How Challenges Can Accelerate Awakening | Eckhart Tolle Foundation

They just don't know it. They have not found it. They haven't discovered it because they are trapped in the surface of their lives. All the people who came to me for advice, counseling, and so on, those that were faced with very difficult life situations, had the greatest potential for spiritual awakening, and those that led a relatively comfortable life, the potential for spiritual awakening was much diminished. That was a very interesting realization, and so life situation becomes uncomfortable and can become Very uncomfortable in many ways. It could happen that you go to a doctor for some tests, then a few days later he calls you back and says, "I need to talk to you." You go in and says, "Well, it's a big C word." I had that, by the way, three years ago. The doctor said, "Sorry to tell you." You have— see, and through— to cut that long story short, it's not important, I had surgery and then I did a lot of self-meditation and I seem to be okay now. But it could also happen, and it happens to thousands of people, Even just in this country, every day the doctor tells them, I'm afraid you might have a year. If you're lucky, you may have 2 years, and that's all you have left. And you might only be 40 years old, 50 years old. I've worked with people who were— who knew they were going to die soon, and in some of them I experienced an amazing Transformation. The transformation that happened was a collapse of their sense of identity, that limited sense of identity. It had nothing left to feed on anymore because you had no more time. And so suddenly— and this is what we are talking about today, that's important— something else, something deeper opened up, something that transcends this limited personal identity. I've also had people who've lost everything who came, who said, 5, 10 years ago somebody gave me your book. I looked at it and it was completely meaningless. I thought, why did you give me that book? They had the same opinion as the reviewer in Time magazine. When Oprah liked my books, they became well-known and it was then reviewed in Time magazine and the reviewer in Time magazine said, it's all mumbo-jumbo. Because the viewer had absolutely no access to the spiritual dimension, couldn't understand it at all. It's mumbo jumbo. By the way, not surprisingly, after that time, Time Magazine went downhill very fast. And it's no longer available in print now. Correlation is not causation, but you never know. And so, people someone was given a book, of course completely meaningless, and then a few years later, some ten years later, I've heard several cases like that. They happened to pick up the book again, and suddenly, wow! It meant something to them. They could feel it triggered something in them. The awakening. But what happened in the intervening years from the first time when the book was meaningless and the second time it was deeply meaningful? They suffered during those 10 years. They suffered. Their daughter, just one case of somebody I worked with, his daughter died of a drug overdose. His wife left him. He lost his job and he ended up homeless. So his entire identity crumbled. There was nothing left. At first, this— I've been mentioning that could also happen when you come to this place. At first you hear, who am I now? And the world will put some label onto you. It will put a label on to define you, and if you're not careful, you might adopt that label. It's a very negative label that the world gives you. But here too, the potential for being here is that your old sense of identity, the egoic identity, is no longer satisfying. There may be people here, for example, who were young members of a gang. And gang— why do you become a member of a gang? Because it gives you an identity. It gives you a sense of self-worth. To become a member of a gang, you think you know who you are or what you are. It's a very fragile sense of identity. It's a very fragile sense of identity. It only leads to suffering, but that's— for a young person like that, it seems in many cases, it seems to be the only option. They don't know anything else. They don't have anything else. They're desperately seeking an identity. And then something happens. Many don't survive for more than a few years. And if you're lucky, you come to prison. You're lucky because otherwise you would get killed anyway. very soon. But then you arrive here and this identity can no longer be sustained. It causes suffering. The crumbling of an identity is a very painful thing because you begin to question, who am I? It can be a period of great disorientation and a very chaotic time period in your life. But now the wonderful thing is something opens up for you when the egoic identity is no longer satisfying. Then either you become extremely unhappy or despondent, or you take refuge in an even stronger identity, which would be the case, for example, if you come here and gradually you become more and more bitter and resentful and angry. So there would be no inner development. You would take refuge in another identity of somebody who is extremely, who has been wronged by the world or whatever it is, the narrative that you have, That you derive your sense of self from. You could go that way, and I believe there are many people who leave this place as more angry than before, more bitter, more resentful than before. And there are others like yourselves who, when you leave this place, you are not the same person that entered this place. You have undergone a profound transformation of