Eckhart Tolle argues that inner freedom comes from accepting the present moment, not from external circumstances. He draws on correspondence with prisoners to show that awakening can happen even in harsh conditions, and contrasts superficial happiness from pleasant surroundings with deep freedom that arises through acceptance.
So I said to the women in prison, there's more opportunity for spiritual awakening for you than for those people. At correspondence from people in prison. And I have visited prisons to talk to them, quite a few of these. We distribute the books all over all most prisons in the United States. And the prisoners have read. Some of them read the book and say, wow, surrender to the present moment is the end of suffering. And they've been suffering for 10, 15, 15, 20, 30 years in prison, a terrible life situation. And suddenly they okay, if I completely accept this moment as it is, without judging it in any way, without labeling it in any way, and just there it is, I don't add any more thought to this moment. What happens? Awakening happens. And so I've had correspondence from them. And that's why we became interested in prisoners awakening. Then they are pointing the way to others. And several prisoners have said to me, I have become free. I am still here, but I am free internally. What does that mean? It means free of the burden of the personality, the conditioned entity that most people mistake for who or what they are. The conditioned entity, the suffering entity that has been conditioned through life experiences, upbringing and so on, has been conditioned to in many cases, manifest dysfunctional behavior. Because they grew up surrounded by dysfunctional behavior, their parents and so on in many cases. And so these patterns were deep seated. And then they manifested dysfunctional behavior that produced created suffering to others and eventually to themselves also. As the unconscious state creates suffering and the unobserved mind creates suffering to yourself and to others, the unobserved mind create suffering. You're not there as a witness. You're not there as the awareness, the presence that is aware of your thoughts. When you're aware of your thoughts, you're not your thought. You are the awareness behind your thought. And then you can. This is the liberation. So people in prison have realized that through the pressure of suffering. And I visited last year, women's prison, also a man's prison. The women's prison, by the way, is a bit more pleasant than the men's prison. That's a fact. I mentioned that when I talked to them. But I said to them, many of you have a greater readiness for awakening. I invented some fictitious place, I don't know what, I called it the Heavenly Spa. On the Heavenly Spa in Malibu, where you go and you're pampered with the best food, massages every day, exquisite surroundings, just absolutely wonderful. That may give you the illusion that you're becoming enlightened. Because. I am fully enlightened now. And, and then you go back into ordinary life. Jack Cornfield wrote a book called after the Ecstasy, the Laundry. And if the ecstasy is just a superficial phenomenon produced by pleasant surroundings and pleasant life circumstances, 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. 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. I have nothing against Malibu. I'm sorry, not offending anybody. The Heavenly Spine, Malibu is less likely to produce the awakening. That's a fact and that's an interesting fact. I also said this is a little. I made a humorous comment to the women. I said, if I ever get convicted to a prison sentence, I will get in touch with my yin energy and bring it up more fully and identify as the woman so that I can spend time with you, if that should ever happen. After the talk, some prisoners came up to me and one woman came, she looked more glamorous than the other women. She had some makeup and just quite good looking. And she said, you know what you said earlier? That's exactly what I did. So it worked for her. So after this humorous interlude coming back to the importance of obstacles, challenges that arise in your life almost continuously. Small scale challenges every day. Little things don't go the way you expect them to go. Little things causing irritation, causing a little burst of anger or complaining pattern that many people have in their minds. This is a favorite way for the ego to exert itself that it's still alive. Complaining people, that's wrong. Complaining about situations in your head or out aloud. Complaining about people, Complaining about what you are doing, but you don't really want to be doing it, but you are doing it, but you're not really in it. Why do I have to do this? Well, it's the present. Oh, it's now. But I don't want the now. I want some other place. I want the next thing. And so you're complaining about the now because you want to get out of the now to the next thing. Very common dysfunctional mind pattern. And when the next thing comes, it's the now that you don't like. Because the next thing is always its future doesn't exist. No, no, because if you existed, you would have encountered it at some point. Nobody's ever experienced or met the future. No intrepid explorer has ever gone out and said, I'm going to find the future. Because when you find the future, it's the present. Moment. That's why in a pub in England, there was a sign saying free beer tomorrow. And it was always true. Because tomorrow never comes. So at some point you may realize that suffering in most cases does not arise from situations, even seemingly very difficult situations like being in prison or losing your livelihood, losing your partner, marriage, breaking up, losing all your money, difficulty, physical health, all kinds of things. Suffering arising and. Then you small scale suffering.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
