From Self-Sabotaging to Conscious Freedom | Eckhart Tolle

When you hold things down, often after a while, an explosion happens. It's like a boiling kettle. Can't hold it for that long. And then you have some kind of rationalization in your mind. You'll do it anyway. The mind will give you a reason. Certain actions take place. You do things, you know they are not the optimal things to do, but you can't help it. Something acts through you. There seems to be some power there that makes you do things that you know are not right or not good for you, and yet you can't stop it. That seems to be the case. And that, of course, is often the case with people who are with you. It might be many different areas of your life, but this is also the case with addictions. For example, people who are addicted to a certain substance or who are addicted to eating too much or drinking, there's something that overpowers them in you. That seems to obscure the awareness, or the awareness is pushed to the side. And this thing, this powerful thing, does it anyway. And again, my answer is a little bit similar to what I said to the first questioner tonight. The power of presence needs to grow in you so that it is strong enough not to. It's not willpower, because willpower is not the best way of dealing with these things. But what I'm talking about could sometimes be confused with willpower. But willpower includes the application of a force to hold something down. Let's say if your addiction is to have a. To indulge in intoxicating beverages. In other words, booze is the British word, then. And you can feel it. It comes on. There it comes. You know the bottles are there. There they are. And you feel you have to go there, and you have to reach out and you have to pour yourself a drink. Now, when you're not aware at all, you don't even know what you're doing. You're so unconscious that you're already holding the drink and you're drinking. Then at that point, you even know that you're drinking. The same with food. I've spoken to people who have had addictions to food. They often say they wake up when they've already eaten in the middle of the night, they've already unconsciously gone to the fridge, taken out the chocolate cake, and they're already halfway through the chocolate cake when suddenly they what am I doing? So awareness comes in at a very late point. Willpower would be to hold an urge down that say they have the pull or even what the example you gave. You want to turn on the tv. And you know it's not right because I. I'm not here for that. And he actually told us not to do it. But I can't help it. I have to go. I can't, I can't. No willpower, you would say. I'm going to hold this down. I'm not going to do it. And I can feel the urge. But you're holding it down. When you hold things down, often after a while an explosion happens. It's like a boiling kettle. You can't hold it for that long. And then you have some kind of rationalization in your mind. You do it anyway. The mind will give you a reason. I spoke to a man who is addicted to food. And his body was very unhealthy. He was extremely dangerously overweight. Unfortunately, he's passed away. But he was a wonderful man and he talked to me. And often before he goes to indulge in excessive eating, his mind would say something like, you've had a rough day. You really deserve a treat. It explains why it's the right thing. I'm not going to do it for much longer, but just today I really need a treat. Life hasn't been treating me, but it's the thing only pleasure I have. What shall I do? It's all I have. There's no other pleasure in my life. Okay, go to the French. Listen. I attempted to be able to show him that this thought is a deception. And I had a little bit of success. But unfortunately it was too late to save him. Well, he is no longer in the body, but that's okay. The essence of never. He probably reincarnates now into the opposite. Perhaps in order to learn a lesson. Again, what I said to first questioner to practice presence, power. When you're not particularly tempted by anything and you're just your room, there's no particular temptation. Go into the body, feel the inner body. Be aware, be present when you sense perception. I recommended that practice sense perception. Feel the presence pervading every cell in your body, the inner body, awareness. So that there is enough presence for when this impulse comes, you use it as. Don't say go away or something like that, because it won't go away, it'll do it anyway. The impulse comes, whatever it may be, and you observe. You realize it's not a good thing that it wants you to do. And if there's enough awareness, use it as. Every time an impulse of that kind comes. This is your special spiritual practice. So instead of wanting to get rid of it, welcome. When an Impulse of that kind comes and see that this is a spiritual practice specially designed for you. Of course it is. And so how do you transform this into spiritual practice? First, you realize this is an opportunity for practicing. And the first thing you could do is you practice delaying, obeying the impulse, not obeying it immediately, but delaying it. And you observe. Then let's say you wanted to go to the TV and turn this thing on. You feel the impulse or say, okay, oh, here's my next spiritual practice. I'm now going to delay the turning on of this show on TV for three minutes. And during those three minutes, you observe