Who Are You Without Your Past | Eckhart Tolle

What does it feel like to be you? In other words, I'm inquiring about your sense of self or your sense of identity. What does it feel like to be you without any reference to your past or your future? What's left when you don't remember yourself as the historical person? What is left of you when your past becomes unimportant? Let's imagine you don't have a past and there's no future, it's just this. Do you still know who or what you are without any reference to memory? And that's a very profound question which cannot be answered conceptually, can only be realized experientially. Because when I ask that, who are you without reference to your past? Some— this awareness awakens in you. You, you realize that there is a presence a vitally alive presence that is there, which in some spiritual traditions is the I Am. You realize that you are the being of you, and that is pure presence. That is the most essential spiritual realization, the realization that you are the being awakening to that realization of being. All spiritual traditions, all spiritual practices point to that. Now, many humans are not yet ready for it. They are too immersed, too much in the grip of the conditioned mind, which is a kind of state of hypnosis. And here we come to adversity. Adversity is a great awakener. Adversity actually drives the evolution of consciousness anywhere in the universe. The evolution of consciousness would not happen if life forms— not just humans— if life forms did not encounter adversity. Adversity awakens you. As Carl Jung said, there's no coming to consciousness without pain. Without challenges, without adversity, you become even more unconscious. You go to sleep, so to speak. You need to be challenged, and then That generates— at first it generates suffering in many cases, and then there's a potential that it can generate more consciousness.