How to Appreciate Your Life Without Getting Attached | Eckhart Tolle

There's a difference between appreciating something and being attached to something because you derive your senses identity from it. This, by the way, also applies to possessions, because in a way you could look at the body as something that you have rather than something as you are. Although I've said somewhere in a book, just as a meditative practice, you are your body, but not the physical body. Where you go deeper into the body, that's another story. But really the physical body, you are not the physical body. Even language knows that. When people use language in all languages, I assume people refer to my body and they say, I have a body, I have a good looking body, I have an ugly body, whatever. But they say they have a body, so they must have realized language has, a little bit of wisdom has crept into language. And so you say I have a body, which means you are not the body. So everybody says they have a body, so they are not the body. But to appreciate something that you have, whether it's a body that you have, or some kind of object that you have, or some kind of ability that you have, whatever it may be to appreciate that is fine. To like it, you love it, but not in an deeply attached sense that you do not. To appreciate something is different from deriving partly your sense of identity from it. Let's say you have a nice an object that you own and perhaps it's been with you for a long time or not, and it looks nice, it has quality to it, perhaps, whatever it may be, and you appreciate it, there's nothing wrong with it. So your body, if you happen to have a lovely body, you appreciate it, you look after it too. You do your best to keep it going through good nutrition and exercise. Nothing wrong with that. And even to say, oh, I look great, but in a superficial sense, not that knowing that it's not going to last, nothing is going to last. Everything will leave you or you leave it. And to have to appreciate something is actually an important thing. You can incorporate it into your practice of gratitude, which is a spiritual practice strongly linked to present moment awareness. On this gratitude is to appreciate the goodness of things, whether you own them or not. You can also walk and have gratitude for the beautiful things, the flowers, the trees, the sky, the sunshine. Gratitude doesn't necessarily mean thank you for this. It doesn't necessarily involve words. It's just to give it attention and to appreciate it, its aliveness or its beauty. You can have gratitude for the flowers that are here, which means you give you appreciate the goodness of so many things in this world. But you are not attaching yourself or using it in the service of your sense of self. So there's a difference. I have a. I have a car. Well, I talked about my car that I had when I lived in England. I had this Lada beauty, lovely car. And I loved it. I had gratitude for it. People laughed at it. And I was sitting driving. Sometimes people ahaha, a Lada. And I realized the people who are driving this car are either relatively poor or they have no ego. In my case, both was true, both applied. And then 17 years ago I was no longer poor and I bought a luxury car. And I still have it. And I'm going to keep it until either it dies or I die. And I love it just as much as the larder. It's just. It's love, it just embodies quality. Don't use it that much. But it's still there. And when I go down, I greet it, say hello. And it seems almost that things, even so called, inanimate things, seem to almost respond. It's almost as if could sense you. The weird thing happened when I left England, I sold my. A friend of mine needed a car. I sold it, not very much. And this car had never broken down while I had it. And it was a month after he started using it, it broke down to completely and couldn't even be repaired. Very strange. The car was not happy. It seems so, yes. The appreciation of things, a gratitude for something that is in their field of awareness, whether you own it or not becomes secondary. There are people, of course, who tell you, I've met some very wealthy people who tell me I have this wealth, but I'm not attached to anything anymore. And whether or not this is true, you can't really know until you experience loss. So if you say, okay, I have a Ferrari, I don't have a Ferrari. It's not. That's not my type of car. But somebody says I have a Ferrari. Tester. Testos. Test. Testosterone. Testarossa. I have to get the name right, but I'm not identified with it at all. And so. But, but of course you have this car and it's red, it's red. And it's very noisy. It's meant to be extremely noisy because it attracts attention. Everybody looks when you drive, but I'm not attached to it. I'm not it at all. And then one day you come back and somebody has scratched your car or somebody. It's gone completely. Somebody stole it. You were not attached? No. So when you say I'm not attached. You may not know whether this is true or not until you lose it. So appreciate the difference between ego attachment, to have something in the service of ego, or to really appreciate seeing something without using it in the service of the ego, there's a big difference. So whether it's a body or objects or abilities. Also, if you're good at certain, you have certain abilities, whether they are physical or you're very good at something, it could be playing an instrument, or you a great expert at this or that. And again, that's lovely. Again, the question is, are you deriving your sense of identity from it? Let's say you're a great musician, piano player, and you derive your identity from it, and then something happens. Perhaps something happens to your hands and suddenly you can't play anymore. That is, maybe a certain amount of pain can be involved in that. But if there has been an ego attach, and if this function was the main source of ego identity, you as the famous, let's say a famous pianist, then all that's a sports person who is very good, got a gold medal or whatever, PlayStation, and suddenly an injury, can't do it anymore. Does their whole life suddenly collapse and the rest of your life you're unhappy, you're totally defeated. It does happen to people. Their sense of identity was exclusively derived from that great ability that they had. And that is the difference between appreciating it, being grateful for what you can do. But your identity needs to come from a deeper place, a more real place, the only real place, from being not some kind of function that you may be good at, because at some point, most likely you won't be good at it anymore. And so it's very a huge difference between those two approaches to what you can do. Important, be careful that you don't derive your identity from something that is part of the flux of impermanence. It could leave you at any moment.