Eckhart Tolle shows how the ego needs others to define itself: a racist on a planet where everyone looks identical, a Lamborghini owner when everyone owns the same car. Both lose their sense of self. He argues that awakening to consciousness beyond the ego ends this suffering, a teaching at the heart of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
Is that who I am? Is that all there is to me? Or is there maybe a dimension to who I am that I have never known, I'm not aware of at all? Is there more, or am I just. This. That people have is to do with conceptual identity. Race is a one that many people have. If you don't have much else in your life, you could identify with your race and see, okay, our race is the greatest and all the others are inferior. And then that gives you your sense of identity. Now you can see how you need the other. In an imaginary scenario, let's say a person who is a racist, One morning he or she wakes up not having become a beetle, as in Kafka. One morning, he or she wakes up, suddenly finds himself on another planet, and then begins to realize that everybody on this planet is exactly the same race as me. There is no other race. In fact, on this planet where this person suddenly finds himself, the word race does not even exist. Because if everybody is the same race and the same skin color, you will not even have a word for race. So the entire identity that was built up on race would collapse immediately without the other. It cannot be sustained. You could also say, you can take any example. Let's say you have a noisy Italian sports car, because Italian sports car are meant to be noisy to attract attention. So you have a Lamborghini and it's painted red to attract even more attention. And it gives your ego a boost. Look at me. Everybody looking because it's so noisy. And then in another imaginary scenario, the next day you wake up in another dimension. And in this dimension, every human being has the same red Lamborghini or whatever it is in. Immediately your ego cannot use it anymore. It becomes totally meaningless. So then your conceptual identity will then collapse without the other. The egoic identity desperately needs the other who is not different. Me, the enemy. It loves its enemies. That's actually how many wars even start like that. You demonize an entire group of people, make them into an enemy, and then you feel a much stronger sense of identity. Another identity is for people to identify even with their gender, male or female. I'm not sure. Gender has become a problematic thing. I'll put that aside for long. Let's just say there's male and female. And in older cultures, or still in some cultures now, an important part for a person's identity is actually their gender. If they are male, for example, they are male. That becomes a very important part of their conceptual sense of self. It is implied that male is automatically superior to female. So you already have 50%. You're already. You can be. You can be a very stupid man, but you have a superiority over 50% of the population that is female. No matter how stupid you are, you're. You're a man. In some countries that still operates more or less so a man. And in some countries also, females are conditioned to identify with and act out a particular way of behaving and speaking female. That's. They don't know. It's totally conditioned. It's part of their identity. So I've been talking about the ego, the human ego one could talk about for hours. But I won't go on and on. You're all familiar with the ego because at some point before you went through a spiritual awakening, you also had an ego. So it all comes back to conceptual identity. Is that who I am? Is that all there is to me? Or is there maybe a dimension to who I am that I have never known, I'm not aware of at all? Is there more? Or am I just this ego entity, the I? And that's why we are here. We need to part of awakening to this dimension that exists in every human being. The possibility of realizing that there is in you the potential of a deeper dimension of consciousness in every human. And the discovery of this deeper dimension of consciousness in every human is the most important part of your life journey here on this planet. And all the. If you look at the ancient teachings, I'm not talking about the religions when they are used as ideologies, because always religions have often been misused by the human ego and have often been incorporated into the human ego. So people seeking power became very prominent in the religious hierarchies. People wanted the ego was seeking more power. But if you look more deeply into the ancient teachings and religions, whether it's Buddhism or Hinduism or Christianity or Islam, if you look deeply, or Judaism, if you look deeply, there's a core that points to this truth. The possibility of a shift in human consciousness. The possibility of a shift in human consciousness. The Buddha talked about it by saying, we are here. You are here to awaken awakening. The word Buddha itself was not a name. It was a title. Buddha means the one who is awake. And Buddha lived 2,500 years ago. And when people asked him, who are you? He said, I'm awake. I'm Buddha. Buddha. The root of the word Buddha, Sanskrit means to be awake. And the teaching of the Buddha is the teaching of suffering. Dukkha, the Buddha said, I show you suffering and the end of suffering. I teach suffering and the end of suffering. Suffering is the ego identity. Its suffering is inseparable from the ego identity. The ego identity always creates unhappiness and suffering for yourself and others. If you make yourself suffer, you make others suffer. The ego creates suffering. So Buddha said, you will always find suffering unless you awaken. That's why he said, I show you how suffering arises, and I show you how suffering can end.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
