This is a YouTube video titled "Eckhart Talks Real Versus Perceived Limitations" containing a recorded dialogue from March 12, 2019, featuring Eckhart Tolle and another speaker discussing the distinction between real and imagined limitations and needs, particularly in the context of illness and mental perception. Eckhart Tolle provides spiritual insights on acceptance and presence in relation to physical and mental challenges.
I'm wondering if you can talk about how to tell the difference between limitations that we're perceiving with our mind and limitations that life is presenting to us and. And also about discerning needs, needs that we're imagining and needs that are really being called for.
Real needs or imaginary needs and limitations that we are creating with our minds or real meditation limitations, right?
Yes. Like where surrender may be.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the needs are really. The true needs are not that many. The true needs are for survival of the body. Air, light, some food, shelter, clothing, some heat, depending what climate you live in, heating, water. Those are true needs. What goes beyond that is probably not a true need. Not a need, but something else. Let's just briefly look at limitations. If I say I'm going to train for the next Olympics because I want to get a gold medal in hundred meters, am I? And my mind says, no, you don't. Is that a true limitation or am I imagining is, of course, a true limitation. Some extreme New Age people might say, if you really wanted it, you could do it. But I'm telling you so there are certainly real limitations in your life and the example I just gave, it's relatively easy to see the difference between what to recognize true limitation. In other cases, it may not be so easy to see whether it's a limitation that you just believe in. I can't do it. Because you've been conditioned not to believe in yourself or your power, the power that can come through you, that you need to look carefully into your life to see which one applies. Now, the answer always becomes more interesting when there's the question, if you can perhaps explain if. Whether this or in what way the question might apply to your life in a concrete way.
Well, I have had some challenges with illness.
Yes.
And I'm starting to understand that there's a story underlying that.
Yes.
So sometimes I get a little bit confused about whether I'm just perceiving what's arising and giving an energy, or if it's actually real.
So there's physical, an illness, or I've.
Had some challenges, like neurological. And.
You discovered something in your mind that may be connected to that?
I think so. Like, there's definitely intensity that happens when I start thinking about it.
Yes.
It seems to generate a lot more constriction.
Yes.
It makes it worse, whatever I'm perceiving. But sometimes I'll sort of observe that I'm thinking about it and then react to that with a kind of a. Like, it'll be a harsh reaction. Don't think that which doesn't help either.
Yes, well, with illness then the most helpful approach is to accept whatever it is that you experience at this moment. It's always this moment. By the way, you might have noticed. To accept whatever you experience at this moment, which some people believe means to accept your illness. No, because illness is already a concept in the mind. The reality of the illness is only whatever you experience at this moment, that's the reality. The term illness is already a mind created concept. If you focus on that, that mind created concept proliferates and grows and then the mental image of illness, or I am ill, or I am a sufferer of this illness grows the more you focus on that. So when I say accept what is, some people misinterpret it and they believe that they need to accept their illness. That's not the case. You don't need to accept your illness because the very idea of illness is an idea in the mind. Because there is no illness. There's only what you experience at this moment is the reality of the illness. Even if the doctor tells you it's called this or that and it doesn't look good, it's still the case that the reality of it is this moment. And that's what you accept internally, that's what is. And that can always be reduced to discomfort or pain or some form of disability. That's about weakness. And that's what you stay with and then you can go from there. Treatment is a different matter. You may seek conventional treatment, you may seek alternative treatment, or if you're a Christian Scientist, you will seek a totally different kind of treatment that's not there at all. But I'm not recommending anything. That's all up to you. I'm not saying this is wrong or this is right. The important thing is not to create a mental image of illness, to relinquish that as much as possible so that you don't focus on that. Stay with the present moment, stay with what is, and stay with the presence, with the attention, the field of presence, that is who you are beyond the person. And then allow the challenge of the illness to push you into the present moment more.
