Why Your Inner State Matters More Than Your Goals | Eckhart Tolle

Manifesting is a secondary thing. It's a bonus. Yes, it is the destiny of humans, of course, to humanity as a whole, eventually to live in a different state of consciousness where all the stuff that we are doing now won't be necessary anymore so that you can affect external reality through your inner state of consciousness. But the thing is, you no longer have this need for external reality to satisfy you, because that is the egoic need. And then what you create in your external reality is very different from somebody who needs external reality for self satisfaction, for some kind of sense of happiness or fulfillment. I need that. Jesus pointed to the future possibility that is in the next stage in human evolution when he said, we talked about faith. Now that's an interesting word, faith. There are two words used in the New Testament Bible, belief and faith. Now they are confused and people have misunderstood the basic message because there is a confusion between belief and faith. In some languages even it's the same word. But fortunately in English you have two words and people don't understand. They're very different things. So in conventional Christianity it talks about salvation and it says if you believe in Christ and that he died for your sins, so you partake a story, basically you believe this story to be true. If you believe that, you're saved. Now belief is to believe something. To be true means you don't know if it's true, because if you knew it, you would know it, you wouldn't believe it. I don't believe that there's a flower here. I know that there's a flower here. So belief implies that you don't know, but you are certain that it is the case. And usually belief refers to something that you believe in, a story or something you have been told, or the existence of something that you cannot verify. I believe in angels, or maybe you have seen them. But if you have seen an angel, then you no longer believe. Then you know there are angels. You've never seen them. You believe in angels. Now. Faith is something different. And because of the confusion of faith and belief, the, the misunderstanding arose in Christianity that the belief in a story can save you. What Jesus said is what saves you is faith. And he said, if you have faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you can tell this mountain. Remove yourself from here to there and it will be done. Now what is that? That's very different from believing in a story. Faith is a deep sense of trust or connectedness. It's not faith in anything in particular. It's not a mental thing. Belief is mental. Faith is to be Rooted in being. And out of that being arises this enormous trust in life. And that really we are talking about is the deep I. When you connect to the deep I, suddenly you feel rooted in something vast that removes fear. And when fear is removed, you have trust. And when you have trust, that is another word for faith, that complete trust in this power that you feel that is not separate from who you are, but infinitely vaster than this little person. So you can sense that vast power in you. And sensing this power in you, which is consciousness that emanates from the source of all life, sensing that power in you is faith. It's not a mental thing. And so when you are connected with this power, then Jesus says in this parable, you can affect things in the outer world much more easily. And that is manifestation. And he talks about another thing. He says, when you pray for something, my translation, feel that you already have it, and then it will be given to you. So you need to already feel the fullness of life now, which is when you connect yourself to the deep I in that you don't need anything anymore, anything you could obtain is already there. So when you try to manifest with yours, you think you need something. Then you're not very good at manifesting. But you may succeed, but it won't make you happy, it won't satisfy you, but the power rises, is in you. And so anything you want to manifest, you feel that power which is faith, trust as an immediate realization. And then you might have a mental image which will no longer be egoically determined. It won't be something that you think is going to satisfy you eventually, or eventually make you happy or famous, or make you into a saint or become a spiritually evolved being. It's all future stuff. No, it's just an externalization of something that is already within you. So that power is the cream. The cream and the external things are the skimmed milk. So there's the essence of consciousness. And anything you achieve will be a manifestation of that consciousness that you can sense within you. So the thing is, it won't make you any happier. It won't make you any more fulfilled than you are now. Because if you think it's going to make you more happy and more fulfilled, it's still ego. You need to find the fulfillment and the true happiness by connecting with the deep I. Then anything else is secondary. And then you can play the game of life from there. You don't need anything anymore. And then when you don't need anything anymore, you can play with it. And many things come to you when you don't need them anymore. That's a lovely thing. A little disappointing for the ego, because the ego would love many things that then come to you. But when the ego isn't there anymore, the ego can't enjoy it anymore. That's a bummer. Also, when you achieve things or something comes to you, you don't claim credit anymore. That's one of the things that, again, the ego would love that. But when this power that is in you manifests through it, you do something, you create something, you attract something, and there's nobody. Wow. I did. I made it. I finally made it. I did it. I'm a great spiritual teacher. I've been trying for decades, and now I've made it. Yeah, that doesn't work. If that happened, you would immediately. The power would immediately shut down and then you would feel abandoned. Where is it? And then you would come and try and give a talk and say, I should be saying something. I don't know what. Or you just talk from memory. Faith. So faith is a foundation also for manifesting things. If you bring a mental image to the feeling of faith, which is a connectedness with the deep I. And then you bring a mental image to it, then it's easy to manifest. So you manifest out of the sense of fullness of life, not out of a sense of lack of. Not of a sense of needing something. If you need something, you can't manifest very well. You can still be successful now and then, but it won't make you happy. So if you. The neediness, whether it's money or some other kind of achievement or success or relationship, whatever people want, if you need it, you're weak because you haven't found the power that is in you. Because then you think there's something out there that will satisfy you. But if you don't need it because you're already totally fine with this moment as it is, it couldn't be better because you have realized who you are in the depths of your being, then you can play with things, bring a mental image to that feeling of fullness. That's what Jesus meant when he says, if you pray for something, feel that you already have it, because there you already have it. You won't feel better when you get it. You just feel the same. I don't feel any better now than I did when I was nobody. I'm still nobody. But people now think I'm somebody. But at that time, I was running out of money. I was writing the Power of Now, doing some counseling sessions and having a bicycle time. And then somebody gave me an old car. It was fine to be nobody. I could go into a cafe, sit there. Nobody recognized me. Of course not. Because nobody knew me. And that was perfectly wonderful. I love being invisible. And then the success came. That my ego would have said when I was in my 20s, he would have said, that's what I want. That's what I want. The recognition and doing something that changes the world. And now I do. Yes, it does change the world. But I didn't do came through. It was consciousness working through this form that's.