Eckhart’s Secrets to Conscious Loving Relationships | Valentine's Special with Eckhart Tolle

The stillness, the presence, whatever we want to call it.

And by sensing it in yourself and being it, then you recognize it in another. And that recognition that in the space of stillness is true love, which doesn't need the other.

Because the other only reflects to you who you are.

So the question you're basically asking. Would you then love everybody equally so there would not be one person singled out as special as the course in Miracles calls it, special relationship, which of.

Course Emeritus says, of course, it's of the ego to single one out as special.

Now, if you single one out as special and you what you see in the other is the form only. And you are attached to the form, which doesn't just mean the physical form, of course, that's an important part of it. Because it's part of the sexuality and all that which is part of the attraction. But it also includes the psychological form of the other. Who you think that person is, their psychological makeup, how they behave and speak and act. That is also form. That's a psychological form. And there can be strong attachment to those aspects. Both the physical come together with the psychological, which includes also emotions. There's an emotional link also there. And those coming, when they all come together, you fall in love. And aptly, it's called fall because it's a fall in consciousness.

But.

That'S okay. If that's what you experience and that life wants you to experience that it's part of your learning, that fall in consciousness. Now, it's not immediately, of course, experienced as a fall. It's experienced as a high. And only afterwards do you realize, oh, that was a fall. And afterwards can be after a year, it can be after three months, it can be after the honeymoon, it can be soon after. You move in together. And then the suffering starts. What before was the love now becomes the suffering. And then for a while it can happen that you fluctuate for the next year or two or three. Between still feeling the love and the suffering. And then usually it comes to an end after a while, or you compromise and for some other reason stay together. So that's the. Now, if you are able to feel in the other, well, first of all in yourself that which is beyond form, the essence, the stillness, the presence, whatever.

We want to call it.

And by sensing it in yourself and being it, then you recognize it another. And that recognition that in the space of stillness is true love, which doesn't need the other.

Because the other only reflects to you who you are.

But even there it can happen that the form of the Other, because You are not just the formless temporarily, you, you are also the form temporarily. You are either a man or a woman temporarily. You have this body and this form, this man or this woman and this body. And the emotional field may find a certain resonance with on different levels, be it sexual, emotional, psychological levels, a certain resonance with the other form. And that resonance, that is what in the unenlightened romantic love makes up the entire relationship. But now, when you are. When you know who you are in your essence, all those factors are still there, but they do not make up the entire relationship. Beyond the. The resonance between the sexual or emotional or physical resonance, there is a deeper level present. So you can go through the motions of romantic love with the transcendent level also present in yourself and recognizing it in the other. So romantic love may, after a while, of course, for the relationship to be truly deep in any relationship, some transcendent element has to be there, because it's.

Not going to last.

Otherwise. It doesn't mean necessarily that people need to be totally awake already, totally awake, knowing who they are. But some element of the formless must be there eventually in the relationship for the relationship to survive and be a true relationship. Otherwise all you have left in the relationship is your judgments about the other and physical attraction and just mind, emotional. And that ultimately is not enough. It's not enough. The added element, the transcendent element, needs to be there. And if the transcendent is there, you can be quite content even without the romantic relationship. You no longer say I need that. When it's there, it's beautiful, but you don't need that.

A conscious conversation is basically a conversation.

Where.

It'S between two people. Each person is not identified with their viewpoint, their perspective, their mental position. They put forward their perspective, their positions, their viewpoints without any sense of self in it, because they don't need that. Because their sense of self is derived from the presence that they can sense throughout the conversation in the background of their being. And then they can play with concepts, they can play with opinions, they can play with words, they can play with arguments even this is my argument is this. And then the other person. Well, and mine is that there's a. The famous saying.

We.

What is it? We agree to disagree or something like that. That sounds relatively conscious. Because if you, at least, if you're not identified with your positions, that's fine. We agree, that's okay. It's interesting, self identification with mental positions is the unconsciousness because then you will be defending your mental positions, but you're really Defending your sense of self. And this is why these conversations become. Can easily and very quickly become very unpleasant.

They are unconscious.

So in unconscious conversation and with very unconscious people, it can even happen. I mean, you can probably read about it in the papers all the time. They get so, so defensive and aggressive about their respective mental positions. They start physically attacking each other. It even happens sometimes. You can see it in certain parliaments in some places. And suddenly all these members of violence start attacking each other. Washington sometimes gets close, but it probably hasn't quite happened. It could happen there too, who knows?

Okay, so if you love everybody unconditionally, how can you possibly decide who is going to be your partner? That's the. Because it seems that there's no preference anymore. Or if it's physical attraction, isn't there a contradiction? If you're in a higher state of consciousness, then shouldn't or not be physically attracted to anybody? Is that the implication, the question? Well, the love we are talking about, the unconditional love towards human beings and life forms is a. See, what is it that you love in the other? When you love unconditionally, you don't love their physical form, you don't love their psychological form, their personality. The unconditional love goes deeper. It's a transcendent love that what you love is not the form, but the formless essence of the other. And you can only love that when you can sense within yourself that dimension, the formless. When you can be still and present enough and then look at another human being, then you can recognize something. What you recognize is, for lack of a better word, the consciousness, which is the essence of the other human as it is the essence of who you are. Consciousness. Prior to the consciousness, being born into some kind of form personality, which is there in the physical form, which is there. But in every being there is still the dimension of consciousness that is prior to form. Although the human being has become form, consciousness assumed form has incarnated, so to speak. But that doesn't mean that the formless in timeless consciousness is lost. It's still there as the essence. And when you can sense it in yourself, you can sense, because you are still and present enough from that dimension in yourself, you can sense it in the other. And that is love. It's basically a recognition that in essence the other is the same as you. But then of course, there's always. That is the transcendent dimension to every human being. In addition to that transcendent dimension, there is a form identity of every human being. Every human being has A physical form and emotional form and a mental form. That's the inner, that's the personality. So the physical appearance and the personality consisting of mental, emotional conditioning and so on. So there are the two levels. The unconditional love towards all humans is the transcendent love. You love the formless. You recognize the formless as yourself in the other. But then you are still here as a form too. And the form may respond to another form, the physical. There can be physical attraction. It is not incompatible with the transcendent realization, although some ancient or not so ancient traditions may tell you that it is not incompatible. You can have physical attraction on the level of form. You can also have an attraction towards the mental, emotional form of that other human being because it resonates with something in your own form. So that means.

You may be drawn.

To another human being, physically or mentally, emotionally, because you resonate with that. And then perhaps you enter into a relationship. So different levels operate. The transcendent remains. It can become obscured through excessive attachment, of course, to the mental or emotional dimension in the other. So in a relationship, the realization of essence identity, as I sometimes call it, can become obscured when form identity takes over completely, which could happen through the pain body, which could happen through emotional getting identified with arising emotions and losing touch with the transcendent. Yes, that can happen, but it's not incompatible. Everybody's challenge is to balance the two in their lives, in their relationships, to relate to the other on the transcendent level.

And at the same time, if it's.

There on an emotional, mental, physical level.

It.