Eckhart Tolle explores how suffering and challenges wake us up to presence and consciousness. He uses metaphors like ocean waves to show how difficulties are built into existence, and argues that expecting life without problems is an illusion most people hold.
The worst crimes of humanity are not perpetrated by the criminals or people who are obviously either mentally, totally insane, clinically insane or hardened criminals, or they do bad things. But this is nothing compared to what so called normal people do when they identify with the collective ego entire countries have destroyed. In Russia, in Germany, in China in the 20th century, normal people have killed millions even of their own people in their own country. Not even talking about warfare between countries. So that's a gradual awakening, happens through intense pain, intense suffering. You don't even need to. You can observe it just by observing yourself how up to a point you needed your suffering. If you hadn't suffered, you wouldn't be here. If I hadn't suffered, I wouldn't be here. I know that I would be. Don't know what I would be doing. Probably drinking beer and watching television. No need to do anything. What's the point? The challenges come at you continuously, small and large. Up to a point. The challenges, the way in which you respond or rather react to the challenges, create suffering, to use that term, create unhappiness, misery, anger, many forms of suffering. But I'm using, it's a Buddhist term, suffering unhappiness, you could say, in its many, many forms. So when the challenges come, up to a certain point, the challenges make you unhappy, the challenges make you miserable, resentful, angry, dejected. All kinds of things happen when the challenges come one after another. Life never leaves you alone. Oh God, I want out of here. Some people say, why? Just when I thought I've sorted out one area of my life, okay, I got the job and a great job and everything is. Then something else goes wrong. There's a relationship problem, or then there's a physical problem, or there's a problem in somebody close to you. Something bad is happening to them, or there's some death happening close to you. Suddenly some great loss or whatever it is, unpleasant people making your life difficult, not unheard of, it happens. And so up to a certain point, the challenges of life are transformed into unhappiness. And then you reach a point where you recognize the challenges are inevitable. They continue coming. It's like the waves when you watch the ocean and the big, the big waves come and break. They come and you can see when approaching, at first it doesn't even look that big, but you can see this movement of the water comes, it's coming, it's coming and then finally it goes. This is how challenges come at you. But they're not always this huge, these huge waves. Sometimes they are there can be little irritating ripples that come at you don't like that. And up to a point you become unhappy, you're not happy, and you complain about life, you don't want it, I've had enough. Or you get very angry at everybody and everything because it's all their fault. Or you angrily deny the existence of God. How would God allow a place like this? I would be morally superior. I could create a better world than this. How can he allow this to happen? This is very common argument. We may address it again at some other point during the. And so you get angry at God. Some God in this case is of course a mental concept that you have of somebody who is in control of everything. And so you get angry with God, and then you get angry that there is no God. And then up to a point, and suddenly, when you no longer demand that life should not be difficult, that these things should not be happening to you, then suddenly something shifts. Challenges keep coming, but they no longer make you unhappy, they make you more present. So there comes the wave of the ripple. And perhaps you see it coming, or it comes so suddenly that you don't see it coming. There it is. You go, ah, there's another one. And as they come, they create an alertness in you that would not be there if the challenges were not be happening. In fact, you needed them because without them, you would be half asleep. This is the human condition. You would be in a somewhat lethargic state because life is fine. I'm doing fine. Every animal develops their particular power because of challenges. They need the challenges. And then through the challenges, they develop certain powers of like, extreme speed. And they all have a high degree of alertness. The animal needs its own alertness, very different from the presence that arises in humans. It is a higher level of consciousness, but it's the same consciousness. The animal is very present and alert. Because if the animal were not present and alert, it would have become extinct a long time ago. And so some animals, like the deer, there's deer around here, deer with big ears there. And the deer, if you look at the ears of deer, they are enormous, very long, and the ears go wherever there's a little noise. The ear moves that like a radar, and is very, very alert. Because if they were not alert, would you get. Well, maybe not here, but until very recently and in many places still the case, it would get killed. It only survived. It had to develop the alertness. Like every bird has to develop a high degree of alertness. Because when you look at a bird, you see Pure alertness on its own level. Because the bird goes beautiful, you can learn presence. And then, of course, when they're not alert and they find a safe place and then they're totally at rest and they're not thinking about their problems, because that's not. They haven't reached the level of consciousness that produces problems. They are below problems. And your destiny is not to regress to a level of consciousness below problems by becoming stupid by. Because that's not where the evolution is going. The evolution is going towards greater consciousness. You rise above the problems. You don't fall below your problems. You begin to rise above your problems. And then the problems, certain problems are still there. But also, yes, challenges continue to come. But because the way in which you deal with the challenges is now suddenly very different. You no longer complain them. You no longer have an underlying assumption that these things should not be happening to you, this should not be happening. No, you see it for what it is. It's one of the many challenges of life that come and come and come. So you no longer have this assumption that there is something wrong with your life because of this. You can also see through the delusion of things that you see online. You begin to realize that what people post on Facebook is an illusory image of who they are. You no longer think, oh, look, their life is so great. Because look how the great meals that they haven't sent photos of. And they're always happy. Look where I am. And they look so good. Their face is just so unblemished. Of course, you have to remind yourself that these are technical things that you can use. You can overexpose the face so much that you don't even recognize who is there. You just see the big eyes and everybody looks beautiful like that. They did it to me too. We had photographers done and I just couldn't get rid of these photos that we need new photos. But every photographer, when you get the photos, has done something to your face. It's crazy. So the challenge is there's no longer the expectation that the world is here to make you happy. It's not.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
