This is a YouTube video titled "What Is My Responsibility? | Teachings From Eckhart Tolle" containing a spiritual teaching session recorded in 2009. The content features a speaker, likely Eckhart Tolle, discussing the concept of responsibility from a consciousness and spiritual perspective, emphasizing personal awareness and the impact of individual consciousness on the world and humanity's future. The talk explores themes of ego, suffering, and the necessity of awakening to take true responsibility for one's state of being.
Hi. Hi.
The hardest word that I'm having trouble with right now is responsibility. And I have a hunch that most of the things that I consider responsibility are just my ego telling me things I have to do. But I also, when I think about the future of the earth and human evolution and stuff like that, sometimes I have big emotions of responsibility. So I'm just curious.
Thank you.
About the right relationship to the word responsibility.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah. It's a strange word. It has been pointed out that if you look at the word, it's. It seems to be talking about the ability to respond. So to take responsibility for. What is it that you can take responsibility for? Primarily, it's taking responsibility for your state of consciousness which determines what kind of world you create. You, because you are humanity. Humanity is an abstract concept, doesn't exist. Humanity is the human being. You are humanity. So for humanity to take responsibility, you need to take primarily responsibility for your state of consciousness. Because only a diseased or dysfunctional state of consciousness produces a diseased and dysfunctional world out there. By world, I mean the human made world that has been imposed on what's already there. The planet which is potentially, of course, a paradise. The planet, pristine, unbelievable jewel. A being of great intelligence. We are not separate from it, but the being is going through a transitional process. And every transitional process is critical. It may or may not work, in which case the being will go some other way. But your state of consciousness determines what kind of world you create, what kind of action you take, and what consequences your actions have. So here this is why my main work is to address the cause of dysfunction which lies in the human mind. The dysfunction of the human mind, or as it is sometimes called in Zen, the sickness of the human mind. So as I see it, and I don't think anybody who reads history can doubt it, there is a deep seated dysfunction in humans, has been there for thousands of years. And if there's no shift in that, then the dysfunction will destroy us. It probably won't destroy the planet, because the planet has enormous resources. But it'll take a while, would take a while for the planet to recover. All you have to do then is primarily take responsibility for your state of consciousness. Now, now. And this is what the entire teaching really is about. What is my state of consciousness at this moment? Am I generating disturbance? Am I generating negativity? Am I generating conflict and suffering for myself and others? Am I generating inner pollution? Am I polluting my beautiful, the beautiful being that I am with continuous, absurd movements of thought, producing negative Emotions producing an entire entity that is illusory that I call the me. So to take responsibility, there needs to be just, of course, an awakening where you can say, okay, I will take responsibility now. Some people don't know that there is even the possibility of taking responsibility. That's why you are so important. Anybody who realizes it, you are the beginning of the transformed world. I don't know who first coined the famous phrase. You hear it quite often these days. You need to be the change that. The change that you want to see out there. You need to embody that. And that's not primarily what you do. But there's something more primary than what you do. It's who you are. Who you are is your state of consciousness. Whatever you do flows out of that. So that's the primary. Is that so? The change is the transformed state of consciousness. Now that is your responsibility. Anybody, once you've seen that, that's your responsibility. Now you know it. People who are not yet at that level don't realize it, and that's fine. You can't expect the whole world already to be at that stage. It's enough for you to take responsibility knowing there's still a few million others who don't know that they can take responsibility because they live in such unconsciousness that they see the entire evil in others. What they see as evil, it's all in them. And they make half the world into their enemy. It's all out there. That's fine. Only those are required to take responsibility who are up to it. But even those who are totally unconscious, still, on the one hand, they don't know what they're doing. Obviously, as Jesus said on the cross, they know not what they do. In other words, they are in the grip of unconscious forces or unconscious mental emotional streams. They don't know what they do. They cannot be held responsible. And people say, well, they should be held responsible. No, they can't be. They don't know what they do. However, the fact that they are not responsible because they can't be responsible does not mean that they do not suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness. So they generate suffering. And eventually suffering is the fire in which the ego gets burned up. The collective ego and the personal ego. That's the long way, the slow way, the painful way. And then there is a shortcut, which is any spiritual teaching. It cuts through that, the painful way, the long way of waking up, more and more suffering. The planet might not endure such a long learning process for humanity. So if the learning process of humanity does not become shortened. It is doubtful that the planet can allow humanity to learn through further suffering for another 500 years, or even 200 years, or even 100 years. So that's. You are responsible for all that. Thank you.
