The Futility of Egoic Reaction & Navigating Our Awakening with Eckhart Tolle

You switched off your cell phones, I hear. And what about your minds? Not as easy. Because it's not just. Well, it is a voice in the head. But over the years and centuries and millennia, it's more than just a voice. There's a kind of entity. It has turned into a kind of entity, a me. Not ultimately real, but seemingly real enough. When you confuse who you are with the talking and reacting entity in the head, energized, amplified by emotions in a vicious circle. The emotions are created by whatever the entity is thinking and the energy of the emotion further amplifies the entity. Eagle. The eagle. And the strength of that varies from person to person in some way. We could say that the entity is an aspect of karma. What is in the east is called karma. It's patterns inside you, inherited patterns inside you that you confuse with who you are. Consciousness identifies with the patterns. And in some humans it's a very heavy entity, extremely dramatic or angry, or very heavy and sad. Easily upset. Always looking out for some perceived injury or slight, always ready to jump to its defence. Even questioning somebody's viewpoint. Because you identify with the mind, which is ego. So any viewpoint is invested with a sense of self. The ego is in your viewpoint that you're expressing about this or that. So even somebody questioning your viewpoint can lead to extreme defensive measures or aggression. As you can witness everywhere, on television or in daily life, a peaceful discussion with that entity is not really possible, because a peaceful discussion about something implies that there's some degree of disidentification from that mind made entity. There is at least a little bit of space in you and the other person, primarily in you. That's the main thing, is not to demand that there should be space in the other person, but to make sure that there's space in you. When you're discussing something and you can see if the other person is already getting upset, you can see why immediately identification with a mental position. Ego. The entity feels threatened and is barking back at you. Some dogs do that also. But the same as in humans, even in vicious dogs, they are only vicious because of their past. Underneath the viciousness in every dog there is a goodness. And underneath the madness of the egoic entity, there is also the truth of who you are or who that other human being is. So your task, as you're confronted with these entities and you are all the time, occasionally your own, still takes over. Perhaps one or two of you may still experience it. Occasionally the task is to be there as the observer or witness of your mind. Then you are no longer in the grip of the egoic entity. So ego then is the unobserved mind, complete lack of awareness. In other words, there is only mind. And that's the state of. One could call it hypnotic state or dreamlike state, in which you dream up your life and then things happen around you. Because in every human, every person's life, there are. You come into this world here and you are surrounded by a certain situation, things happen to you, you react, the entity reacts without any awareness. It reacts according to its aggressive defensive conditioning. So it's completely at the mercy of what happens around it and it perpetuates its own state. So an event that for somebody who is relatively free of the ego, at least in that particular area of their lives, the same event happening to one person is relatively unimportant. Oh, Eckhart didn't reply to my email. To one person, that is, he must be very busy, or maybe he doesn't even read it. And that's just how it is. And the other person feels deeply offended. And another person said, well, that's how it is. When the Power of Now first came out, some people suggested to me it would be a good idea to send a copy to Deepak Chopra. And I did, because that maybe he'll read it. And it was published in 3,000 copies. The first edition, which had to be taken, I carried to bookstores in a paper in a plastic bag. And so I signed it to him. And nothing, as if it had disappeared into hole. And now this is what happens when people send books to me. But now I know why, because you can't even read them all. You can't possibly read them all, the manuscripts and the books. But luckily that entity was no longer operating inside me, so there was no complaining that Deepak had not just there was no reply. Well, that's just how it is. He must be busy. Maybe he read it and didn't like it, maybe he didn't read it, who knows? The moment I interpret something, I'm projecting. So it's futile to interpret something. You have no clue why. It's just that's how it is. It's the simple isness of fact. And of course the truth is, sure he never even saw it because he gets too many books. It's impossible. By the way, later, when Pavna was already doing very well, he did write an endorsement when it wasn't needed anymore. But that was very nice. But if I had sent him angry emails, I still have not heard from you. After three months of sending 10 emails, you still neglected to inform me whether, etc. Etc. Then I don't think he would have written an endorsement. So your reaction determines also what happens next. So if your reaction is an egoic one, it's not simply the reaction to something that has happened in the present moment, it also determines how the events unfold from now on. So if the egoic reaction is aggressive, negative, demanding, complaining, whatever the ego does to strengthen itself, to feel stronger, then that creates an echo in the external world. It's like you're shouting a particular sound. You're shouting it out into the world and then it echoes back. So what you're putting out, then, as in your reaction, which comes to words and actions, then comes back at you. People react to your reaction because they are not perhaps totally enlightened, in which case they wouldn't react to your reactions, but they are also, they have their egos, so they react to your reaction, and you create a whole train of reactivity. And this is how the drama develops and grows and it's all taken for absolutely real. And that's how it is. You don't realize the entity doesn't realize it's creating the whole story. And all it hears back is the echo of its own conditioning coming back to you from the external, the outside world. And so. And of course, that then serves as a very powerful confirmation that your initial interpretation of events was absolutely correct. Because you see, his original intention was to deceive me to whatever. And then when I confronted him, he got angry because I was right, and so on. And so. And if you have ever tried to argue with the egoic entity, with someone, you can see the futility of it. It is impossible. You cannot convince this egoic entity of its own illusory nature. You can't. You only strengthen it. Arguing with the ego is quite funny ultimately, but it's an absurd enterprise on its own level. It will always win and it will draw you. Well, the moment you start arguing with the ego, you're already trapped in your own mind patterns. So the karma, then, this being an aspect of karma, Karma is what happens. Usually people say karma is what happens to you, but more importantly, karma is how you react to what happens, because that is what perpetuates the conditioning. And that creates what. What you experience as your life. And it creates how other people react to you. So how you experience interactions. Amazing. So often I observe the futility of egoic reaction. Nothing. Reacting to nothingness and blowing it up like a huge soap bubble, talking about it for days on end until finally reality confirms you were right all along. It's quite a trap. So you need to. The heavier the egoic entity in you is, the more dense it is. Because the density, we could call it that. I'm talking about ego. The emotional aspect of ego is. A large part of the emotional aspect of ego is the pain bodies. The pain body really is the emotional aspect of the egoic entity. And the density of the ego in you varies from person to person. There is probably nobody listening to this here or there. This is the wormhole of the camera through which the words are reaching out. And there's somebody the other end. Hi. Not just somebody. Far more people than sitting here. There's thousands of people. But there's nobody people sitting here or at the other end of the wormhole whose ego is extraordinarily dense. Or if they are, they won't stay here for very long or they would switch off the screen. This is awful. There's nothing that the ego likes less than to hear about itself. So it is then not so likely that in you there is this great density of the ego and pain body. But you still encounter in your daily life, you will still encounter many humans who manifest extreme density of ego and pain body. And of course, those people create suffering for themselves and others. That's their purpose in life. That's where they are at in their evolutionary journey. They are here as spiritual teachers. They are creating suffering which eventually will awaken them when they realize that the suffering they experience is self created. But that could take a while before they realize that. In the meantime, they might attempt to create suffering for you at the same. It's because they go together. And so they become your teachers because they force you into more intense presence or they draw you into the egoic unconsciousness. So when you are confronted with dense egos, as one spiritual teacher in India called them, ego GS, ji being the term of respect. So the ego GS, there are still many around and they are here to teach you more presence. Of course, they don't know that that's what they're doing. But within the totality, that's ultimately what their function is in the evolutionary journey of human sa.