The Source of True Power | Eckhart Teachings

Power, really, it is feeling your inherent power. I don't often use that word. I did use it for a title of a book. But there is a. You can. There is a source of power in you that transcends the person. And it's not egoic power over somebody. And it's one with the power that is the power of life in the universe where all life arises. And people sometimes have a problem with self confidence or valuing yourself. And sometimes you try to convince yourself by changing your thinking that you are actually good enough, that you should be self confident. But there is a better way to find the source of self confidence on the egoic level. Self confidence is there because you see, you can tell yourself I'm actually more intelligent than most of these people or I'm better looking than most. I have to remind myself that I'm better looking than most. And then okay, I feel a bit more confident now. Or you say I actually have more money than these people so I should have more self confidence. Whatever it is some way of convincing yourself. And then you compare yourself with others. And then you focus in on those areas where you feel superior to others and try not to think about other areas where inevitably you are inferior to others because you cannot be superior in all areas. It's a complicated game when you start, start comparing yourself to other people. And if you want to bolster your self confidence and you only have to focus on where you feel I'm actually better than most, but that doesn't really work that well. So there is a better way of self confidence that has nothing to do with comparing yourself with others or with feeling you are better than or not as good as. And that is direct access to inner power. You don't need any comparison. You can have it right now at this very moment if you are not stuck in your thinking mind. But take your attention a little bit beyond the thinking mind and then realize that you are the presence behind the thinking mind, without which there could be no thinking. You're the aware presence behind it all. That is deeper. You've gone deeper than the thinking mind. And that aware presence is where power resides. And it's not yours because it connects you with universal power. Therefore, you don't need to compare yourself to anybody anymore or feel, as the ego always does, that you are either superior or inferior to somebody else. That's not a comfortable way to live where you have to classify yourself when you meet people. And so the fear is always I might be inferior. Or behind that fear is a desire to be superior. And when you access true power, you recognize you can relate to humans without any sense of either superiority or inferiority. And that's amazing liberation. You can only do that when you feel your inherent power beyond the mind and mental images of who you are. It's wonderfully liberating to be able to meet other human beings and absolutely have no interest in finding out whether you're superior. Inferior, because you see it's a delusion anyway. And then you have that sense of absolute equality with every human being. They are all your equals, and you are their equals, which is nice when you met VIPs and you don't have to go, who am I compared to this person? You are consciousness, essentially. And this person is consciousness essentially, which has taken form. So you may remember the story I told in one of the books. There was a Zen teacher abbot of a Zen monastery in Japan who was about to meet VIPs that were visiting the monastery. The governor of the province was coming with his staff. And as the governor of the province approached, the abbot got up to greet him. And at that moment he noticed the palms of his hands were sweaty, which is a sign of nervousness. And because so he was very much able to observe himself. And he observed that. But of course, he went on with the ceremony of greeting the officials. And the next day he announced to the monks that he was going away, that his realization was not deep enough, because he explained he became nervous when the governor of the province came and he felt his arms got sweaty. So he was not deeply rooted in his own being. He went off for several years and then he came back. And finally he was able to live in true connectedness with power, which is not personal. That's an amazing act of self observation. Another act of self observation you can do. You can observe when you relate to people, whether your behavior changes even slightly, whether you behave to, whether you're talking to the lady who is cleaning your office, or whether you're talking to the CEO of the company. Observe in yourself is the ego still operating? And don't beat yourself up if you find that the way in which you relate to the cleaning lady is different from the way you relate to the CEO of your company. That's an insight, because whenever you discover the ego operating in you, which is built on image making, it's a great thing, meaning you're becoming more conscious. The process of becoming conscious often involves becoming conscious of your own ego and see it in action. If you then beat yourself up about it, that's more ego on top of the Original ego. So you get layers of ego. Oh my God, I'm still not rid of my ego. No, ego is nothing. Even ego looks personal. But it's not nothing personal really in ego. It's a pattern of behavior in humanity, in the collective unconscious that has been there for being, growing for thousands of years. A separate sense of identity, a sense of separateness. Yes. So observe how whether a great sign that you are beyond ego is that you're the same with everybody and you feel actually the same with everybody. And if you don't, then you can observe the ego in action. But when you observe the ego, it begins to change. It cannot sustain itself in the light of your observation. Your ego requires your unconsciousness. So all the egoic patterns in you can only survive if you don't know what you're doing. But if you know what you're doing, in other words, you are there as the witness, as it's sometimes called the observing presence, then the ego cannot survive. When you recognize it as silly, for example, or you smile at it and you see how silly it is to play one kind of role with one person and then play another kind of role with somebody else who has a different social function. Why? What for are you? You're not yourself, neither with the CEO nor with the cleaning lady. Each case is a role, and the ego plays many roles. So is it possible to not play roles? Yes, Just be straight, be yourself is the famous saying. And of course the question is, well, how can I be myself? Who is myself? So you cut through the mental to the go to the place of power and feel that the presence. Right now, for example, you are both a person and a deeper presence. The moment you start thinking about where you're going to go next, or you think about what happened this morning, or what's awaiting you next week, or anything else, you are the person. And the moment you drop down into just spacious presence which feels very much alive, you are the awareness presence. You're not a person right now. 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.