How To Find What is Truly Important in Life | Eckhart Tolle

You wouldn't say to the wind, how dare you? Unless you're almost mad. So the vigilance then, as regards your inner state is very important so that you no longer believe the outer is more important than the inner. That's the great illusion. Some outer condition is more important than the state of consciousness. So the vigilance needs to be there. And I'm saying that to you because there's enough awareness in you for that vigilance to arise. Without the vigilance, you have no idea what's going on inside you, and you project it all outside. Then you don't even know. This is the essence of unconsciousness, spiritually speaking. Many really unconscious people, they don't even know that they are suffering because everything is projected outward. All the bad stuff is out there. Other people and whoever they blame, it's all out there. Everything is projected out there. Complete unawareness of their inner state. That's the essence of unconsciousness. But even humans who have already begun the spiritual path or the awakening process can still be taken over periodically, regularly, completely by the delusion that something out there is more important than your inner state of consciousness. And then you go. In that moment, you become reactive. And in that moment you become identified with the reactions which are mental, emotional forms that arise. And so you are lost, and you think, it's all out, it's out there. So the vigilance, then can tell you the moment you become upset about something. Upset is a generic term. Upset could be about upset, could be anger, it could be despondent, it could be fearful or upset. It's anything that's not rooted in the peaceful depths of being is upset. So then you would notice anything that upsets you. And you might be surprised that little things perhaps can still upset you. Just tiny things. Somebody not turning up for an appointment or handyman, not doing a good job, all kinds of something taking too long, somebody not treating you with respect that you deserve. All kinds of little things can make you. Driving people get upset when they drive. It's strange. It should. I mean, none of the other drivers knows you, and you don't know them, but they are regarded by the unconscious ego as personally insulting to you. Somebody pushes in from the right. How dare. If a gust of wind came, probably you would not get upset because it's hard to personalize that. But if you're very unconscious, extremely unconscious, you can even get angry with that. But it's less likely because it's just a gust of wind pushing you, forcing you to go that way. You wouldn't say to the wind, how dare you? Unless you're almost mad. But an unconscious person is just like a gust of wind. It's no more than that. It's nothing to do with you whatsoever. And of course you find these unconscious every day in your daily life you will find people who are just acting out their unconsciousness. Some are driving around the streets and suddenly we meet in other ways and it's never really personal. They are definitely not in the traffic. So be vigilant to see. Do you still get upset by other drivers? And then it's not something to beat yourself up about. Say, oh dear, you see, I'm no good, I've been on the spiritual path and I still get upset by other drivers. All you need is to notice it. And so whenever you become upset, oh, what's going on? And then always, you know, I confused, there was a confusion in my mind of what really is important. I thought that thing out there was important. And you forget this is important. What do I bring to the situation? And then you dissolve conflict. Quite often because often because you're surrounded still by many unconscious humans, there are conflict situations that arise wherever you go. You will find conflict. Where humans come together, conflict situations arise. It's amazing. Even places that should be quite peaceful, church congregations, committee meetings at your church or hospitals, where things could be healing in peaceful places, universities, schools, there could be over conflict. Even spiritual organizations because of course the people they may be trying conflict. And that's fine. There's no need to react to that and say look at all these unconscious people. Or to say, I'm done with spirituality. Look at all those so called spiritual people and look how they behave. I'm done with that. It's all a farce, isn't it? All these and so on. Mind goes on. So again, it's all put out there. It's there something wrong out there. It's not me, I'm okay. No, you become vigilant and whenever you are upset about situations and people, oh, that's a reminder then that there was a confusion about importance. What matters and what is secondary and what is primary? Secondary is the external situation. Primary is your state of consciousness that you bring to it. So when you are, the moment you become upset, you've forgotten that. Well, that in itself can be a sign to become present again. So if you are vigilant about getting upset about things, then you can use it as an alarm clock. Any kind of upset in any situation that's oh, I must have come confused. Primary and secondary and okay, and then you can invite the alertness in. And this is sometimes compared to turning up the light with a dimmer switch, which is really what it feels like is from the mind identified reactive state. And suddenly there's been still a remnant of awareness from where you can notice, oops, I'm upset about this. And then you can. At that moment, there is a choice. Okay, there's a confusion about what is really important here. And then you can invite in presence attention. And at that moment there's a shift from the mind identified reactive thinking state. You might have just been talking to somebody about how dreadful somebody else is, what they just did. Why can't they ever get it right? And why. And suddenly there's still a remnant of awareness in you. And so you begin to witness that inside you. And that moment you have a choice. You can say, okay, you recognize you've got confusion of primary and secondary. And then you go, okay, let's become present. A deep breath might help. Looking around you might help. Anything that brings you into the present moment brings up, okay, you step out of the mind identified state. What that means when I say you step out of it means your consciousness removes itself from the thinking. Your consciousness was in the thought forms. You then reclaim the consciousness. The consciousness reclaims itself, so to speak. You reclaim the consciousness from its incarnated form in the thought or emotional form it had incarnated into this form. This is the dream of consciousness. You reclaim it or it reclaims itself because you are ultimately it. And so consciousness then is withdrawn from the form, the thought form, the emotional thought. Well, let's say this is consciousness and this is thought. Then it goes. Consciousness was trapped in that thought. It had become that thought in the same way that water can become ice. So this is just so consciousness gets out of it and then the thought collapses because it was only consciousness that had been frozen had become hardened, so to speak. So consciousness is withdrawn from the thinking and then it is there in its pure no form. And that is the amazing. It's an amazing thing when that consciousness is suddenly there that before was trapped in thinking, and that you experience at a heightened sense of aliveness. Suddenly, and that is the entire vibrational frequency shifts to one could say, well, it feels like a higher frequency. So this is why we call it waking up. Because waking up is awakening. Spiritual awakening does not mean to suddenly see angels or talk to God. What do I do? Tell me what to do. That's not spiritual awakening. It's fine if you see angels, it's a beautiful thing. But it doesn't mean that you're spiritually awakened. It just means you're seeing an angel. Or even if you are channeling a spirit entity does not mean you are spiritually awakened. It you're just channeling a spirit entity who may have a big ego, who knows? And then that ego gets added to your ego.