Eckhart Tolle says irritation comes from your thoughts about situations, not the situations themselves. He uses the Mary and Martha parable to show how you can stay present while acting, and offers a simple practice: observe what's happening without adding your mind's story to it.
The thing that created the unhappiness wasn't ultimately the situation, it was the narrative about the situation in your mind. Most humans are in this world are lost in the doing dimension. It's another way of putting it. Unaware of the being that is always there, but they overlook it. One could say they don't. They look, it's here and they look. Where, where, where? They look there, but it's here. All this is beautifully expressed in the parable in the New Testament of Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha in the New Testament, it's a little story. They are two sisters. They invite Jesus to their home. Martha is working in the kitchen, cooking their lunch. And Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. And Jesus is presumably talking or emanating being. She's sitting at the feet of Jesus going. And Martha says, please tell my sister to help me in the kitchen. I've got to get dinner, lunch ready. This is not. Why am I doing all the work myself. Please tell her to help me in the kitchen. And Jesus strangely says, martha, Martha, you are concerned about many things, but Mary, there's only one thing. I'm paraphrasing again. There's only one thing that ultimately matters and Mary has chosen this one thing. So if you approach this story from a conventional perspective, you would say this doesn't make sense because if everybody does that, nobody's ever going to cook the lunch. If he says she has chosen only one thing is of absolute necessity and she has chosen that one thing, well, then if everybody does that, then who is going to do anything? Nobody's going to prepare any meal anymore. Okay, but the deeper answer, of course, is not like that. The deeper answer of this story is that Mary and Martha are or need to be or need to become a single person. Mary and Martha need to be one so that the ability develops in human to do without losing connectedness with a being dimension. And then Mary and Mata are one. So it doesn't mean that nobody's going to cook any meal anymore, but you can, you can be involved in doing without losing yourself in it, remain connected to the being dimension. So how does it look in practice? Well, you can practice in many, many ways. The, let's say in this realm of doing, you become irritated because doing has always an aim. It's in the future. Obviously you're doing something in order to achieve this or that. So you're, you're involved in and. But obstacle arise. Quite often you do something because you want to get there. But then obstacles arise. People often it's in the form of other human beings. Human beings can be so difficult. You might have noticed. Really obnoxious. They always get in the way of you. You want to go to. Sometimes they help. But so you doing. But you get irritated. This shouldn't be happening. Why? Why is this? Why can't he. Why can't. So when you get irritated, angry, upset in situations. Many situations are like that in daily life. You get irritated. Even a traffic jam. Or could you want to get. Why isn't it moving your line Line up at the supermarket. Why aren't they. Can't they be more efficient? I can't stand this. And quickly. Again. Here, look at Surrender to the present moment. What does that mean? It means you ask yourself when you get irritated or whatever. Any form of unhappiness. How would I experience this moment if I didn't any. If I did not add any thought to it? So instead of complaining about what's happening at this. Complaining is fine. When complaining helps you to change a situation and not to talking about that. If you're in a restaurant, you get served soup and the soup is cold. You. You tell the waiter this. Unless it's gazpacho. Then it's I love that. It's. That's fine. Then you don't say, this should be hot. No, but if a normal soup is cold, you say, can you please change it? The soup is cold. I'm not going to eat this cold soup. That's. You could call that complaint. But something can be done about it. That's fine. But I'm talking about the more habitual complaining that has no purpose whatsoever except make you irritated and unhappy. So that's. How would I experience this moment if I didn't add any thought to it? Let's try it. Let's not any. Let's not add any thought to it. Right? Yeah. It's still the same. But that which created the irritation isn't there anymore. Why not? Because the thing that created the unhappiness wasn't ultimately the situation. It was the narrative about the situation in your mind. It wasn't the situation, it just is. And situations change constantly. If you're not looking for ultimate satisfaction in any situation, it's actually fine. And why would you stop looking for ultimate satisfaction in a situation? Because you have already found it in the depths of your being. Then you don't need to look for ultimate satisfaction. Then start complaining when the situation doesn't satisfy you. That includes other people. Then they're not doing what they're supposed to do. Why are they so unconscious? Well, they are. Yes, they are. And it's a great thing if you no longer demand that a human being should be. Should manifest behavior that is beyond their level of consciousness. They obviously can't. This is great when. If you have an issue with your parents, if you're a grown up person and you have an issue with your parents, or vice versa, you have children, you have grown up and you have an issue. Continuous disagreements allow them whatever behaviors they manifested is part of their learning process. I experienced a wonderful liberation with relation to my father, for example, because until I woke up or awakened, I felt a lot of antagonism towards him. He was very much, always. He was also capable of loving. But that was continuously interrupted by extreme bursts of anger. Extreme anger usually directed against my mother, not me. But that was bad enough. And after awakening and my dad would still, whenever I visited him, we would talk about angry stories, about politics and say, these politicians are cold. And I was just able to listen and was quite pleasant. I gave up wanting him to behave differently. And then he even changed quite a bit. Chunks of his ego broke off. Not all of it, but some big chunks of his ego broke off. And he was more in some areas of his life, became almost enlightened in others. There was still big ego. So things not demanding. In general terms, what I'm talking about is the demand that is unconscious in most people. It's an unconscious assumption that is the world is here to make me happy world, including situations, people, events, whatever achievements, the world is here to make me happy. People don't often verbalize that, but at the back of their minds, unconsciously, they assume that's how it's supposed to work. And then the delusion is. Of course, I mentioned old movies that ended the happy ending with Wedding. This perpetuates the illusion that the world can actually make you happy. But the world is here to make me happy is an underlying unconscious assumption that creates a lot of suffering in your life because you find that life or the world continuously challenges you in one way or another. Sam.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
