What Is the True Nature of Desire? | Ego vs. Presence with Eckhart Tolle

It is a disguised desire also for God. But those who are trapped in ego don't know that what they are really looking for is not the house of the car or the recognition from others or the fame. What they're really looking for is themselves.

Hello, Eckhart, the question that I submitted was what is the fundamental difference between your teaching of presence and the current popular teaching of the Law of Attraction? Behind that teaching is really a question about desire. And I have always felt very drawn to the Sufi teaching which says, hidden deeply within my desire is the desire of God. And yet the law of Attraction. People are saying, you can have or do or be anything you want if you think and feel in a certain way. And I always feel a red flag when I hear that because I think the ego could go wild with that. So my question is, is there a deeper fundamental level of desire which is not of the ego?

Thank you. Thank you. The Sufis are right, of course, when they say that ultimately every desire is really a disguised desire for God. It's a disguised desire for ultimate satisfaction and fulfillment and being fully and truly, completely who you are. And basically, we're talking about the source, realizing the source of all life. And everyone is longing for that. But in most humans, still the longing for the. What I sometimes call the return journey to where you came from, the source of all life, but never really left the source. Of course, it's not really a journey, but it's words. There's a longing to return to the very source of life. And it's really only then, when you have discovered it, found it consciously, then there's a completion there of life. That's what the universe wanted. It wants two things. If you observe yourself, you'll know that this is true and you are the universe. So you can learn a lot about the universe by observing yourself. Because you are it and it is you. And as above, so below the tendency or the desire to create, the human being has the desire to create in the world of form, to do, to bring things into, to give birth to whatever it may be. It may be material thing, it may be something else, but there is a desire in humans to participate in the act of creation, which of course the act of creation is there even without humans. The millions of life forms on this planet alone come into being every moment. Millions of life forms of different kinds of staggers, the imagination. How many different life forms on this planet alone are being created every moment and of course die at the same time. The continuous birth, death, birth, death continuously. Humans too. Humans Are being created every moment. I can say a human being is being born now, now, now, now, now, somewhere on the planet. And a human being is dying a little bit slower. Now, now, now, now, at this moment, somebody is dying on the planet. And again and again and again and being born. So there's the act of creation that the universe is engaged in. And creation is becoming. Is increasing in complexity. If you look at our planet alone, you see that there was a time when it was barren. There was only minerals. Then came plant life. And then other levels of life. Increasing complexity. Like a tree. First there's only one branch stem, one branch. And then a lot more smaller branches coming out of that. So it crosses and it goes into complexity. And even human life forms. If you go back in human history, Human society and the human being was relatively simple thousands of years ago, Even a few hundred years ago, compared to now. There's much less complexity in people's personal lives, what they had to deal with. And the collective. So there is the. The universe, then, is growing in complexity. And is indulging in or wanting or delighting perhaps in the act of creation. Because otherwise it wouldn't be happening. It is a desire of the universe to create, and that's what it does. And that is reflected in humans. We participate in this wanting to give birth. So the human. The act of creation can happen to the human. The human can create. And in that sense, we are different from animals because we can create all kinds of things that are totally new. We can create music, science, and many, many other things. Art, philosophies, pictures, movies, organizations, Wall street, all kinds of things. And you can probably find in yourself that there's part of you that would like to do and participate in the act of creation and bring something into this world that wasn't here before in the world of form. Maybe it's a book you want to write or a piece of music. Or you want to create an enlightened organization that changes things in the world or whatever. Or you want to help people who are suffering. You create a structure that is helpful, but you create something. There's that desire. Or in some people, it's. It is more fundamental. It's the desire to acquire something. Some people who are very much in the egoic consciousness don't see it so much as giving out into this. Giving from your treasure, and then create something. You must, to some extent, have already gone beyond ego. The creation comes through the fullness that you sense inside you. And from there, you can truly create. This is really presence in the egoic consciousness they also very interested in the world of form. But it's the egoic consciousness is not so much doesn't come from the wanting to give, but wanting to have. So the ego goes what can I get? And the from presence. When you put participate in the creation, it's more what can I give birth to? That's the difference. So there is the egoic aspect of increasing complexity in the world of form and life forms. The egoic part is wanting something. So the ego comes not from fullness, but from neediness, from a sense of not enough. And so it says where can I get? And that is the ego desire. The ego. I desire that car because I will really feel better when I'm sitting in