This is a YouTube video titled "How Reactions Shape Your Life | Eckhart Tolle on Choosing A Life Presence (Part 2)" featuring Eckhart Tolle delivering a monologue or lecture on the nature of human reactions, karma, presence, and consciousness. The content, created in August 2025, explores how individuals experience life differently based on their internal patterns and the importance of presence in transcending suffering and old karmic patterns. It is a single-speaker presentation focused on spiritual and philosophical teachings.
The external events in your life really trigger the karma that you carry inside, and they become your reactions. And your reactions determine how you experience your life. So in a way, you could have the same thing happening to one person creating a certain response, and the same event happening to another person, creating a totally different response. I can have, for example, you have. When I first. When I had just written my first book, the publisher said, why don't you sign some books for some famous people? They might give you an endorsement. So I did, and they were sent out and almost nobody replied. And I didn't realize at the time that those famous people, how many books and manuscripts they get sent every week and every month. Now I'm getting them. And now I'm the one who doesn't reply. Because you just can't. It's impossible to read it all. Even dipping in, they pile up. There's a backlog. I have now already several months of backlog to get through. So it's very hard, if not impossible. But I didn't know that. But fortunately, I didn't take it personally without having read the Four Agreements. I already knew this is not a personal thing, so it was not problematic. But I read some instances where people have sent me books and they got extremely upset because they didn't get a reply. And they get more and more upset, and the letters became more and more angry. And then I became some great. The worst dreadful person in the world. You can. And those are old karmic patterns that people carry. The external event triggers the pattern. For some people, what becomes a huge drama for one person is an insignificant event for another. So how you experience your life is not really so much to do with what happens to you, but it's how you react. Because every reaction determines the next thing that happens. So something goes wrong, you make drama out of it, and that creates more stuff. This is how more karma gets created. How you react to a person determines how that person reacts to you. And so it's a reflection. In other words, you kind of. You create to a large extent your life, not to a large extent completely your life experience unconsciously. And so to break the old patterns that create so much suffering, unnecessary baggage, I sometimes call it, that you carry around with you, that you. So you meet it, you interpret situations and people throw the unnecessary baggage in your mind that for that to be transcended or dissolved, that requires presence, power. The presence needs to be there when the old patterns arise in your life, and that is there. So you don't wait for the challenge when Hoping that you can stay present because you won't use it when you're not being challenged. And invite presence into your life in all those moments that are really precious and in that generates more than you. It's like a. Almost like a. The equivalent on the physical level would be working out. You get stronger, so to speak. And so sometimes it's only a disaster that makes a person conscious. It has a potential of making a person conscious. It doesn't always. The potential is not always fulfilled. Often a disaster can make you even more unconscious and more unhappy. But potentially any disaster, any great loss in your life can be the awakener. The awakener it. And then you see, for example, many people when they fall seriously ill, they realize all the things they'd been worried about and upset about are quite insignificant. And suddenly they realize what was all that about all the drama they have had for the past 10, 15, 20 years in my life? Nothing. It was just generated out of nothingness. Full. What is the Shakespearean? A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That is what many people's lives unfortunately boils down to. Full of sound and fury. And then they die. It was so important, it mattered so much. And then there's the gravestone. And it's almost. Almost a relief that they died because all the stuff finally comes to an end. But does it? Maybe they continue in another dimension. More drama in the astral realm. So that is the. This, as I sometimes call it, the sort of presence needs to be there. And you practice in ordinary situations. And it's wonderful because already there, the benefit is, you know, it's not just. It's not a preparation for when things. When you're getting challenged. Yes, that also. But the benefit is already there in the moment. Because the way in which you experience even the ordinary moments which before so boring and routine and not another I have to go shopping again and my laundry do that again and again. Even that is actually quite. When you really bring presents to it. Every movement actually has a certain quality to it. You pick something up, put it in the washing machine and suddenly no thinking, just a presence. And you listen to the noise, whatever noises are associated with that particular movement. And it's a pleasant experience. You could call it a meditation. And then you might lose yourself in the mind and then you come back. So the. The alertness is there more and more. And that means the person subsides, the presence arises. So it's like the person is the seed that begins to dissolve slowly. It's still there. As long as you have a body, you're still a person. But it becomes transparent. So the seed should be on you. Continue with that analogy. Something comes through where the person was, something shines through the person, and that's. That means your identity. And this is a wonderful thing. Your sense of who you are is not derived from that particular person that you are in space and time. Your personal history is not. No longer gives you your sense of who you are, but your sense of who you are is the presence that you, that is, you sense right now that you are right now that that is who you are. Yes, you still have your personal history. It's fine. Don't forget it. You remember exactly what happened. But you don't go there unnecessarily trying in your. In your past and continuously revisit especially the unpleasant things or even the pleasant. Try to get. Trying to revisit this pleasant time five years ago that was so nice. And you miss this moment, or you revisit painful things in the past and you derive your sense, your identity from something that happened. You did in the past. Something happened to you. You achieved something 10 years ago. I achieved something. Who cares?
