Let Go of Compulsive Thinking | Eckhart Tolle on The Path from Thinking to Awakening (Part 3)

Who am I? Am I who people think I am? It's all surface. So learn to sense within yourself the deep I so that you're not. You don't exclusively live through the surface I and then be rooted in that. And then the ups and downs of your life are of secondary importance. You still give your life attention, you do the best you can. But your sense of who you are, your sense of worthiness is not dependent on your achievements. Although you can welcome your achievements and nice. It's not dependent on your losses or your non achievements or your failures. These are just concepts. So there are many people who have the concept in your head that I have failed at life. I have made so many mistakes. Or maybe they blame society or they blame somebody, or they blame themselves, or there's regret. I didn't make it. These are all stories. Every one of these sentences is a story in your head. It's a narrative. And the narrative, you believe in it and it makes you unhappy and that becomes your identity. I haven't made it in life is a narrative. It's a story you tell yourself and that gives you your sense of identity. I'm a great Success is another story that gives you a sense of identity, which is a more satisfying sense of identity while it lasts. Yes, but it's just as superficial. And it could happen that when the stories in your head, the narratives that give you a sense of identity become very painful, there's a better chance of transcending the narratives and finding out who you are beyond the narratives. That a pleasant narrative that temporarily makes you feel good about yourself because you have your fame or you have your private debt or whatever it is that you base your sense of identity on. Then the narrative of I am a greatest makes you happy for a while, but that will come to an end too, as many famous people had to experience for themselves. Temporarily it can be satisfying and actually prevent you while it's satisfying, prevent you from finding who you are at the deeper level of your being. So the successful financier on Wall street is less likely to find spiritual awakening than the one who has just lost everything. The unsuccessful financier potentially is closer, more likely to find it. Or the successful one becomes so dissatisfied with the so called success that he realizes the emptiness of his success and so goes into suffering too. And then the suffering again potentially can bring about a deepening. Let's go back to where we started, which is the cessation of compulsive and involuntary thinking. Cultivate that bring it into your life, your daily life. Moments of no thought. Which doesn't mean you fall below thought. No, you're not having no thought because you just had three whiskeys. You're falling below thought. You become more alert, more present, and you rise above thought. So your life becomes interspersed with moments of spaciousness, inner spaciousness. No thought. That's what no thought is, inner spaciousness. If you don't find inner spaciousness, stillness, no thought, nothing that you achieve will satisfy you. Temporarily, perhaps, but not for long. No person, no relationship, no location or place, no possession, no achievement will satisfy you truly for long will always prove to be. Oh, have a downside. Everything has a big downside. Every person you meet, you get married to. And when you start living together, you experience the downside of that person. So no matter what it is, you're condemned to continuous frustration if you don't find inner spaciousness. Inner spaciousness frees you from the attachment to all the things in this world, which ultimately is attachment to your mind. Because whatever you experience in this world, you experience as a mental formation. You might have a Rolls Royce in your garage, but ultimately, how do you experience the Rolls Royce as a mental formation? My car. And so ultimately, you're attached to, not ultimately the Rolls Royce. You're attached to the idea, the thought of me and my car. So it again always comes back to thought. Thought giving you your identity, which is the limitation. Cultivate the cessation of thought. Alert, presence, stillness, spaciousness. Bring it into your life in moments, moments when there's nothing to do for a minute. You can either get your cell phone out of your pocket and start looking at it like everybody else, like all the zombies that you see around you, people, they really look. Becoming like zombies. They all go. The intention is absorbed by the cell phone, which is an extension of thought. Reflection and extension of. It reflects thought back to you and you link into the collective thinking. It's just the cell phone is an extension of identification with thinking. You can use it. It's an incredible device. Of course it is. It's amazing. But it's also highly dangerous. So instead of automatically pulling the thing out of your pocket, what for? You invite a moment of no thought into your life. Cultivate presence. Either just go into no thought and alert presence, or take a conscious breath or two conscious breaths.