that car and driving it. Especially if other people see me in it. Without other people it doesn't really work because who. Okay, it's comfortable for the ego. Yes, it's a comfortable ride, but that's not such a big thing. It only begins to work for the ego if other people have cars that are not like mine. Then it works the same with the house or whatever. You acquire any possession you can perfectly enjoy a nice house or a nice car without the ego deriving any pleasure from it or enhancing itself. I'm not saying things cannot be enjoyed if you have no ego. You can still enjoy lovely things, but not because they add to your sense of self. It's the simple enjoyment of a beautiful thing that perhaps a human has created a beautiful piece of furniture. Beautiful could be a house. You enjoy that house. You would probably not want to acquire a 20 bedroom house for yourself. When you're not coming from ego. It's unlikely that presence would say I'd love a 20 bedroom house we have. So there's both the egoic aspect of wanting to not so much the ego, not so much create, but have. But it's the world of form and the non egoic desire of the universe to give birth to more forms and experience more form. So the universe does it without the humans. But an added dimension comes in when the universe or the greater intelligence or consciousness creates through the humans a completely new level of creation comes in. And this is why we have the expression we become co creators with God. God creates the fishes in the sea and and the plant life and all the animals and the human bodies. And then through the human form, the human mind, including thought. The universe can create things that wouldn't be there without the human co creators. So that's desire as such is really an egoic phenomenon. When you Create beyond ego. It's not so much a creation out of desire. It's a creation because desire implies some kind of lack. Creation comes as wanting to give. From the fullness that you sense within you, something wants to be. The way I perceive when I wrote the books, the books wanted to come out and I could feel it wanted to be created. It's not so much that I had a desire to write a book. The book wanted to come. And so that is creation when it does not come from ego. The desire of the ego, as I mentioned earlier just now, if you look deeply, it is a disguised desire also for God, for spiritual realization. But those who are trapped in ego don't know that what they are really looking for is not the bank account or the house or the car or the recognition from others or the fame or whatever it is that the ego thinks would give it fulfillment. What they're really looking for is themselves, a fuller version of themselves. And who are you in your essence? You are the source. Who you are in your essence is consciousness itself, which is the. If God is the sun, so to speak analogy, then the light of the sun, the consciousness is the light of the sun. God is the source, the unmanifested of which you cannot speak. Because whatever you say is a distortion. It's absurd to speak of that mystery. As the Tao Te Ching says, you, you can't speak of the Tao. And nevertheless we are speaking. And nevertheless the Tao dating did get written in words. And the people who are impelled by egoic desire eventually experience frustration and suffering, even if they attain, and particularly if they attain whatever they desired, because then they realize, no, this doesn't seem to work. I still feel this unfulfillment, perhaps even more strongly when you no longer have anything that you could mentally project yourself to and say, when I have that, I be okay. And so when you have everything that this world can offer you, some people do not many, most people want that, desire that. But those few who do, I've met a few who have everything. And they can either realize the futility of desiring things that ultimately cannot give them themselves. Ultimate fulfillment, ultimate satisfaction, a sense of permanency, vibrantly alive inner peace. These things can't give that to you. But in the meantime, as long as the ego GS don't know that they are free to practice manifesting, they are free to practice okay, I need to manifest the car, I need to manifest the house, I need to manifest this. And they, to some extent it can work. You are a little bit hampered when you are coming from ego consciousness. So your powers of manifestation are limited. Nevertheless, you have some in addition, what the ego also manifests, of course, its own dysfunction that comes with the house and the car. So what we're not mentioning here is that while the ego can manifest a house and a car and whatever else it wants, it will also manifest the drama in the marriage that's in the house, the drama drama with the wife and the husband in the big house. That's a side manifestation of the ego that it hadn't planned that. But because of its inbuilt dysfunction, it also manifests continuous conflict around whatever else it manifests. So it's. And eventually you realize that this does not provide you with satisfaction and then you begin to awaken. So there are then two ways of manifesting. One comes with the ego's neediness to manifest, and another is out of the fullness of presence. You can manifest even coming from the fullness of presence. Presence can use also the human mind, because presence flows through the. Can flow through the mind and can energize your thoughts, your thought structures, and they're no longer dysfunctional. And whatever presence wants to manifest through you, it can. And it can use the power of thought to manifest, but it will come from a giving behind there. It's a desire to give, wanting to give, not to get. So thought can be used and it used more powerfully. When the ego is no longer interfering, but presence, when the human becomes co creator with God, then presence can flow into the human mind and use also human thought and create original things out there. And that's a beautiful thing. Sa.