How to Stop Pretending and Start Living | Eckhart Tolle

So many of you are being called upon to teach. And the course in miracles, it says that the moment you start living it, you become. They call it a teacher of God. That's fine. If you don't make it into a conceptual identity, it's always a danger. So if I tell you from now on you are a teacher of God, the ego goes, oh, I have a new identity. I'm a teacher of God. Of course, it only works if others are not a teacher of God, because if everybody is a teacher of God, then the identity collapses. So I don't necessarily recommend that you think of yourself as a teacher of God, but you will notice that situations that you go into, your state of consciousness affects the situation. Your state of consciousness affects the people you are with. And that's one level of teaching. Even if you don't say anything, your state of consciousness does affect your surroundings. It also affects others that you never meet. Because at a deeper level, all of human consciousness is a totality is connected. And then there's another level of teaching where you actually. People come to you and ask questions. And many of you are already in that position, perhaps because you're already practicing. You're already working with people in whatever capacity, as body workers, as counselors, as teachers, whatever it may be. So many of you are already spiritual teachers, formally or informally. And some of you will become formal spiritual teachers if you are not already. And if you are a formal spiritual teacher already, it's fine. You're just here to enjoy yourself, and that's great. So knowing that the most important function in your life is to embody this consciousness. And whatever your life situation is, you bring it there. You don't need to think, how am I going to change my life situation in order to be able to be present, if that is the case, be present wherever you are. Even if what you are doing now you may not like that much, or think it's not important enough, or you would rather be doing something else. Give your fullest attention to the little things that you're doing rather than waiting for something really significant to happen in your life. The big thing, as the expression goes, I'm waiting for the big break. I'm waiting for it. It's going to come. Many people live like that. It may come or it may not come. It doesn't make any difference. The big break is another mental concept that doesn't have that much meaning. The big break. I've had the big break. What does it mean? It means every moment is still very simple. I sit somewhere I speak, I walk from here to there. There's just still the simplicity of every moment. I sit, I speak, I stand, I talk, I lie down, I breathe, I eat. This moment, there's nothing big. If I go to give a talk to 2,000 or 3,000 people, step into the car, I sit, I look around the streets being driven. There's only just the simplicity of this moment. There's not a big thing. That would be a mental concept in the head. And then I get onto the. Then I sit in the green room, waiting. It's still 20 minutes to go, but it's fine. That's only the present moment. Breathing, being, nobody in particular, not developing the mental concept. I'm going to do this big talk. Not just this, just this moment. Big talk is a mental concept. And then you step onto the stage. One step at a time. Don't think, no thinking, no thought. Just one step, another step. Oh, there are all these people. Oh, you look and then you sit down, and there's still no thought in your head. And then a thought comes. There's nothing big about it unless the mind creates a narrative about it and says, this is huge. It's a huge thing. And it requires vigilance because it can be a challenge. These things, the world can be challenging. Some years ago, when I did the big thing with Oprah again, everybody would have said, wow, you're doing that. And now you arrive in Chicago and they pick you up, and then you're in town. Then you go to the Oprah studios, and the whole world is tuning in. They're sitting on these monitors, all these people. And so it's this huge event on the Internet, the webinar with Oprah. Amazing. And this requires real vigilance. So you don't leave the present moment. Just stay with the present moment. Otherwise, you build up a huge mental structure that will make you uneasy, and you start to believe in these things. The power is only there if you can stay centered in the now, particularly in those situations. Stay centered in the now. And then just little moments. And there comes Oprah, and you give her a hug in the now. Okay, it's fine. And she's so good at. She does it so naturally. After many years of connecting with the camera and people through the camera, we sit there, and there's one minute to go, and she's still talking to me about this and that. 20 seconds to go, and she's still talking to me. And just five seconds before she looks into the camera, and then she just talks. And again, that's a good example of something that comes. It takes her over, too. There's a presence that comes the moment she connects with the camera or the people. Something acts through her, something speaks through her. And that's the power that she discovered when some of you may know the story, she might have told it on the webinar, and some of you remember that webinar from years ago that we did. But it's a meaningful story. It's a simple story, but meaningful. How she discovered her own power. She was in her early 20s, and she was a news reader at a TV station in southern Oklahoma or somewhere like that. And her great aim in life, her ambition was to become like Barbara Walters, who is a famous. Is or was a famous TV personality in the United States. Very famous Barbara Walters. So early twins. I want to be a Barbara Walters. I want to become like her. I want to be as famous as her. So that was her great ambition. And one day she was reading the news on the. And she was reading, of course, when you read the. You read it on the prompter, and she misread one word. So she had this wonderful Persona built up as the news reader. And the image was Barbara Walters. I'm Barbara Walters. And she read and she mispronounced one word. She stumbled. The word was Canada. And she pronounced it Kannada. And that stopped her in her track. And she said on the camera, she said, did I just say Canada? I meant Canada. And she noticed something at that moment, and that was there was a power suddenly there that wasn't there before because the role had collapsed. Her ego was playing a role. The role she was playing unconsciously had collapsed because she made that mistake and then admitted she made a mistake. And she could feel. It felt so much better not to be playing a role. So when the role was disrupted, that was the first time she connected with. This is my interpretation. She didn't add that to the story. That was the first time when she connected to the power within her, which was beyond ego. So the role had to collapse. And then she changed. She gave up the idea of wanting to be Barbara Walters and she could just be herself. And by being herself, of course, there's nothing wrong with Barbara Walters, but she's had a far greater effect on humans than Barbara Walters. I think even Barbara Walters would agree with that. And so by being herself, the deeper self, she discovered the power in this little moment of disruption of. Of her role. So it's important. Again, I've written about roles a few times in various places and spoken about roles to play roles is part of the conditioning of your mind, the conditioning of the ego. And you have to be vigilant to catch yourself when you find that you are playing a role. When you talk to people, how do you communicate with people? Self observation is important. Self observation. Do you talk differently to one person, to another person? How do you talk to the Pope, if you ever met the Pope or the Dalai Lama? And how do you talk to the Pope, man who is sweeping the road? If there's a difference between the way in which you talk to the road sweeper and the Dalai Lama or whoever, then you're playing roles. And you can only know that through vigilance and self observation. Can you just be yourself? And again, to be yourself, what does that mean? It means to be your deeper self, not the conditioned self. Be yourself in any situation, be connected with that and come from no thought. So that while you interact with another human being, there's that spaciousness in you. While you listen to another human being, listen through the spaciousness within you, and then the words come out of the spaciousness directly. And then the wonderful thing happens. You talk to the Dalai Lama in exactly the same way as you talk to the road sweeper. That means you're free of roads, and that's a wonderful discovery.