The Grip of Ego & Living More Consciously with Eckhart Tolle

So it's when your surface reality becomes frustrating, that's the beginning of potentially finding the portal into the awakened state. But when your surface reality is relatively pleasant, by the way, it doesn't stay like that. But for the time being, let's say it's relatively pleasant. You're not really motivated into finding the deeper the essence of who you are. Because why not? Let's fly to Paris. We'll have a great meal there, where you feel a little bit uncomfortable and discontent. Okay, let's. Let's go there. Let's do this. Let's try this. More sensory experience. You can buy any sensory experience. And then after a while, you find being in your comfort zone. After a while becomes your discomfort zone. And then finally you made it. And then finally there's a possibility of awakening. And so this is the challenges that we encounter in life. Many people have an attitude of resentment or a feeling that there's something very wrong with the world or there's something very wrong with my life. When they're being challenged by difficult situations, difficult people, loss of some kind. Did I mention difficult people? Oh, yes. You may find a lot of your suffering unhappiness, strangely enough, comes from other people. They are so difficult. And often the very people that were supposed to make you happy, suddenly they don't fulfill their purpose anymore and they make you unhappy. It's called the divorce court, and there's an implied belief that this shouldn't be happening. Life should unfold beautifully without all that stuff going wrong. And to some extent, yes, to some extent, especially as you live more consciously and no longer totally in the grip of ego, you're beginning to awaken. There's an awareness. You no longer create unnecessary suffering in your mind through reactivity, you're able to drop the unnecessary baggage of creating narratives and creating your own suffering through your narratives. You let go of that. So huge chunks of suffering begin to fall away. But challenges still come. Even then challenges. And even then, it doesn't mean everything will now go totally as expected and as it should. There's still loss happening from time. You still come across difficult people. I don't want any more difficult. But they're everywhere. As the famous French philosopher said, hell is other people. He looked very unhappy, by the way. Well, the only photo I ever saw of him, he looked unhappy. So I don't know. Jean Paul Sartre. It's true, other people are difficult. So your life improves immeasurably as you become more conscious, but it will still challenge you, and it won't mean you will never experience loss again. It doesn't mean things may not go wrong. Still, occasionally, not perhaps as drastically as before, you don't create your own mayhem and chaos anymore. But challenges, yes, different kinds of challenges come. And if you no longer complain that a challenge shouldn't exist, difficulties shouldn't exist, obstacles shouldn't exist, things should not be cancelled, they shouldn't go wrong. If you drop that expectation, then it's actually fine. But be careful that if you still have an unspoken assumption that there's something wrong when challenges happen, that would draw you back into unhappiness. There's nothing wrong when challenges happen. We grow through them. And if you hadn't had yours, you wouldn't be here. If I hadn't had mine, I wouldn't be here. So we wouldn't be here. We would not be here without it. And so retrospectively, we can actually be grateful for the suffering that we've had. Retrospectively, the question is, the challenges of life, when they come, do we transform them into unhappiness? Or are we able to just face them and then go with it? Go with them and do whatever action is possible or necessary, or totally accept that at this moment, this is how it is. So when you live more consciously, you no longer convert the difficulties of life, the inevitable difficulties and challenges of life, you no longer convert them into unhappiness, which means they don't contribute anymore to your unhappy person identity. You're no longer becoming a more unhappy person. You'd be surprised how many people's main sense of identity in this world is unhappiness and they're just looking for the next thing to be unhappy about. And they always find something or to complain about, to be angry about. There's an expression that you become a grievance looking for a cause. And of course you always find the causes. So important thing then to realize that if I'm sure there are some of you who have carried the burden of a very unhappy self for many years, and perhaps you're just beginning to step out of it, you're just perhaps beginning to transcend it. And there are still millions in this world who carry the burden of an unhappy narrative in their minds, unhappy self. And that means, and you think about then, my life. Why did it come to this? Why didn't my own, these, my expectations that I had when I was 20, why didn't they work out? Why did my marriage collapse? Why did I lose that job? Why did I succeed and made millions and then lost them? Why? Why? Why Did I work for nothing for 15 years? And then the whole thing that I built up collapsed. Why so dreadful? Dreadful. All this begins to dissolve because you realize it's. You're unconsciously creating suffering and strengthening the egoic personality through that. And then my life then is just memories. And you begin to realize, as I sometimes put it, or people find it a little weird when I say my life isn't a correct way of putting it. Because you don't have a life. You don't have a life because if you have a life, there's you and life. How can you be separate from life? So if you don't have a life, one could even say you can't even lose your life. You can only lose something that you have. But you are life. You don't have a life. I am life. And life and consciousness are synonymous. It doesn't mean that every form of life is conscious, but every form of life is. The way I see it is matter, the table, a rock, mineral. It's like frozen consciousness. Plant life is like liquid consciousness is an analogy. And the mind and thinking. And beyond that, consciousness itself is like vapor mist. It rises. This is a water analogy. All life is manifestation of the one underlying life or consciousness in manifold forms. So you are. That I am life is a wonderful realization. I am consciousness. I don't have a life. Yes, I have a history, but the history is not my life. It's stuff. It's stuff in the mind. It's memories. And all these things are wonderful that they happen to you because they have brought about your awakening. They all make sense. If you now look back on all the things that happened, including, and not only including, but especially the so called bad things. They brought you to this point. They brought you. They pushed you into awakening. Sam.