consciousness. For example, this happened in a famous case, Nelson Mandela of South Africa. He was in a prison cell for, I believe, 27 years, and— but he had been given life, a life sentence, so as far as he was concerned, He didn't know whether he would ever come out, or the likelihood that he would never come out. Then after 27 years, the political situation in South Africa changed and he was released. And he was released as a wise man, totally transformation from the man that had gone into prison 20 years before. And as that wise man, he was able able to usher in a peaceful transition in South Africa rather than civil war. Through his wisdom, he was able to usher in a peaceful transition to a democratic government in South Africa. And if you just looked at him and listened to his words, you could see there was an inner peace there, there was a wisdom there, and He would never have achieved that if he had not spent those 27 years in the prison cell. His identity got eroded, his previous identity. He was a revolutionary. His previous identity got eroded, and we don't know the details of this transformation. It probably happened over Period of time. For most humans, the awakening process is gradual. It happens over several years in many cases. In some rare cases, the shift to that deeper identity happened in an instant. It just kind of happened to me overnight, but that's relatively rare. That is The ego breaks down overnight. In 95% of cases, it's an awakening process, an awakening process. So if this identity that dissolves, I call that— I didn't write that in the book because that term didn't come to me when I was writing, it came later when I was giving talks. I call that, there's the super— the surface I. Everybody says I, I, I. I. The surface I, the surface I is the old identity you identify with, a gang, possessions, even achievements, status in society, whatever. Physical strength too can be a sense of identity if you have you're very physically strong, that also is a surface I, a surface identity, and that when it becomes uncomfortable, we call that suffering. That is suffering. The surface identity becomes— you become uncomfortable in your skin. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. The narrative that you had based your life on, which is the the story of me, you call it me and my life, the story of me crumbles. It's very painful. It's suffering. And some people get stuck at that level. They cannot move from the suffering to that deeper level. They get stuck in the realm of suffering and that's very unfortunate. If they could only be given a little bit of help, a hint, and many of you are destined, I know that, to also teach others because you are going through the awakening process. So you can help others whether you do it here or when you leave here, you can help others who are stuck in this intermediate no man's land where you've come to— your identity is no longer satisfying, it's crumbling, but you cannot quite transition to the deeper identity that I call the deep I. So you— every human being has 2 identities. You have the surface I and you have the deep I. The spiritual awakening is the realization of that deeper level, and I'm going to do not yet in a little while little kind of meditation with you to access a bit more deeply that that level of depth within yourself. In various spiritual traditions, they have words for this deep eye. This they all talk about it, but Because they use different terms, people think they talk about totally different things. They just use different terms. In Buddhism, in many Buddhist— in certain Buddhist traditions, they use the term Buddha nature. They say everybody has Buddha nature within, they just don't know it, they have not found it, they haven't discovered it. because they are trapped in the surface of their lives. They have not discovered their Buddha nature. Your purpose is to discover and awaken to your Buddha nature, which transcends who or what you are as a person. And we have the same in esoteric Christianity. For example, in the— I don't know if you're familiar with the New Testament, the letters of Saint Paul, Saint Paul was a very interesting person who wrote a significant part of the New Testament. He spent a lot of time in prison. He had a lot of suffering and he came to this realization. He said, let's see if I can remember that quote. He said, I have been crucified with Christ so that It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. I have been crucified with Christ so that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. That is the same expressed in Christian terminology. Christ is your— Savior. deeper identity. It's your Buddha nature. It doesn't really matter what label you give it. The reality is there. The reality is there. And so, and people discover this in many different ways, and when they talk about it, often they use different terms. Just a quote that just comes to mind. There's a French writer Camus, he wrote, he got a Nobel Prize for Literature in the '50s, I believe. In one of his works, he wrote the following sentence. He said, in the midst of winter, I discovered within myself an invincible summer. In the midst of winter, I discovered deep within myself an invincible summer. Of course, this is metaphorical. He's not talking about the actual winter. He's talking about a very difficult life situation that he describes the midst of winter. In the midst of winter, I discovered that depth within myself, an invincible summer. An invincible summer. A beautiful way of speaking about that. Thank you.