Eckhart Tolle explores whether your personal life matters, examining consciousness and what connects us beyond ego and personality. He argues that awakening means seeing past the temporary nature of individual existence to something deeper that binds all human beings together.
That is the greatest, the most amazing mystery, that the universe is not only conscious, but becoming more conscious. The universe is awakening. Where it all goes, we couldn't possibly understand. It goes to something vast. It's like as if the grain of sand wanting to understand the earth or the universe you can't understand. You can get glimpses of it when you step out of thinking. You can get glimpses of the vastness of it all that's unfolding, that we are part of that vastness. We are like a spark in the awakening consciousness that appears briefly. Every human you could see, look at every human as a spark of consciousness that briefly manifests out of that one consciousness. It comes out and then it brings back what it has learned. Not the, not the details, but the essence of what it has learned in this incarnation. So the universe, every human life on this planet, is that spark coming in, the consciousness coming. So it comes in and goes, that was your life. From a more universal perspective, human life is very short. And if you could look at it from a higher perspective, a more universal perspective, you would see this planet and you would see continuously these sparks, billions of sparks lighting up and disappearing all over the planet. Every, every lighting being is one life. There's a one under, underneath it all, there's a one coming again and again and again. And then it learns, it comes out. One amazing process. And you are part of that. But so it is liberating to know that because it frees you from the delusion that all that matters is your little personal life and all the problems that fill up your personal life a few years from now. Nobody will remember just a few years. And I always, I like to look at old movie scenes from cities where all these people are running around the city in 1903 or 1910. And they're all gone now. And I look at this, I showed, we had a retreat last week and I showed one of those clips. People running around the city, 1900, hundreds of people, and now where are they? Nobody remembers their names even. And every life was on the personal level, was so important. So if you get to the, with a transcendent dimension, it gives you a true perspective of how important the personal dimension is. Yes, you look after it, yes, you honor it, you clean it, you make it better. But this, it's relatively tenuous and very fleeting. And so what a more important question than whether you have achieved so called success on the level of form. If you have, fine, be happy. But is it going to last? Probably not. But that's okay. Either, either $50 million are going to leave you or you're going to leave them. So a more important question is, are you awakening? Are you aware? Are you awake now? Are you? So the greatest achievement, my greatest achievement in life, a wonderful achievement, is not that these books have come through me, but I'm not burdened by thinking anymore. And in fact, I don't have to think if I don't want to. I just go. And it's all liberating because you're free of the person. You just. I can look at and take everything in, whether it's a city or nature and it's beautiful and you don't have to comment on it. I could comment, but I don't have to. You just. You're there as the awareness that. And there's a sense, perceptions, and there's. Adapts to everything. And here we come back to being with another human being. When you're only meeting another human being on the conceptual level, you're not really meeting them at all. You're only ever seeing the conditioning of your mind reflected in the other. So there's no true meeting. There's no true empathy. There's not. You cannot have this outflow of benevolence or goodwill, loving kindness, feeling a connectedness, because you cannot sense who you are beyond the person. Therefore, you can only react to the other person on the level of the person. But if you are connected, then you can look at another human being and have in the background of your perception that spaciousness. And then you look at another and you can sense beyond their personality there is a conscious being. And that consciousness is one with your consciousness. And when you realize that that consciousness in the other, that you can sense in the other, beyond their personality, which may or may not be pleasant, you can sense their deeper. The deeper dimension of their being. And that is. That changes the way in which you interact with other human beings. That brings only that state of consciousness of spaciousness, can bring in love. That is where love rises. Not the love that says, come to me. Don't you ever leave me. I love you. I love you so much. You better remember that. No, the true, the loving kindness. I think that's a good expression. The Dalai Lama said, my religion is. He didn't say my religion is Buddhism. He said, my religion is kindness. So what he's talking about is ultimately a state of consciousness because it's only kindness. This true loving kindness towards another human can only arise out of that transcendent state of consciousness where you're able to be conscious but you're no longer controlled, burdened by, I can almost say possessed by the thinking mind. You can then the wonderful thing that happens then is the consciousness that comes through you can actually flow into your thinking mind and use it for deeper purposes to bring more consciousness to this planet in whatever way. It can use your form, your form, identity, and use it to bring more consciousness through an activity, through making something, through a human relationship, many ways in which consciousness can come into this world through you. And that's the beauty. And that now becomes the purpose of your life, is to express consciousness in this world. And so there may be one or two of you who look back on your life. You say, I've achieved so much. Maybe you. I don't know if you would even be here if you were totally identified with your achievements. You might be somewhere else, up in the penthouse of your tower. But let's say everything you ever did failed. Or it might be, as somebody told me, he said in a kind of half proud and half sad, he said, I've never failed at anything because I've never tried anything. Okay, so let's say you failed at everything. You tried. You had your business ideas and the business failed. And then you had your first marriage, and the first marriage failed, and you had your second marriage, and the second marriage failed. And then you finally made some money and then you lost it all, and then you went had to experience bankruptcy, and then they put you in prison and then they let you out, and now you're here, and then you sit here and you can go. This total failure of my life. So look at all these people. They're all successes, great successes. They're all comfortable, they're doing well, they're spiritual. And here I am. You can go that way or you can go and you can sense an alertness in the background and a spaciousness and a presence that transcends the unhappy person. And so all your failures have taken you to this moment of awakening. And you realize that in essence, you are consciousness. It.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
