Eckhart Tolle on Conscious Relationships

A hugely problematic area for many or most people is relationships of whatever kind or on whatever level. It's where people seek their happiness and it's where many people find their unhappiness. And so I'm talking about both intimate relationships, somebody you live with, and I'm talking about other kinds of relationship also at work, other family members, relatives, friends, and even very brief relationships. Because any interaction with another human being is, I'm using now relationship in a wider sense. Any interaction with another human being is a relationship you are relating to that person. And so it is for many people. Most of their or a large part of their suffering or unhappiness unfortunately is derived from relationships. They tend to go wrong so often or present so many problems and obstacles. And it seems that human beings are just so terribly difficult. Except one, the one who is listening to these words. You remember the statement, know thyself. Famous words of wisdom. Knowing yourself. There are two levels to knowing yourself. One is the level of mental, emotional and reactive patterns that you display in your life and the ability to be aware of them. That is one level of self knowledge of knowing yourself. That is the kind of thing that in. Sometimes in good therapy sessions, if you have a good aware therapist, can be helpful to become aware of that level in yourself so that you know what your predominant patterns are. Doesn't everybody know what their patterns know? They are so identified with their patterns that. That there is no awareness left. And that usually means when a person is so unconscious that unconscious, the definition of unconscious, the way we use it here, in a spiritual sense, not in a clinical sense. I'm not talking about unconscious, but in a spiritual sense. Unconscious is to be totally identified with thoughts and emotions, so there's no room for any awareness left. So you are in the grip of the thought, in the grip of the emotion. And often they go. Thoughts and emotions are linked, go together. They have you in their grip so that they basically you are them, you are the emotion. And those people who are so unconscious, there are still millions around, you might have noticed often they have a tendency of seeking always the. There's always the people are always to be blamed out there. There's always people that point their fingers at why these people are so bad and what they're doing to you or how awful they are. There's never looking at oneself. Jesus already had that statement, why do you see the. What is the saying about the what? Yeah, you see, you see a little splinter in the other person's eye, but you don't see the huge splinter that is in your eye. Very profound statement. So why don't you find that first he says so in other words, he says, know thyself, be aware of your own patterns. And most people here have that awareness, but perhaps not all the time. For many of you, when you are challenged in a particular way, in particular situations, you may lose awareness and regress to total identification with some reactive pattern. And it could be the pain body. As you know, the pain body is old accumulated emotion that still I regard it as an almost autonomous entity that lives in you. It's a way of looking at it. But there's a lot of truth to this. There's an emotional field that lives in you almost as an entity. One could say that sounds slightly spooky, but one could say that even a thought is an entity. When you think a thought, it is an energy formation. It is a little being that you give birth to. So it has a life. It depends upon its life. It depends on you, on your life, but it is a little entity. And so in some forms of either deep unconsciousness or when mental illness, sometimes it can happen that the mind gets completely taken over by these little thought entities. And so you're totally, then totally occupied. Your mind is totally. Another word for occupied is. I won't say it. It sounds too spooky. So you're totally occupied by these thoughts. They pretend to be you. So that is total lack of awareness. So it's essential for your spiritual growth to be continuously alert and vigilant so that you are able to be there in the background, so to speak, as the awareness in your daily life, so that you are not completely taken over by the arising thoughts and arising emotions when you interact with people, when you become upset about this or that, always any kind of upset or disturbance in your energy field can be very helpful. Do not believe that, oh, I shouldn't have this disturbance in my energy, or I shouldn't be upset because I'm spiritual. I don't get upset about these things anymore. But we honestly observe what arises and then observe how does it arise. And as I already mentioned last night, very often you will find it is caused by certain thoughts in your mind, certain interpretations, certain reactions. It can also happen that a reaction comes so suddenly that is just an emotion waiting to come up, an emotion. And this is what the pain body does. As you may know, the pain body is not necessarily always active in you. There are periods when the old emotional pain that you carry still carry around with you is dormant and then leaves you in peace for a While. And then you are fine, you meet somebody, this person is lovely, and it all goes fine. And you might spend some time together and it's still fine. And then you go on vacation together for the first time. And then there comes a moment when something else comes in that's not fine either in you or through the other. And what happens in relationships, the pain body periodically needs to feed on a certain experience that corresponds to its energy field. The vibrational frequency of its energy field is a good external image of the pain body. In. I think it's. In Lord of the Rings is this little being. I can't remember the name. And even the little being, once a normal being, according to the legend in this. It's kind of modern mythology, that being was once a normal, lovely human. And there is still. Although this has been. This. This being has been completely taken over by what I call the pain body, occasionally, there are still instances when the original being that's been completely taken over still shines through and there's a little bit of tiny glimmers of awareness come in occasionally. And then you almost feel sorry for it, but then again, the pain body. And if you feel sorry and you give in, then immediately the pain body will take advantage of that. So that's a lovely mythological, modern mythological illustration of the pain body. So to observe that in yourself in relationships, how it periodically comes up either in your partner or in yourself, wanting some kind of drama, amplifying something little into something big, because it wants to feed on your partner's reaction, it wants the emotional negativity. It needs emotional negativity from the. From the other in order to suck it up. Then you give back of it to the others, the pain body. Then mutually, they energize each other. And that is unconscious. That is how couples, many couples, most couples, perhaps unless there's already considerable consciousness there in both of them, or at least one of them, they go through that periodically, don't realize that that is what it is.