Eckhart Tolle explains how the ego creates an internal dialogue where you criticize and defend yourself to an imaginary audience. The future is an illusion, he argues, and chasing it for fulfillment only perpetuates suffering. The ego splits from your original being the moment you recognize an image of yourself, like Narcissus seeing his reflection.
So the human seeks completion in the future, but it always withholds from you what you're seeking. And it fools you briefly, quite some in your life, gives the times when you feel, now I have what I need, I've got it now. And then some form of dukkha, suffering. Comes in again. The future actually does not exist. This is a bold statement. The future does not exist. And only— I'm not asking you to believe it. I'm asking you to verify in your own life whether or not the future exists. Easy. You'd say, okay, I'm going to see if I can encounter the future. You start looking for it. Tomorrow. Yes, the future exists because tomorrow is going to come, but when it comes, it's the now. Okay. Whenever the future comes, It's a no. And even if you could time travel, if that were possible, you would time travel into the future, and even then it's still the present moment. You couldn't experience anything if it were not the present moment. That's all there ever is. So where's the future? The future is inseparable from your mind. It's something that the mind creates when it makes this world into this, the place that we perceive with our senses. And it's necessary, it's good, we need it for practical purposes. But to find ourselves or to find some kind of satisfaction or find a truer identity, completion of your sense of self, The future does not help. So the human seeks completion in the future, but it always withholds from you what you're seeking. And it fools you briefly, quite simply, in your life, gives you times when you feel, now I have what I need, I've got it now. And then some form of dukkha, suffering, comes in again. So the human lives with this self, we call it the ego, the conditioned entity, that is mental-emotional conditioning, my life. That is, the mind creates a— It's a construct of the human mind. That is, in ancient Greek mythology, there is the story of the man Narcissus, which is where the term narcissism comes from. It's a mythological figure in ancient Greek mythology. Narcissus was a young man who was very beautiful. But he didn't know it because he didn't have a self-image. He didn't know he was beautiful. He just was. And he was happy, joyful, until one day he came across on his walk, he came across a pool of still water, and he looked into the pool and he saw his image. And he suddenly Realized he was beautiful, and the story goes he fell in love with himself. But I would rather say he didn't— not quite didn't fall in love, he became obsessed with himself. At that moment— this mythological tale is very profound— in that moment a separation happened In his psyche, an image formed and says, that's me. And then there was him with an image. And this is the arising of the human ego. And from then onwards, the human ego then began to grow in every human being. And so you live with a mentally created image that you have a— Self. relationship with. Isn't that strange? Humans have a relationship with themselves. They say, I love myself, or I hate myself, or something in between. And many humans talk to themselves. There's one part that says, you, why can't you do better? You should have done better. The other part says, yeah, but I did my best. Why? And you have an argument with yourself and all kinds of— many people have a negative relationship with themselves. They don't like themselves. It's a terrible fate. You don't like yourself. You've split yourself in 2. You say, I don't like this thing that is myself. There are many things about myself that I don't like. There's a split in you and The question is, who are you? And who or what is the self that you don't like?
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
