminous beings in the last few weeks or months of their.

Lives and became just.

There was no wasn't. I couldn't See that there was any person left. There was only a space of conscious presence left. Just wonderful, as if they had just come into this world.

So they came and then they came.

To me and then still asking questions, very profound questions, wanting to understand what happened.

And beautiful.

So this can happen. It can happen collectively to people who have. Who go through warfare and in countries, or become refugees. They lose everything.

And again, it can go either way.

Whenever there's any great loss in your life that again, an opportunity opens up. If you resist and you regret, you resist. The Resistance origin. The origin of the resistance is a narrative that forms in your mind.

That.

Says something about the situation and about your life and about other people. So the narrative forms in your mind and the narrative is an unhappy one. And then there's continuous resistance and non alignment with the isness of the present moment.

Now one could ask, well, how could.

Somebody who is lost, who's lost their home, perhaps even lost love, loved ones.

And then they don't know where to go.

How could this person be in a state of alignment with the present moment? Isn't that. How. How can somebody accept the unacceptable, accept that which in conventional terms would be regarded as unacceptable? How. How is it possible? But that's precisely it. If you can accept the unacceptable, that is the sudden, the opening, and then you realize the unacceptable is actually not unacceptable, it is acceptable.

And the.

I was homeless for a certain period in my life with not knowing what to live on the next day or the next week. And I had already gone into the state of acceptance. So it was a very pleasant experience, but potentially would have been extremely unpleasant.

So not having a home was for.

Me already something that was not experienced as something bad.

But I knew I had to take.

Some action eventually to get a home. And so gradually something happens. I don't want to talk too much about that. I also mentioned in the New Earth, I believe when I was at university, there was the Stephen Hawkins, the physicist who was confined to a wheelchair, passed away a couple of years ago. There it was.

He would always.

He wasn't famous at that time, only famous locally in the university. We would always be in the same dining room having lunch, but not the same table. I never met him, wasn't introduced, observed him many times sitting at a neighboring table.

And the one moment when I held.

Open the door for him, he was coming through in his wheelchair and I looked into his eyes and I could see there was no unhappiness.