What Is the Main Purpose in Life? | Eckhart Tolle

And if you live in a false identity, a conceptual identity, that you allow the world to tell you who you are, you allow the world to determine your worth. So you've stopped thinking, the ripple has stopped thinking. And in that at first there is a strange. I'm not thinking about who I am or my problems. And yet what is left here is just a presence. And that means the ripple is becoming aware of. Aware of a transcendent dimension that is deep and that is the awakening of the ripple. And that is actually the main purpose of your life, is to become aware of that, because that is the awakening of the human species. And the human species is only one manifestation of the consciousness of the universe manifesting here as the human species, I'm sure there are others on other planets or galaxies who are also awakening. And your purpose is that you may sometimes question whether your life. There's this weird notion of how do you judge your life so far? Success, failure, something in between. And of course it's yes, it's nice to achieve something in this world, to create this or that, but it cannot tell you who you are. It always leaves a sense of lack, ultimately behind, even if you can hang on to it until finally you die and you have to let go or it leaves you. Either you leave it or it leaves you. Whatever it is, it leaves you or you leave it. And many things leave you before you die. Achievements too, especially in the age of reputation, can leave you, especially in the age of Twitter. One wrong tweet and your entire life is destroyed. And if you live in a false identity, a conceptual identity that you allow the world to tell you who you are, you allow the world to determine your worth, you look to the world, in other people to tell you that you are good. And if you allow the world to tell you that, then it's ultimately you're trapped in a conceptual identity that's me. And that can be destroyed. In the past, you had to do a little bit more to destroy your reputation. But nowadays it's so easy, just tweet something that. And suddenly the hive mind will pounce on you. And you have to say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just. And you can't show your face in public again, anywhere, exaggerating only slightly, but that's all a. It's so fragile because it's a fictitious sense of self, it's a surface I. But to lose your reputation or to lose your possessions or to use to lose your position is a wonderful opportunity for realizing who you are beyond Your position and your possession and your achievements. Some people need that. It's a blessing for them to lose. Not everybody needs it. But many people need to lose some things very significant in their lives in order to bring about, to initiate the awakening process. And retrospectively, many humans look, then look back. They're really grateful that they lost this, which they regarded as irreplaceable and extremely valuable. And with that loss they lost the most important part of their identity was affection anyway. But they didn't know that. And that led to suffering, of course. So the loss of fictitious identity, which can happen to anybody, to some people it doesn't happen until they retire. Maybe they had a particular job title. And suddenly you pack your bags and you look forward to, okay, now I can start living. But then suddenly you realize you're nobody any beyond your job description. And your function that you fulfilled for decades, perhaps an important function, member of the board. And suddenly you're not a member of the board, you're just bored. But you have been looking forward to the golfing, or there's a lot of golfing around here. Nothing against golf can be wonderful meditation. You'd been looking forward to the golfing or whatever it is. You're very tired and I can start living and you do some golfing and then you sit there. Then you do a bit more golf or whatever it is. But who are you? Suddenly you don't get these phone calls anymore. Only very occasionally. And that this great sense of something missing. Oh, what is this? I'm nobody suddenly. Yeah, because your entire life, your entire identity was built upon a fiction, a conceptual edifice in your head. And everybody else confirmed its truthfulness. But it wasn't. So the loss can be great, a great, great help. Most of you are not in desperate need of a huge loss, or that might happen. The universe gives you what you need because you have already voluntarily come here. You have voluntarily embarked upon a cause of, to put it in blunt and somewhat scary terms, a cause of self annihilation. But it was only the surf itself. There was nothing real there. So when you, for example, when you. Now, especially now during the six months when your practice is. You're in a state, the practice is becoming familiar with awareness, allowing awareness into your life, realizing that nothing is more important than that. And the most important thing is you discover your ability to refrain from thinking. Doesn't have to be long at first, just long. Not just when you're meditating. Okay, now I'm going to do a meditation. That's fine. It's Good. But there's more, there's much more to it. To refrain from thinking in ordinary situations when thinking is not required. Simple thing like looking at flowers, looking at around the room. Do you have to think while you look around the room? Or can you look around the room without thinking? And who is looking when you're not thinking? Is the person looking? When you have no labels for your perception, or when you're listening to a bird or the sound of the ocean or the sound of rain which may be coming tomorrow, when you're listening to that and you're not labeling it mentally, you're not saying anything about it, but there's an alert listening. Who is listening? Are you then a person with a history and so on that's listening? Or is there a deeper I that has emerged and the sensory perception is happening against the background of or within the space of that deep I. So in that sense, you could say the universe is listening to itself. And there is a. Let's say there is the bird song, or there is the crashing of the waves, or there's the sound of the rain. And suddenly that listening is an enormous addition to the universe. The universe is awakening to itself, its own depth, its own beauty through you. But you can only fulfill that function as part of the totality, the function of the awakening universe, if you're not excessively burdened and excessively trapped in your personalized sense of self, because otherwise you carry the burden of yourself, the surface self, the little self. But the little self can feel very huge. It occupies your entire mental and emotional space. And it thinks about itself and it talks about itself and it worries about itself. I am the most important thing in the universe. He's me and the rest of the universe. So, and now how do you become free of. How do you step out of this being, the trap, the presence of the self, as the Buddha just called it the self. Jesus also called it the self. It's not very well known fact because they don't understand it in the churches, most of them. Some may do, but they understand. When he said deny yourself, Jesus said, deny yourself, deny thyself in the old translation, meaning obviously you're not supposed to deny something that is real. The implication when Jesus deny thyself is obviously that the self is not real. Why would he ask you to deny something that is real would not make sense. And so the Buddha, of course, always pointed to the fictitious nature of the self. Buddha said self is an illusion. Buddha. And as long as you are trapped, I'm paraphrasing the Buddha. Now, as long as you are trapped in the illusion of the self, you will encounter dukkha, translated as suffering, sometimes translated as misery, or translated as unhappiness. Suffering, misery, unhappiness, unsatisfactoriness. When you are trapped in that ultimately illusory self, you continuously generate dukkha, which is from the Pali language, which is related to Sanskrit, meaning suffering, unhappiness, unsatisfactoriness. And wherever you go, whatever situation you go into, whatever relationship you go into, whatever place you go to, whatever attainment, whatever you attain or achieve or get, there's always sooner or later, and usually sooner you will encounter the element of dukkha. In other words, it gets tainted with unhappiness. And so the Buddha, that was the teaching of the Buddha, said, wherever you go, you'll find dukkha. But why? Because you take something that you are not to be real and ultimately who you are. And so that felt is a fiction. And therefore Jesus said, deny thyself, meaning, not deny the reality of yourself, meaning, recognize the unreality of yourself. That's the significant meaning of deny thyself, recognize the unreality. That is a denial of the self. It.