Eckhart Tolle explains how mental narratives create suffering and how presence beyond thought offers a way out. He contrasts human unhappiness with the peacefulness animals naturally experience, showing that consciousness itself is the key to waking up from an unhappy life.
My life is something, is a narrative in many people's heads that causes an enormous amount of suffering. You can't imagine how many people's lives are made miserable by a very unhappy story in their head that they identify with and call it my life. It's people just driven to suicide by the unhappy narrative that tells them how awful my life is. And they never realize that they are trapped in a delusion of thought if they were able to step out. And again the question arises, where is your life? Let me think. This is all my past, my dreadful past, My probably dreadful future. That's my life. All the things have gone wrong, all the things that I missed, all the things that people have done to me. All the things that the universe has done to me. All that is just awful. Nobody has suffered more than me. Nobody. And that's. And people don't realize how much unhappiness is derived from what they're telling themselves in the head. Now, these people need to come out of that if they want to be free. Do you want to suffer more? No. Okay. Are you ready to step out of the narrative in your mind that says my life and realize that you don't have a life? That the whole thing that you call my life is certain thoughts that float around in your head and you identify with them. You don't have a life. You are life. And to realize that you are life, which is a temporary expression of the one life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe. You are temporary expression of that one life. You don't have a life. And if you don't have a life, you can't lose your life. People say, he lost his life, she lost her life. How does that work? There's he and there's his life. Who is he and who is the life that he lost? There's a duality there. It doesn't exist. You can't lose your life because you are life. You don't have a life. They are just memories and thoughts in your head. Yes, but the life that you are can only be realized the present moment. And in the present moment, the first realization comes to you. When you realize that there are. There can be gaps between thoughts. When you realize that apart from thinking, there is another dimension of consciousness in you that is not disconnected from thinking, but deeper than thinking. We could say higher too. Higher than thinking. And what is that? That is awareness or presence. And you realize this dimension of consciousness in you right now when you become conscious. I'm slowing down, as you might have noticed. When you become conscious that there are not only words here being spoken, but there are also gaps between the words. And you become aware that there are these gaps between words, or between one sentence and another. And when you become conscious of that gap, which we could also call a moment of stillness, you might notice that every time you are conscious of this little gap, when there's no word in that moment, you are aware, but you are not thinking. And you haven't disappeared in that space of awareness. The essence of who you are is there fully, and yet it almost is like nothing, and yet it's not nothing. Undoubtedly there is a presence that is deeper than thought, out of which thought arises. And to sense in yourself this presence that has no characteristics as such, it's pure conscious presence. To sense that is to get in touch with the essence of who you are. And that essence, if we had to attach a word to it to describe it, we would probably call it consciousness. You are that consciousness out of which thoughts come. In the same way I sense or experience thoughts as movements on the surface, like waves and ripples on the surface of a vast ocean. Thinking now if you only live on the surface, then all that you have is waves and ripples which are thoughts. There's only this dimension for you, and you can't stop thinking. And you look for some kind of answer to who you are on that level only. Maybe if I join with this ripple, I'll feel better. Or I need to accumulate power over all these other ripples, then I'll be someone. Or I need to own more ripples than others, but always never being able to go beyond that. So the cessation of thinking, which is not falling below thinking, which is not a regressive step to where the animals still dwell. Because the animal has not yet arrived at conceptual thinking. Consciousness, yes, but not conceptualization, not thought. The animal. Are we regressing when I say, when I present to you the possibility of discovering within yourself the possibility of stepping out of thought. But I'm not saying this is a regressive step towards the animal or the vegetable realm. The dog is more peaceful and joyous than most humans, except neurotic dogs, dogs that have lived for too long with humans. The dog is more joyous, non judgmental and alive than most of the people who own these dogs. Because the dog does not have a burden of a conceptual self, it does not have the burden of an ego. Except some neurotic dogs or cats have already a beginning of little egos. Yes, but put that aside. So the dog looks at you and does not judge you because it doesn't have concepts, but is conscious. But are we going there to. I mean, it's wonderful. Why do people love dogs and cats? Why do they go, ah? Because when you look into the eyes of a dog, you realize for a moment you connect with a dog and you can sense the beingness or the consciousness of the dog looking through the eyes back at you. And this consciousness of the dog, although it's not the same as the human consciousness, also one aspect of the universal consciousness temporarily taking on the form of dog, this consciousness looks at you and. And for a moment you feel free to not think. And you might not even know that when you look at the eyes of the dog for three or four seconds, you're not thinking. When you feel joy arising, three or four seconds and it makes you feel good, the cessation of thought makes you feel good because then you sense your beingness, your deeper presence, your beingness. And this is why people connect with animals, they give them moments of sanity.
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