Is Your State of Consciousness More Important Than Your Life Situations? | Eckhart Tolle

And as presence, gradually you realize ultimately the most important part of your life is to embody that dimension of consciousness more and more in your daily life rather than whatever else is personal, personal goals that you have, personal whatever you feel you need or want to do on a personal level. It varies a lot from person to person. There's something more fundamental than the details of your life, which is whatever goals you may have, whatever purpose your life may have on the level of the person, there's a deeper purpose. And that is to embody this dimension of consciousness, which is like I call it sometimes the next step in the evolution of human consciousness is to. Is the arising of that dimension of consciousness. The only thing that this critical point in human history is, the only thing that will save us is that. So it's very important. Everything else is of secondary importance in your life. If you look at your personal life, there are many things in your personal life you think are very important. Of course they are relationships, your health, your professional work situation, your living situation, where you live, your relationship situations, all these things, of course they are important. And you should do your best to do things as well as you can, to pursue, to make your life as harmonious as possible. But ultimately that's only possible if you realize there's something else that is more important than any of those things which are important. But there's something more fundamental. That's the. Your state of consciousness with out of which you respond to the situations in your life and to people. So your primary function or purpose is to embody presence. And then it flows into whatever you may be doing in your personal life. Relationships, work situation, way in which you handle conflicts, in way in which you respond to a difficult person or challenging situation. That, that, that becomes your main purpose in any situation. To realize what is really important, what is absolutely important here. And that's your state of consciousness. The second thing is the actual situation itself that you may need to either deal with or in some cases just accept, because there's nothing much you can do right now. In certain cases, there's nothing. All you can do is accept this moment as it is. And that already takes you deeper. This deep acceptance of this moment as it is immediately takes you to a deeper level. Ah. And becoming a teacher of presence means to allow presence to flow into your life. And then gradually, slowly, it you detect subtle changes in the way in which you conduct your life. Personal relationships, work relationships, responding to challenges, difficulties, those things gradually change. And you notice, for example, that in some cases people who used to trigger you Just to give an example, people who used to trigger or upset you, suddenly you're able to not be triggered anymore. And in some cases perhaps accept their limitations, they can't do otherwise. Accept everyone, especially family members, accepted this is how they. What they say is out of their conditioning and you can love them anyway. But your ego doesn't react anymore because your ego has subsided and you don't fuel conflict situations anymore. It doesn't mean you become a doormat, so to speak. In fact, you're able to in some cases speak out. You could speaking out of presence, not out of anger or fear. Speaking out of PR or taking action out of presence. If you're in an un. Very dysfunctional work situation, you've tried to be present, but the environment is so dysfunctional that there's not much you can do. See, then presence will help you to one day walk away. And you do think things that arise out of wisdom. In some cases it means walking away from a situation or relationship without accusing or complaining or playing scenarios in your mind for years afterwards, just to see this situation is no longer right for me. It does not resonate with my state of consciousness. And then you remove yourself, or sometimes the situation itself removes you. If you're very. If you're in a dysfunctional workplace and you stay present as much as possible in that dysfunctional environment, at some point they will let you go and that will be the happiest day of your life. You become a teacher of presence in a very. In a wider sense, through every interaction with another human being, your state of consciousness affects another person. So in that sense, teaching and teaching, becoming a teacher of presence. The moment you embody presence, if not fully, at least to some extent, it's there. You are teaching presence not by telling anybody anything, but by demonstrating that state of consciousness. But demonstrating presence, but demo, for example, demonstrating non reactivity when it's totally pointless in traffic, whatever, Somebody shouts at you and suddenly. And you don't automatically shout back anymore, it just evaporates what the other person shouted and there's nobody there to say anything and the entire energy evaporates. Whereas before you would have shouted something back unconsciously. The ego trying to defend itself. It's a natural thing for the ego. You shout, somebody shouts at you, you shout back. Or you. You're so fearful that you totally contract it. Presence is. You don't amplify anymore. Very unconscious situations. Unconscious means people are totally trapped in their egos. They produce a lot of conflict, unnecessary conflict, because the ego loves conflict. So you come into contact with many humans. They, they don't. Nobody says, I love conflict. They will say, no, no, I don't want. But their actions say otherwise. The words say otherwise. Politicians, they all say, we want peace. So the, the first level of teaching is just your state of consciousness affects others around you, if not consciously, sometimes unconsciously. They can feel there's something in you that's different. And, and then you discover that the way in which you experience your life does not so much depend on what's happening to you. Because people say, well, that's karma. Some people say, well, why did these, did these things happen to this person? You think your life is what, what life does to you. But ultimately, the way you experience your life is not so much determined by what happens to you, but by how you respond to what happens.