How to Face and Overcome Challenges | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

It's the medium, nothing in excess. The challenges of life. It's important then to see that there is no end to it. So on that level, life won't leave you alone. But on a deeper level, once you accept that challenges will come, you don't have to become negative. When they do come, you can actually, oh, there's another one. And then it's often through intense challenges, the bigger ones, they drive you deeper. Now the interesting thing is it's not the great things that happen to you that make you more conscious. It's in many cases the so called bad things that happen to you, if you deal with them correctly and come to a place of acceptance, that make you more conscious. So there's an ancient saying, I believe it comes from Sufism, but I'm not sure that says when the ego weeps for what it has lost, the spirit rejoices for what it has found. And so many times you may find that in your life you lose something. Death, loss of security, loss of income, loss of health, loss of long term relationship. These kinds of. When the ego weeps, because the ego weeps, it's terrible. But then something suddenly arises of something that had been part of your sense of self has been removed. It leaves a hole, an empty space, such as when somebody close to you dies, you lose your livelihood, your home, it leaves an empty space which is painful from the point of view of the personality. And when you, it is potentially also able to drive you deeper into who you truly are, beyond form, the unconditioned. And then you experience suddenly, how can I feel so peaceful suddenly? If something bad has happened and yet suddenly you feel a sense of liberation. It doesn't happen to everybody who experiences loss, but potentially that is always there. So next time a challenge comes, it won't be long. Then say, oh, there's another one. And then you go with it, you look at it. Is there anything I can do to change the situation? First, when you look at it, the first is always to accept the present moment as it arises. Now sometimes whatever arises in the present moment requires you to take action. And, and then you look at it. Now this looking is an important part of it. To look at a situation is not necessarily visual looking. It means to give attention to a particular situation that has arisen or is arising in the present moment. And then in this thing that I call looking is you give it attention in that moment. It could only be a few seconds or a minute or two, you give it attention. And that, that is a very important thing. It's not you. At that point, you don't think. If your thinking comes in too soon, you might come to very wrong conclusions about what action you need to take, because that action will be conditioned by your mind. The old stuff. You bring in the old and try to deal with the present moment by bringing in old conditioning. So you will act according to your conditioning. But if you can give something, attention, this giving attention, you face it, you don't. You've let go of the inner resentment, and this is the most important thing. You've realized it is in the nature of life to give you challenges. And when they come, there's no resentment. You just say, ah, there it is, another one, okay? Even if you say there's another one, you don't say, oh, no, another one, there's another one, okay? And then you look at it. And by looking, I mean to be in that state of consciousness in which there is an alert, an alertness, but not yet thinking. You don't immediately, unless it's a situation that requires immediate action, which is called an emergency situation, in which case you'll do whatever you do anyway. Often emergency situations cut your mind out completely and something else takes over and you take action. And sometimes people do heroic things. And afterwards, when they are praised by others, they say, I don't know, I just did it. And then others, it can happen that they become paralyzed in the face of an emergency. They cannot get out of their mind, and their mind doesn't have time to deal with it. It can't do. Suddenly the whole engine in the head gets stuck. What do you do now? And then it's too late, it's happened already, and you're dead or whatever. You didn't jump out of the way soon enough. And there the train was coming towards you. What do I do now? The train is coming. So in emergency decisions, you cannot think if you think you're stuck. And so many people experience actually that the mind gets out of the way and something else presents suddenly. And this happens to people who engage in dangerous activities and love it. Climbing up a steep wall, mountain wall, driving dangerous cars, fast motorbikes or whatever they do, anything, any dangerous activity forces you into the present moment. You don't need that. And it could, of course, dangerous activity means it is dangerous. Don't get addicted to just one activity to take you into the present moment then, because then every weekend you'd have to climb up this wall. And in the meantime, of course, you're still not present. So if it's not an absolute emergency situation, But a challenge, then it's important. So that means you have a little bit of time to deal with it. Don't immediately go into thinking about it. So give it attention, face it. And now this giving of attention, which I sometimes call looking, but it's not. It might involve looking or it might not, is this clarity of consciousness with which you look at something as an entire situation and don't immediately come to a conclusion as to what action you need to take. So you go, it's that facing it and looking that connects you to a deeper level. Intelligence, in other words, you become still alert and still. And then after a few seconds or minute or two, it is likely that a thought comes in that tells you what the right action is. So that's not an emergency, it's just a challenge. Or it may be that you still don't know what to do. Or it may be that you have to become still again after a while and look at it again. And then you may come to the realization that there's nothing you can do, at least for now. There are certain situations that are problematic, and yet for now there isn't really much you can do. And then you leave it alone. You accept this is what is the acceptance of what is. So it happens very often when people are not able to really have that clarity of perception looking at it. Often people take action when it would be better to leave it alone. Many situations, it depends, of course, what it is. Many situations are made far worse by taking unnecessary, superfluous or excessive action. Balance in everything. There's a balance that you need to find. But the most important thing, challenges. Accept them, even welcome them when they arise, because they are great opportunity, especially the little ones. You might not welcome the big challenges, but they are great too. Don't resent the challenges. Get rid of the belief or transcend the belief that you should not be challenged by life, that these problems should not occur. Think about the movies, how boring a movie is. And not only the audience would go to sleep. If nothing ever goes wrong in a movie, the characters would go to sleep too. And in the end they're all asleep. And are you asleep? Not necessarily actually asleep. You would. In the absence of challenges, you would. Your level of consciousness would decrease.

So if you discover within yourself that a lot of the time you are in a state of lack of insufficiency, of not enough, and you feel that the answer to the remedy is to be active in this world and achieve and do as much as possible, then you'll probably find that ultimately that is not the answer to your state of lack. In order to transcend, to go beyond your state of lack of neediness, of not enough spiritual practice and spiritual realization is necessary. Focus on the realization of being. It's only there that you can go beyond that state of lack, which is ego. Go within and discover who or what you are beyond the person.