Understanding Your Identity, with Eckhart Tolle

I use the term sometimes. There are two identities to who you are. One is the form identity. Form means physical form or mental emotional formations. So you have a form identity, that which is to start with the physical body. It's a physical form. But then you also have thought forms that continuously arise, and you have emotional formations. They are energy formations. Even thought is an energy field. An emotion is an energy field that lives in you. It arises, and then sometimes it subsides. Thoughts arise and subside, and some thoughts refuse to subside. They get stuck in your mind and in fact, in some cases infect the rest of your mind. Toxic thoughts. There is such a thing as a pandemic of toxic thoughts that can also happen. And I've observed the beginnings of that when I look on the Internet and so on. I've observed some weird, very weird things in the collective consciousness or unconsciousness. Very weird. Are these people totally insane? So this is an enormous liberation. So the form identity is, as I said, physical form, mental, emotional form. For most people, that's all they ever experience in their life. That's their life. They're completely identified with their physical form and their personality, which is the conditioning of their mental emotional field. That's the person. That's me. Me. People talk about pronouns, of course. Everybody's favorite pronoun is I. So you can put that on your Facebook. Favorite pronoun, I, because that's the one I use all the time. I. I. I. Everybody says I. What do they mean? What do they. No, in most cases they refer to this entity, the conditioned mind, the conditioned entity. I. Everybody says I. It's a favorite word. Everybody's favorite word. And so most people spend their whole lives trapped in this conditioned existence. Conditioned because who you are as a person, even who you are as a physical form, is determined by the past. All the ways in which your mind and your emotions have been conditioned since childhood so that gradually the certain forms of conditioning get lodged in your mind. And those are the thoughts that create the thoughts that create your world view, how you see the world, how you interpret events, how you interpret other people, your likes and dislikes and your fears and your ambitions and your desires, all determined by the conditioning of your mind, which is determined by the past, your past experience. And so that's the form identity. Now, your other identity, which is deeper and infinitely more real. That is the realm of spirituality. To discover that it really is also the realm of religion, because religion should and really in its essence is codified spirituality. Spirituality has become structured, but often the structure is so heavy that the essence is lost. So the other identity, that's the spiritual realm is. I call that the essence identity. So for the sake of our argument here, let's just say this is not ultimately true, but we're is an approximation to the truth. Let's say there are two of you here. There are two of you. One is the person, conditioned entity. The other is the being, the unconditioned consciousness that you are. The person is a conditioned consciousness. And they are not separate, but they are very different. In every human being there is the unconditioned consciousness also. But most humans don't know that. So it's latent or dormant still in most humans. Your essence identity, to awaken to your essence identity, that is spiritual awakening, that is the beginning of liberation. Religions use all kinds of terms, but they all refer to that. Some religions talk of salvation, some religions talk of awakening, some religions talk of liberation. They all point to the same thing. The possibility of living in and through a different state of consciousness. That's all really that that's the essence of all religion, expressed in different words. All religions. There's a lot of truth there. Unfortunately, it's been in many cases corrupted. Religions agree that there is a basic dysfunction in. In human beings. Of course, the basic dysfunction is the egoic mind. Christianity talks of sin as your basic state. Primordial sin. My God, that sounds terrible. What have I done? And so you can tell a little child, you are full of. There's primordial sin in you. It's your fault. That's of course not quite right. But what is inherited is a dysfunction that's still in human consciousness or unconsciousness. And that makes humans do dreadful things from time to time. Other religions talk about the basic human state. The Buddha said the basic human condition is dukkha, which is the word that means suffering. Buddha said wherever you go, whatever you do, very quickly you will find dukkha suffering. Similar things will go wrong. What thing might make you happy today? The same thing that makes you happy today, tomorrow, or in a year's time makes you unhappy. Or it loses its ability to make you happy. Or there's another side to it which isn't happy at all. Well, I sometimes call it the wedding, the honeymoon and the divorce. The person that makes you happy two years later, three, four, two months later. The person that makes you happy, so happy. I found him. I found him. The same person. You start living together and you suddenly discover this wonderful being that you went on dates with. The dates were so beautiful. You looked into Each other's eyes. You can always see. When you observe couples in restaurants, you can know whether they're already married, have been married already, or whether it's a first or second date. If it's a first or second date, they're in a hypnotic state. Wonderful. And then you start living together. And one day this wonderful being suddenly turns into something completely different. You suddenly have this aggressive, dark, destructive entity. And you go, oh, my God, who is this? And then. I've made a dreadful mistake. I'm telling you that because some of you may recognize it from your own experience. I can tell by the laughter. This is just an illustration of what the Buddha was talking about. No matter what you do and where you go, you will encounter dukkha, suffering. That's the traditional translation of that term. Dukkha is suffering. You can also call it unsatisfactoriness. Unhappiness, the most generic term, or misery. Misery. Unhappiness. Unsatisfactoryness. A sense of something important is missing in my life. In the background, a continuous sense of fear, anxiety. Sometimes in the foreground. When you're challenged by a pandemic, it comes very much into the foreground. Oh, my God. And then it recedes into the background. But it's there. It's there for many humans, a continuous state of unease in the background of their lives. Continuous state of almost. There's something missing. This. I'm not. I haven't. There's a sense of, I haven't arrived yet. Because many times you think you have arrived. Like the first and second date, you think you have arrived, oh, no, that wasn't it. And always that feeling of something not quite right, something is missing. Some people are still waiting. When they are 30 and 40 years old, they're still waiting to really start living. Haven't quite made it yet. I hope I'm going to make it. Then I can start living. At this moment, I'm just kind of doing what I have to do. I'm not happy with my life. I'm not happy with my circumstances. I'm not happy with the people I'm with or. Or where I live or what I'm doing. I'm hoping at some point it'll get better. I'm just unhappy. I'll start. And then the years pass by, and then finally you look forward to, okay, now retirement is approaching. That's when I can start living. I've waited 65 years, and now finally I can relax, and there I am. And finally you do relax, and then you move to Florida or wherever. And then you sit there in your nice condo, or you go to the golf course and then another. You go to the golf course again and again and again and again. And then you sit there going, what now? This isn't it. I thought you get unhappy again. Some people die soon after they retire because there's nothing to live for anymore. At least they had their job before. They've been waiting, waiting, waiting. The waiting game. Now, this is a key thing also in. To become aware of in yourself. The state of consciousness that is waiting. It is inextricably linked to the egoic state, the state of waiting for the next thing. In the background, there's continuous sense of fear, anxiety. Sometimes in the foreground, when you are challenged by a pandemic, it comes very much into the foreground. Oh, my God. And then it recedes into the background. But it's there. It's there for many humans, a continuous state of unease in the background of their lives. Continuous state of almost. There's something missing. This. I'm not. I haven't. There's a sense of, I haven't arrived yet. Because many times you think you have arrived. Like the first and second date, you think you have arrived. Oh, no, that wasn't it. Always that feeling of something not quite right, something is missing. Some people are still waiting. When they are 30 and 40 years old, they're still waiting to really start living. Haven't quite made it yet. I hope I'm going to make it, then I can start living. At this moment, I'm just kind of doing what I have to do. I'm not happy with my life. I'm not happy with my circumstances. I'm not happy with the people I'm with or where I live or what I'm doing. I'm hoping at some point it'll get better. I'm just unhappy. I'll start. And then the years pass by and then finally you look forward to. Forward to, okay, now retirement is approaching. That's when I can start living. I've waited 65 years and now finally I can relax. And there I am. And finally.