How to Forgive Yourself of the Past | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

For some reason, it has just come into my mind. Perhaps because somebody desperately needs the answer to this. And it's connected to what we've been saying. You are now, compared to years ago. You are now definitely more conscious than you were before. And it could be that in the past, when you were not conscious, you did things that you now recognize as not right. Or you inflicted suffering on another being or other beings. And you can now see it. At the time, you didn't know what you were doing. Because you are not conscious enough to act differently. Now. The fact that a person feels guilty means he or she can see something now that he or she could not see. Then. If you were still in the same consciousness, then you wouldn't be able to see that that was wrong. You'd say, you did the right thing by whatever, killing that person. I did the right thing. But now you see you have awakened. And then you can see a lot of your past as dysfunctional, unconscious action, inflicting suffering on yourself and others. Virtually every unconscious human inflicts suffering both on themselves without knowing it. Others, they create their own misery, and they make others miserable. That's what unconscious humans do. And some to a greater degree than others. So guilt can come up as you awaken and suddenly see how unconscious you were. That can bring up guilt and say, because the guilt says, I did that. The Guild uses the word I. But what does that mean? What does that mean when you say I? What is that I? Who is I? Is I the conditioning of your mental emotional conditioning? Or does I have a deeper meaning? Who is I? When you think that your mental emotional conditioning is is I, then you are deluded. Your mental contortion is not I. It is the mental emotional conditioning in you. It is a false identity. There is no real I there. The only true I is the I am. The essence of who you are is consciousness. That is the I I am that I am. That's even how God describes himself. This is probably one of the most profoundest lines in the Bible. Somebody asks God, who are you? Or what's your name? I am that I am. Because your deepest I am is the I am of the universe. It's not personal. Your deepest identity is the identity of God and of the universe. This is the I that's the only true I. So when you confuse the unconsciousness of your past, which was only conditioning, which was a reflection of where humanity is at at its present evolutionary stage, you reflected where humanity is in its present evolutionary stage. That's all you were a reflection of the evolving or the unevolved, as yet unevolved human consciousness. That's all. There is no I in there. It's not that I did that. The unconsciousness, human unconsciousness did that. If you construct an I out of human unconsciousness that you represented, that is an ego attempt to manufacture another mind made identity for yourself. Because the ego loves to have a conceptual identity. The ego is conceptual identity. In the head, that's me. And the ego doesn't mind, even if it's a very unhappy conceptual identity. It prefers that to having no conceptual identity, because that's its end. So the ego will cling to the guilt and associate unconscious action in the past with identity, my identity. And that's how the ego can survive for years. And it can torture you for years, saying, I did that. And it's a terrible feeling that you can now see it as so wrong, that was so wrong. But it's ultimately a delusion. Find the true I, and then that will free you of that. And then you will naturally forgive yourself without needing to take an action and say, I must forgive myself. That doesn't really work in the same way that it does. This can also be applied to other humans. You can also do that to other humans, what you do to yourself when you see what they did. And you can manufacture an identity out of their unconscious action also. And then say, this is who they are. This is who he is, who she is. It's not. It's unconsciousness playing itself out, human unconsciousness. There is no ultimate identity there. But the mind likes to manufacture a conceptual identity not only for yourself, but also for others. So the mind loves to get in there. And these are those evil ones. And sometimes you do it to a whole group of people, those millions of this particular group of people, no matter what they are, they are. This is what they are, and this is what they did. And that is who they are. No, it's human unconsciousness, that's all. So very careful. The same process. And then you cannot forgive them because you've made an identity for them out of their unconsciousness. And they are their unconsciousness. And then forgiveness will be very hard. Okay, I have to try to forgive because I'm supposed to do that. I have to forgive them for what they did, such terrible things. But I have to forgive them. Okay, I forgive you. It's not easy. The real forgiveness happens when it's just. You realize that ultimately there's nothing to forgive. And that's true forgiveness. There's nothing to forgive. And forgiveness happens naturally in this way, not as a conscious thing that you do, but a thing that happens by itself. It falls away. The false identity that you inflicted on yourself or another human being or a group of human beings, that false conceptual identity falls away. And that is an essential part of being here as a conscious human being. A conscious human being does not have resentments anymore, because what could you resent? It's only if you manufacture pseudo identity, then there's resentment. So all those things just. They fall away and there's the flowering of consciousness.