How do I Forgive Myself For Not Being Present? Q&A Eckhart Tolle

How do I truly forgive myself for not being present with another? Janice? Well, I assume the question refers to something that happened in the past, not in the present. Because if the other is here with you now, then there's nothing to forgive. You just be present. So it must be something that you were not present with someone in the past because there was not enough presence in you. You cannot manifest any behavior beyond your level of consciousness. Either you had no idea what presence was, you were not yet able to access that dimension of consciousness, or it was there very weak in you, not strong enough, perhaps, to survive in that particular interaction or relationship. Some parents have that feeling also because when they look back upon how they brought up their children, they cannot believe how unconscious they were as parents. Now, there's no such thing as totally conscious parents. No matter what you do, there's always something that you don't do, right? Absolute perfection is just not possible. But there are now, for the first time, perhaps in history, there are parents who are relatively conscious, who are endeavoring to be conscious as parents. In my generation, it was unheard of. Conscious parents, what is that? You just. The parents brought you up in the same way that they were brought up, in the same way that was sanctioned by the surrounding culture. That's how you were brought up. Conscious parents? What's that nonsense? And of course, in my generation, I didn't know anybody who had even remotely conscious parents. My parents, of course, they did the best they could. They loved me to the best of their ability. But they were both very unconscious. In the later, when my dad was very old, some of the egoic self broke off. Little bits of pieces of his ego disintegrated. There was still an ego left, but the massive ego that he had before started to dissolve. If he had lived beyond his age, he reached the age of 90, perhaps if he had lived to 100 or 110, he might have gone much further still. But my parents were deeply unconscious. There was constant conflict at home, terrible drama and scenes and shouting and screaming and physical violence. It was a nightmare. And that was not uncommon. Of course, even nowadays there are children, still many, who have to endure that, still many. But there are conscious parents. And I have met children who are born into a conscious family. And it's a wonderful thing. It's a new thing. So forgiving yourself for not being present. There's always a tendency of the ego to identify with certain conditions. So the ego identifies with the condition of unconsciousness and says, that was me, and I was wrong. I should have been conscious. At the time, but you were not. You couldn't have been more conscious at the time than you were at the time. So there comes. You forgive yourself by realizing that nobody can act beyond their level of consciousness. And whatever you did in the past was an expression of, on your personal level, of the evolutionary state of yourself. And on a collective level, you manifest the evolutionary state of humanity until you begin to awaken. And then you become a forerunner at the forefront, spearheading the growth of consciousness. There were many silly things I did in relationships when I was in my 20s, unconscious. Nothing drastic, fortunately, but it could have been. But hurting people, but not being aware of it, ego, egoic motivations and so on. I wasn't even there. There was conditioning operating through me, the ways in which my mind had been conditioned. I wasn't awake yet. So it was a kind of dreamlike state. So it shouldn't be that difficult to forgive yourself for something that you did in a dream. And the unconscious state is very much like that. If you have still an opportunity to go to this person and perhaps explain that you were unconscious. If that is, we don't know what level of consciousness this person is at, whether this person would be able to listen to you and even understand what you are saying. So, or this person may not be alive anymore, or there may not be an opportunity to speak. But either way, you forgive yourself by realizing that there is ultimately nothing to forgive. And that even applies to another person. Because if forgiving goes both ways, sometimes you have to forgive yourself, but you also have to forgive somebody else. If you do not want to carry the enormous burden of carrying a grievance, which is a dreadful thing that could just one grievance towards another human being that is a heavy grievance that you carry can stop the rising of presence in you. So letting go of grievances is vital. And again, it's whatever somebody else did to you, they acted out of their level of unconsciousness. So then it. Rather than make it into an identity, somebody does something that's unconscious to you, and then you transform it mentally into that person's identity. That makes it almost impossible to forgive. In ordinary human interaction, it is very important to overlook things that humans do. Because every human being that you come into contact with will manifest. Even if they are awakening. They are in the awakening process. They are. They will still manifest occasionally areas of unconsciousness. When they interact with you, they might lie to you for some reason here and there. They might do this or that. And then if you focus on that excessively, you Say he lied to me. Okay. Have you ever lied to anybody? No, I never lie. Okay, then you need to. He lied to me. And then you focus on that and you amplify that and you make that into part of his or her identity. And then you. It's very easy to do that. And this is judgment. And you focus on that little thing and you amplify it and becomes part of who you think that person is. So if you want to have a relatively harmonious relationship, many things you need to overlook in the other person. Because every person has his or her unconsciousness that occasionally manifests, hopefully not massive unconsciousness because you might not want to be with him or her to have a close interaction, but some unconsciousness, yes, some insensitivity may arise there. They may say or do something that is selfish or that they may have a very one sided perspective of something. They may misperceive you, they may misperceive your motivation, you misperceive their motivation. All kinds of things. So to forgive in a present situation means to overlook. So it's not the big forgiving but an overlooking of things so that you can focus on the being of the other person rather than focus on the faults which are unconsciousness. So the same applies to human beings. If you see a fault, don't dwell on it. As applies to you if you're looking for a home in California. If you see a fault, don't dwell on it. 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.