this, the impulse in you. You observe it. It's an energy form. And you observe it. Oh, there you are. There you are. Do you feel it? It's like a little gremlin. And so this time gap can be a very useful first practice that you introduce. A time gap before you give in. You're not saying, I'm not going to give in. No, you say three minutes. During those three minutes, I'm going to observe you. And you shine the light of consciousness, the light of awareness, on this impulse, which is an energy form. And it can be an energy form that is in you as a kind of emotion. It can also dangerously invade your mind and make you the explanation I gave just now with this friend of mine. The thought comes into your head that explains why you should give in to this impulse. That can happen easily. And there too, you need to be present enough, sufficiently aware, so that you do not believe in every thought, especially those kinds of thoughts. You don't believe in every thought that comes into your head. You observe the thought because the thought is part of it. And even to the thought you say, oh, there you are. There's the thought, and there's the feeling behind the thought. And you set aside three minutes. During those three minutes, you observe that isn't that interesting, Wonderful spiritual practice. And while you observe, you grow in consciousness. You apply consciousness to it. Only three minutes. Three minutes. And then after the three minutes, see how you feel. It may not. It may have dissolved, but probably not yet. It's still there. And then you can see, can I do another two or three minutes? Am I strong enough for that? Is my awareness strong enough? And yes, it is. Don't believe you might stop this nonsense. Do it anyway. And so you. And then you achieve five or six minutes of. And then what happens after that? We don't know. It is possible that the impulse has receded, gone back to a dormant state. And you suddenly. You don't have to do it. It's also possible that the impulse is still there and you cannot. After five minutes there's not enough awareness left and you. But you have to go and do it. But at least the five minute interval, the time gap was very important. And when anything like that happens, you always introduce a time gap for your spiritual practice during which you do not hold it down, but you observe it. So you don't push it down, you observe, oh, there you are. So if it's a gremlin, you don't say, you hold you down. There's a grammar, look at it, there it is. Oh, another interesting thing, when you apply awareness to something, you shine the light of consciousness on it. The possibility of transformation is also there. It arises as you shine the light of consciousness on it. This is the famous example from fairy stories and so on. The frog, you don't kill the frog or do something with it. You kiss the frog. And the moment you kiss the frog, it turns into the prince. And so the frog stands for. This is like mythology. There's some wisdom embedded in these fairy stories, which by the way, many of them were not created by the people who wrote them. They were already orally transmitted over long periods of time. So there are mythologies that often contain a lot of wisdom and there's certainly a lot of wisdom in kissing the frog, which then turns into something beautiful. So there's something ugly. But you give it kind of, you give it an acceptance and love. You look at it and then transformation happens. So that is the spiritual practice. And after a while you will find that initially, perhaps after the time gap, you still do it. But then gradually this time gap gets longer and then you may observe that the energy behind the impulse weakens and it subsides until next time. But gradually it weakens and all these self sabotage mechanisms then begin to gradually disappear. If you apply the awareness to it. Observe them. There it is. So think of the frog. These are all the frogs and whatever they are, gremlins, frogs that live in you as energy fields. And the energies are trapped there. They are not in themselves bad, they are trapped. Like the pain body is an energy that is emotional energy that's trapped. When the pain body dissolves, it transforms into presence. It's like a fire. You put a log into a fire, so it's consumed and transmuted perhaps is the word, it's transmuted into presence. And here we have again the famous example of. In Middle Ages certain philosophers were very interested in alchemy. Alchemy was supposed to be the transformation of base metal into gold through a chemical process of transformation. But the true meaning behind alchemy was the transformation of human consciousness. They have many images and so on. They could not speak and write about this openly because they would have been executed by the church at the time. So they had to hide all these symbols, as if it were to do the transformation of base metal into gold, of something that is, first of all, not very desirable, into something wonderful. And that's the alchemical process of transmutation, which really is something in the universe, human psyche. There's an entire long treatise written by Carl Jung, the psychologist, on alchemy, with countless illustrations and just fascinating things. But it's the transformation of something undesirable, initially, into awareness, into consciousness. And this is. So you're lucky to have that tailor designed spiritual practice for you.