Eckhart Tolle addresses whether you can have a healthy relationship with someone who isn't spiritually awakened. He explores how presence and consciousness affect partnerships, and what happens when one partner is more aware than the other.
We'll have some questions, but before just read two or three questions that people have been sending in questions. People who are watching us, who are with us, but elsewhere in time, in space, and eventually in time too. Except that it's always the present moment. So time ultimately is an illusion. But on a conventional level, we talk about time. So I forgot to say hello to everybody who is not physically present here, but present somewhere else on the planet. This question has been asked in the past a few times and tends to come up very often. So it is a question that quite a few people have. If we live with a person who is unconscious a lot of the time, is it possible to have a harmonious relationship whether the person totally awakens or not? That seems to be a recurring problem for many people. Now bring in role playing. And then for the first time, I've observed it a few times, people have told me and personally observed for the first time, you can communicate with that person at a deeper level of presence. This can also happen when people who had a huge ego all throughout their lives, when they're approaching death. Sometimes miracles of transformation can happen in the last moments, in the last days, or in the last weeks of a person's life, when resentments that had been building up over a lifetime and other narratives of an extremely negative nature let go of can happen. It can also happen when a person is ill, that when this person recovers, that shift that you observed doesn't last. And the moment strength returns to that person, the old egoic patterns are back. And it's like, oh, my God, you're your old self again. You were so nice when you were ill, loving and present and open. Well, just wait. Things will happen again. So if there's abuse, and these are more pronounced manifestations of unconsciousness, if there's verbal abuse, can you live with such a person? Only you can know whether you are prepared to do that, whether you can sustain your presence. Practice, perhaps not physical abuse. If you stay with physical abuse in the hope that this person will become transformed, that is probably a delusion. But I cannot tell you what to do. But if you are alert and vigilant and observe yourself in the presence of that person, you will know what to do. You just have to see that what you the right course of action is what to do. But if you are alert and vigilant and observe yourself in the presence of that person, you will know what to do. You just have to see that the right course of action is not being sabotaged by certain patterns that remain in your mind. Mental emotional patterns such as fear of being alone. Fear, loss of security. Perhaps security of being with another person. Even if it's fear of the unknown. Stepping into the unknown. So you may be held back by certain patterns in your mind. And if you are present enough, you can recognize that and then go beyond it.
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