A short spoken reflection by Eckhart Tolle contrasting superficial happiness derived from pleasant circumstances (illustrated by a fictitious 'Heavenly Spa in Malibu') with deeper spiritual awakening that can arise in adverse conditions, exemplified by his visit to a women's prison. Tolle suggests that hardship can offer greater opportunity for awakening than comfort and pampering.
If your happiness, your joy, is produced by pleasant circumstances, it does not go very deep. At the moment, the scenery around you changes, it's gone. I visited a women's prison. I said to them, I invented some fictitious place, the Heavenly Spa in Malibu, where you go and you're pampered with the best food, massages every day, just absolutely wonderful. That gives you the illusion that you're becoming enlightened because. And then you go back into ordinary life. So I said to the women in prison, there's more opportunity for spiritual awakening for you than for those people in this fictitious spa. The Heavenly Spa in Malibu is less likely to produce the awakening, and that's an interesting fact.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
