Recognizing Egoic Patterns | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

So it's welcoming the challenges. We talked about it before. Welcoming the challenges of everyday life. Without that, first you wouldn't get a reflection of where you are at as far as your state of consciousness is concerned. How upset do situations, how much power do situations and other people have over you and over your state of consciousness. How often do you get upset, irritated, reactive, and so on. That's a good reflection of how present you are. Not. Although meditation is a wonderful device, a wonderful tool, but how deep you can go when you meditate is only a small part of the transformation of consciousness. You can't really tell their state of consciousness unless you go into normal life and then get reflections of yourself there. Human beings, it's not the case that humans either have an ego or are totally free of ego. The ego manifests in human beings in varying degrees. Most humans have a lot of ego that determines their thought processes and their emotions. But a little bit of awareness also in between, they may still be capable of empathy sometimes with a limited number of people, perhaps only empathy with your family members or empathy with the people who belong to your particular group, your collective. And there are, when you look at. You can understand the ego more deeply. If you look at the extreme manifestations of ego that a certain percentage of humanity suffer from, where it's actually labeled as a mental disorder, then you see that many mental disorders are actually just a more extreme form of what is the normal egoic state. And when you see the normal egoic state in a more extreme manifestation, then you can recognize it also when it appears as a normal state. An example of that is paranoia. Paranoia is the belief that there are people who are plotting against you, enemies who have spent most of their life following you or plotting against you. So it's a delusional system that is the result of the egoic state of fear, on the one hand, because there's always fear in the background when you live through a false sense of self. And so the mind tries to explain the fear and then it creates a story, and then you believe in the story. Secondly, another reason why the mind creates paranoia is to give itself a heightened sense of significance. I am so important is the implication that the CIA has 55 people whose full time job is to control. Try to control me. Now I'm not saying that CIA don't, they don't. I'm not saying they don't do things. They do sometimes, as you know. But I don't think they have 55 people, or even one in my case, that try to, who knows I may be wrong. If you work for the CIA, please raise your hand. But you can see if that is a story that your mind believes in how important you suddenly feel. So sometimes paranoia arises because the ego's need to enhance its sense of existence, its sense of significance, its sense of importance. And if life doesn't tell you that you are important, then you have to create a story that you are important. And paranoia is one way of creating a story that gives yourself importance. You can. There are slightly less extreme forms of that are people who believe, for example, believe they are great geniuses, but they are so superior to everything that they never even try to create or do anything because that's beneath them. So you can have. Occasionally I've met people who say to me, oh, I'm a spiritual teacher too. They tell me, oh, I see, that's great. Have you written anything? No, no, no. I don't write this. The true teachings are all beyond words. I don't bother with that. That's fine. They may so. But that gives you a sense of you are actually superior to most people. All these insignificant people who are so in their sense, in their insignificance, they have to write books, many stories one creates to give oneself a sense of importance. Stories that have in, in the more extreme cases, little relationship with external reality. And then there is the talking about narcissus. There's another extreme form of ego that when you look at it, you can see that it has all the elements of the normal ego but greatly emphasized. And that's called narcissistic personality disorder. And people who suffer from that are totally obsessed with themselves, with their appearance and the way they are perceived by others. They live for that. They are totally incapable of empathy. In fact, they are hardly aware that other humans exist. They only see other humans through how they can help, how they can amplify their own ego. So what they want from other humans is attention or other forms of so called narcissistic supply. They are always looking to enhance their self image through being told that they are awesome. They are wonderful. They believe they know everything. The moment you question their opinion about something, they will become very angry and aggressive. You see quite a few of them on Facebook. But there is still a human being underneath that dysfunction. It's just an extreme form of ego. Nobody knows how many people suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. But the estimate is 3 to 5% of the population. Now that means 3 to 5% of your population suffer from this very extreme form of ego. And perhaps you've all met somebody who can think of somebody oh I wonder if that was my dad that was my ex that was my ex husband my ex wife hopefully not your present husband or wife so continuous vigilance so that you are there in the background as the awareness when you become aware of your ego operating it's not really ego anymore the real ego exists in complete unconsciousness in complete identification when you notice something in you that's egoic with the need to be right the need to be superior to somebody whatever it may be by noticing it that means you are there as the observer the awareness so strictly speaking it's not even ego anymore once you notice your ego what you're noticing is a deep seated pattern in you and it's only really ego if you are completely identified with it and there is no awareness whatsoever this mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive to be free you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation it.