Eckhart Tolle explains how people sabotage their own growth by resisting setbacks instead of seeing them as chances for spiritual awakening. He argues that accepting life's difficulties, rather than fighting them, is what creates real change and lasting fulfillment.
Despite your best efforts, which you should, you should continue to engage in trying to improve your life, knowing also that continuously, life will challenge what you're doing and where you are. And it will seem as if there were some malicious little entity or entities that try to try to always sabotage, not always, but often sabotage things that you're trying to do. So this, this element that we could call sabotage, you will always find that sooner or later, and sooner rather than later, which does not mean you should refrain from trying to improve your life. Knowing, however, that no matter how carefully you work at improving your life, which you should continue to do, other things will happen to try to sabotage things in your life, even if you engaged in 24 hours of positive thinking. Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. Today, everybody. I'm getting better every day, in every way, I'm getting better every day and everywhere. It feels quite good, and up to a point, it even works. And yet this sabotage thing will still come in. Of course, then you can deny that this is happening. No, I'm feeling better and better. So knowing that you should continue to work on your life to create a good life for yourself, knowing that it's unlikely, despite that, you can enjoy these things, but ultimate fulfillment and lasting fulfillment you cannot derive from that. But you can continue doing it, because you may not have to look for fulfillment there. You can just enjoy that dance of your activities. And so it's good to know that life, that element is always there in life that wants to sabotage what you're doing. Something goes wrong in the relationship, something goes wrong with your career, something goes wrong with your body. Or on a smaller scale, you miss the plane, you lose your wallet, you drop tomato juice over. Your dress you just bought was so lovely and expensive. Why? Why? Why is life doing that to me? Why to me? Of course, you may not know that life is doing it to everybody, but most people don't advertise that on their Facebook page. They don't advertise feeling sick after eating too much. All you see is a nice picture of the food on the table. You don't see what for, just an example, you don't see what happens three hours after that or the wild party. Wow. Now, if we know that this element is unavoidable, then we don't need to react to it in a dysfunctional way. Because if you react to this sabotage element of life in a dysfunctional way, that means you behave and you think and speak as if there was something wrong with life or with yourself or with the world. You protest, you complain, you get angry. You ask questions that nobody can answer. Why me? What did I do wrong? Didn't do anything wrong. It's not fair. It's not fair. Life is not fair. Life is fair, but not in the simplistic way that the ego believes life should be fair. So if you can now, you can actually even be in a state of kind of alertness and on the lookout for what's the next thing that's going to come in. Don't, don't expect it. It's wrong. But knowing that this is how life is and that could happen at any moment, and then it happens, and then, oh, there it is. I just lost my credit card. And it's a little thing. It could be a much bigger thing. A visit to the doctor, a visit. Be invited to your boss's office. And he says the famous words, I think we'll have to let you go. That kind of funny way of saying, you're fired. Well, somebody else likes to prefer that expression. The show would have, not this show that would have not been so successful if he had said, I'm afraid I'll have to let you go. And he would not be president now, but you're fired. And then things also take you out of your comfort zone in the collective. Many of you may have experienced that also recently. And so people, many people get angry, resentful, and start posting things all over the Internet, attacking all the other. These other evil people. And I think if I shout loud enough, something will change. This should not have happened. So you can be taken out of your comfort zones in many, many ways, large and small. But if you knew, and of course you do know, but if you, let's say if you knew that the deepening of presence, spiritual awakening, whatever you want to call it, the realization of who you are in the essence of your being is more likely, far more likely to happen during those moments, times or periods when you are taken out of your comfort zone. If you knew that your relationship with those times when you're taken out of your comfort zone would change. The way in which you react or respond to these events would be very different if you knew there's actually potentially an opening there, potentially and ultimately life is actually giving that to you. When it seems that life is taking something away from you, which is often when people are taken out of their comfort zone, they're taken out of their comfort zone. Life seems to be taking something away from you. And when it seems that life is taking something away from you. Actually, on a level that most people are unaware of, life is giving something to you. A possibility, a potential opening into a deeper dimension of who you are. If you can come to a different relationship with what's just happened.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
