How Consciousness Can Help in Difficulties | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

So that to just add a practical afterthought to this, if possible at all, do not resent encountering difficulties or problems in your life, because that's how it works. And it doesn't stop. Even if you awaken, Even if you are awakened, there are still things that you get challenged. Further, everybody gets challenged by life in one way or another. You can't. Even the trust fund baby gets challenged by life eventually. So when you encounter difficulties, small or big, See, if you don't say this should not be happening, this is the underlying attitude. If that's your underlying attitude, you're in a state of resistance. For example, many difficulties come in the form of other humans. Humans are difficult. You might have noticed many. So they come in the form of other humans. And then the underlying mindset for many people is, this shouldn't be happening. These people shouldn't behave like that. What we're really saying is they should be enlightened. Why aren't they? Well, what about you? So difficulties come in the form of other humans. And then you see, this is meant to be. You're meant to be challenged by other humans. And you cannot not be challenged. No matter how conscious you are. You will encounter other humans who are not or not yet. And they will try to create problems for you and sometimes achieve that. It is true also that you attract fewer unconscious humans into your life as you awaken more the awakening. It is true that you are not going to move in circles where you are surrounded completely by completely unconscious humans. But you cannot totally avoid contact with unconscious humans. In fact, they need to come into your field of consciousness because they can be helped in many cases by being in your field of consciousness. But they can only be helped if you do not react when you encounter them. You say you do what you have to do, but you don't. The underlying mindset is not, this shouldn't be. They shouldn't do that. They should know better. Well, they don't. So then other difficulties come in other ways because you can encounter. So we just really talked about relationship. Other humans means relationships. They can be the intimate relationships of people living together. There can be relationships of people working together, other kinds of relationships. Then now this already makes up for a lot of problems that people face. Relationship problems. And then you have others. If you don't have relationship problems, then life says, okay, I'll give him or her something else. Then you have a work problem at work. Usually connected with a relationship too, but maybe some additional factors. Or you have a health problem, you have a problem where you live, you have a financial problem that's a big one for many, not enough. Or maybe it is enough, but your mind says it's not enough. Who knows? Shortage. The problem of losing your job, the problem of insecurity, which isn't a problem unless you think you should have security, that life is insecure, you don't know what's going to happen next to you. That can be a huge challenge. But once you accept that actually insecurity can contribute if you no longer fight it. If you don't demand that your life should be secure, it can contribute to the arising of presence because it forces you more into the present moment. Insecurity means you go into the future and see you can't control it anymore. You don't know what's going to happen next. Oh dear, I wish I knew. I wish I had a secure job, a secure income, a secure family environment. I wish I had a secure pension plan. I wish I had a secure life insurance. I wish I had secure this, insecure that, then I would be okay. Of course you wouldn't. These things are. If you remove the element of risk or insecurity from a person's life, this is similar to the trust fund baby. Then you remove one of the most important areas where you can grow by being challenged. So sometimes the emphasis in our societies in the west is too much on security these days. The I mentioned somewhere before I read last year I was going by a school, secondary school, and it was the beginning of the summer vacation and they have a big sign outside where there's always notices. They post notices and then on that big sign at the school it said have a great vacation, be safe. That sounds reasonable advice because you don't want to be unsafe. But is that the main thing of your vacation? You come back after the summer, the teacher asks you and say I was really safe. What did you do? I didn't leave my room because I wanted to be really safe. So there is life again needs to be a balance between security and risk taking and accepting the insecurity, the basic insecurity of all life. When I wrote the Power of Now, I was already in my late 40s and I didn't have a home anymore. That wasn't the time, the original time, when I didn't have a home because after the original time I did have a home, but then I let go of it and then I had a limited amount of money, as I briefly mentioned in the book, to finish the book. What would happen after that in my late 40s no life insurance, no job prospects, no income, no savings except those that were running out. No home, no relationship, even, Nothing. And that insecurity contributed to the intensity of presence through which the book came. It could have led to fear and it could have blocked me if I had demanded that my life should be more secure than it is. But I did not demand that security. I accepted the insecurity and it became enormous presence, because all security has to do with future orientation. So the more you have future orientation, the more insecure you feel because you cannot control the outcome. So the fact that my money was running out, that I had no home of my own anymore, I was just going from place to place. Place contributed to the energy behind the writing and the book. So that's a wonderful thing. Some people cannot take that step. They feel that step into the unknown. The impulse that came to me was so strong at the time when I knew I had to leave England for the reason I didn't know. And I had to move to the west coast of North America, didn't know why, but the impulse was so strong I had to obey it. Well, I didn't have to, but I did. But I'm sure if I had not obeyed that impulse, which didn't just come once it was there every day, I would have probably fallen ill and maybe would be dead already by now. So the life demanded that I step out into the unknown. If that is the case with you, then you know what to do without being rash about it. You still need to look at the practicalities. So insecurity is one of the great challenges. Wonderful. And all these things, of course, life insurance, these are just illusions. How can you insure your life? First of all, life insurance isn't life insurance, it's death insurance, because that's what it is about. They just don't call it death insurance because nobody would want to buy it. So the universe, the one consciousness, whatever you want to call it, is awakening in every human. And every human's essential identity is that one consciousness. So it's not a personal thing, because if you think yourself only as a person, then you have the delusion that you're an autonomous entity cut off from everything and everybody else. But you're not an autonomous entity. You are just a cell in this vastness. And for a few years, the cell gives itself a name or is given a name. So and so that's me, me, me. It really changes your life when you, the way you feel, you sense your own life to be. You are the awakening consciousness in this body. It's wonderful. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation. It.