This is a YouTube video titled "Finding the True Essence of You | Eckhart Tolle Explains" containing a spiritual talk by Eckhart Tolle. The content explores the distinction between form identity and essence identity, discussing how people often identify with their external attributes and abilities, which leads to suffering, and emphasizes the importance of discovering a deeper spiritual essence beyond ego and form. The talk was created in October 2023 and focuses on spiritual growth and self-realization.
Find death before death finds you. There was a spiritual teacher, philosopher in early 20th century from Gardiev, from Russian area. He later moved to France and taught there. He had an interesting. He said people have a personality and essence. And he said many people have a strongly developed personality and virtually no essence. And it's very rare for people to have more essence than personality. It was an interesting way of looking at it. And that's of course how it is that I'm now elaborating. He only, there's only a little bit of that. And then he dropped the whole matter and he didn't talk about it again. So the essence, there are two dimensions in your identity. There is the form identity, the you as form with your. Your physical form and your name and all your knowledge and education and abilities and your past, whatever happened in your past, it's all connected and it all makes up your who you are on the level of form, who you perceive yourself to be and who others see you. And there is a connection between how the world or other people see you and how you see yourself. And when you are trapped exclusively in a form identity, so you only know yourself as a form identity, then how other people see you is of extreme importance to you because it contributes to how you see yourself. So you might become self conscious. And see, self conscious in English means you're very much aware of how you're being perceived and you feel always a little uneasy because you feel observed and people are judging you and you want to appear in a certain way. And there is a natural tendency in humans to emphasize their form identity to the world. It's a natural thing. So I'm not. You can't tell a little child. When the little child begins to say or says you're observing that one child says to the other child, look, I can do this. You can't do what I can do. I can do this, but you can't. Or the child says, my dad has a bigger car than yours. You can't say to the child, don't do that. You are emphasizing your form identity, but you know that's what's happening. It's a natural tendency in humans to emphasize, it could be a possession I have more than you. It could be my body looks better than yours or is stronger than yours or bigger than yours or taller than yours. Or it could be I have an ability that you don't have. Children start with that. And it's that I can play the piano. What can you play? I play the ping pong machine. So the Emphasize form identity is a natural thing. It can be. There is a point where this should come to a natural conclusion. I would say in a more evolved humanity, the emphasis of form identity as a person reaches adulthood a little bit after is replaced at the moment, this is not what's happening, but can be replaced by something more genuine and deeper. And that is finding your essence identity. That's underneath your form identity. And that is spiritual dimension. Finding the spiritual dimension in yourself so that who you think you are is no longer. You still have a form identity. Yes, that level is still there. Undoubtedly you have certain abilities. You're good at this, you're not good at that. You're better than the other person at this thing, but not as good as in the other thing that remains. But it no longer gives you your sense of who you are. And that can only happen when something else arises that is deeper than the form and that's the presence. And when the presence arriving in you, it has no form and is not tangible. It's there pervading your entire being. Then suddenly you realize and you feel who you are essentially has nothing to do with what you possess, how your body looks, your abilities, what you can do or what you know. That's another one. That's form identity. With what I know, I know more than you. So then comes the realization who you essentially are is nothing to do with possessions or looks or physical or mental abilities or other abilities, but comes from a much deeper place. And that deeper place no longer operates through comparison. You don't. Your essence identity does not deepen because it's stronger than somebody else's essence identity. You don't compare yourself anymore to others in order to find out who you are. And that's such a liberation from only knowing yourself as that particular form. Because with that comes a lot of suffering. A lot of suffering comes when. When your who you are is derived from the form of you. Because at some point let's. If you have good looks and then your who you are is based mostly on that, and you feel superior to most because you look so much better. Then you look down on all these other people who are not good looking at all. And then you even emphasize it. So you buy great even you look even greater with the wonderful things you wear. And then as the decades pass, you look in the mirror and there's something wrong slowly. And you notice that the mirror is becoming seems to becoming defective. It no longer shows you the beauty of who you are externally. And then you need to pay for repair jobs. But even There it's just postponing the suffering that inevitably comes when what your identity was based on begins to collapse. And that's awful. Or it could be an ability. You are very good at something, but then at some point something happens and you are not good at it anymore. Or somebody else suddenly comes who is so much better than you. One could give many examples. Knowledge. Perhaps your mind doesn't retain the knowledge anymore, or it becomes redundant. Having an encyclopedic mind is no longer a great thing because the Internet is always better. Wikipedia. So sooner or later, if it strengths, then eventually you can't compete anymore. You get arthritis, can't jump high enough anymore. All these things sooner or later, when your identity is based on form, then you begin to suffer. So it's vital to have both. But it's not easy because your form identity has its own kind of momentum. And that's the ego. The ego is anything you identify with as yourself becomes part of your ego identity. So form identity is ego. The ego is a formation, an energy field, an energy form in you that refuses to go. It wants to survive as this particular form. It wants to defend its form, it wants to strengthen its form. So although there may be the evolutionary impulse of the universe may be at work in you, which wants some something else to arise, there may be the ego trying, not wanting it, not wanting it to arise. And so you get scared of stillness, of inner peace, can't sit still. You don't want to stop thinking because you think I'm going to disappear if I stop thinking. And you want to continue to have opinions about who you are, the old opinions about who you are. And there have been spiritual teachers and spiritual masters and mystics throughout the ages have realized form identity, essence identity. And there is a whole stream of spirituality that is based on de emphasizing your form identity. And of course St. Francis is part of that stream of de emphasizing form identity, not saying, look at me, I'm so good at this or that, but that says basically I'm nobody, I'm nobody in particular that can go too far where it becomes another form. So you have to be very careful when that happens. Because when you say I'm the most miserable sinner, then you've. That's not quite it. That's because that's a big another form identity that can be even stronger than to say I'm the most saintly person there's ever been. I'm the most miserable sinner. So dreadful. But to de emphasize form identity.
