This is a YouTube video titled "Eckhart Tolle Reveals the Basis for Conflict" containing a spiritual talk by Eckhart Tolle recorded in December 2024. In this talk, Tolle explores the nature of ego, individual consciousness, and how personal mental and emotional conditioning leads to conflict both within oneself and between people. He discusses the process of awakening and the challenges posed by the egoic self, emphasizing the importance of presence and awareness in overcoming conflict and achieving deeper understanding.
On a collective level, then, as humans awaken, there will no longer be completely pointless conflict between nations. But it must begin with the absence of pointless conflict on an individual level. The way in which you experience life is a kind of mirroring back to you your predominant state of consciousness. So if you are engaged in continuous conflict and unpleasantness year after year with people, if you engaged maybe in countless court cases with all these nasty people who want something from you, who are all. If you find that when you talk about people, you may find that the strange thing is that those people that you talk about, they are always wrong and you are always right. Isn't that strange? If that is still the case with you, you might have to. It's very unlikely because you're here, but you might just be. When you talk to others, to third people about others. This is what he said. This is what she said. And then he did this, and then I said, and he never did. He should have, but he didn't. And if you find the strange phenomenon that you are always right and others are always wrong, that's an important realization. How is that possible? I must be superhuman. And in the eyes of the ego, of course, that's kind of the case. Because the ego, which is that. Which is perhaps the major obstacle towards the realization of that deeper dimension in the. The ego strives incessantly for some kind of superiority. And so this is what you are condemned to. When you have not yet awakened, even at least to some extent, to the deeper essence of who you are. The awareness, the presence, the stillness. Then you are in the prison of your own personality. And it's not a pleasant place to be. I sometimes watch people and they are so burdened with their personality, so in the grip of. Of that thing. What is personality? It's the sum total of their mental emotional conditioning from the past. Mental, emotional conditioning. Mental conditioning means certain thought forms, mind structures that become repetitive, certain narratives concerning your life. My life, says the ego. A certain narrative concerning my other people in my life, what I did, what they did to me, my victories, my defeats. Many things form the egoic conditioned self. And one important aspect of the egoic condition self is it talks about my life all the time. In the head and out aloud. And my life is what concerns me. Obviously, it's my life. And what is my life? It's a story in my head, but they don't know that. They think it's the reality, but it's a story in my head. It's a narrative. It's a predominant narrative in My mind. And it's a narrative through which I interpret everything that come into contact with it becomes a screen through which I interpret other people, situations, places, events. I don't know that because I am so identified with that mental emotional conditioning that it has become me. It has become me and my life. That's. I don't know anything else. That's the fate still of the majority of humans on the planet. Although the minority that is awakening is growing, it is still a minority. Most humans are still totally in the grip of their egoic self. And probably most of you are moving still in and out of your egoic self. This is usually how the awakening process happens. Sometimes you are drawn back completely into it and it talks and there's a search for superiority and you compare yourself to others and you need to be right. In any argument, being right is more important than the truth. And you're always right. That's a good sign that there's ego. So the egoic entity, I'll just say a few more words about it because it can be very deceptive. It can use. You come back in sometimes through the back door. By that I mean you may be going through an awakening spiritually. And when the ego comes in through the back door, you begin to feel very superior to ordinary people who are not awakening. And now what does that mean? It means, and this is always ego. There is a conceptual sense of self. And you derive your identity, you derive your sense of who you are from a conceptual mind made self. If, for example, let's take myself in the. The world tells me now, you are a great spiritual teacher now, 25, 30 years ago, he didn't tell me that the world basically was saying, who are you? Nobody. Nothing has changed. If I walked around with an image of myself. This requires a lot of awareness because what I'm describing now has happened to some spiritual teachers. The spiritual teacher is only one example. If I had a mental image of myself as a great spiritual teacher, I would be lost.
