Eckhart TolleNYT Bestselling author of the Power of Now

The Two Kinds of Adversity

28 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief excerpt, Eckhart Tolle explains that adversity appears in two distinct forms. The first is personal adversity, which affects an individual or their immediate family. The second is collective adversity, which impacts large groups of people or the entire planet, such as climate change. He emphasizes that beyond the practical question of whether we can address collective challenges, the crucial factor is the underlying state of consciousness that guides our actions. Only actions arising from a clear, wise state of consciousness can be truly effective; otherwise, well‑intentioned actions may exacerbate the problem.

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Adversity comes in two forms. Adversity come to you personally, it means a challenge that you face as an individual or in your family. And then there are other types of challenges that are collective. That means difficult situations that arise and affect large groups of people, sometimes millions of people or everybody on the planet. At the same time. So when you talk about climate change, then that is certainly a collective challenge for humanity. And the question arises, is there anything we can do about it? But more importantly, what is the underlying state of consciousness that is necessary for whatever action you take to be intelligent action, wise action, not action that instead of solving anything makes it even worse.