Why Your Mood Swings Aren't Your Fault | Eckhart Tolle

Every human acts, speaks in the way they call it corresponds to their state of consciousness at that moment. Sometimes you encounter humans. It's very common for humans to fluctuate between being relatively more conscious and quite unconscious. So you might meet the same person that you know well or family member in two or three or more different modalities of consciousness, as you might know. And when you're having breakfast in the morning and the family member or your roommate is coming down the stairs, you never know who is coming down the stairs that morning. It could be a very cheerful and lovely person. Isn't it great to be alive? And the next morning comes to a completely different entity down the stairs and starts complaining and why didn't you do this? You should have told me long ago. I've been thinking about that all night. It's just awful. You always do that, don't you? Who is that? Well, that was the person that was light and cheerful yesterday morning. And who knows who is coming down the next day. So with people who are fairly unconscious, they are subject to enormous fluctuations. And you also, to the extent that you could all, you could call them virtually certain different personalities emerging at different times. So you're not dealing with one human being. People then. I'm talking about people who would hunt, have not yet enough presence to bring about a more continuous state of identity. So you have all these people and then you might talk to one person and he says, okay, I'm now very clear in my mind what I want. And I promise you those things that I did yesterday, two days ago, this will never happen again. I'm really become very clear now. It's all sorted out in my mind. And this person is genuinely believing that he's at a relatively slightly higher state of consciousness. And a few days or weeks pass and then he or she does exactly the same thing as before or worse. And then you say he's dishonest. He lied to me. He said he wouldn't do that again. He betrayed my trust. I trusted him. We had a long talk. I started to trust him again. And then what did he do? Turned around and did the same thing, went worse. Not realizing these are because the person is relatively unconscious. Different sub personality take that person over, which are just mental patterns, mental emotional patterns. They could be called sub personalities. They take over that person and then there's somebody else there virtually. And so it's not if you draw certain conclusions that this person now can never be trusted again. No, that wasn't the same person. It's several different people. There if you draw some conclusion and even make or some universal conclusion, then you yourself become deluded. If you say, you see, now I know people can't be trusted. They do lie all the time, don't they? So suddenly the one subpersonal becomes everybody. And well, it does apply to the majority of people. Still, you need to remember the majority of people are often completely possessed by mentally emotional forms of conditioning. And sometimes certain forms of conditioning arise very strongly and take over that person and then that subsides. There's a little bit of, perhaps occasionally a little bit of awareness there before the next wave of conditioning comes and takes that person over. Once you see that, it's easier also to be with people. Because whatever behavior a person manifests towards you is the same as whatever the present moment prevents presents. It cannot be otherwise at this present moment. Nobody can act beyond their state of consciousness at this moment. But you should be more conscious. More conscious? What are you talking about? You talk about consciousness. Let me tell you what you did. Start arguing with an ego. You can never win. So dealing with your mind. Life is difficult, yes, people are difficult, yes. Situations are often difficult, yes, but they are much less difficult if your mind does not amplify the problems that you encounter. And the people that you encounter in your life, that already takes away a huge burden. So that your mind no longer complains and has those patterns that deny what is and that weaves huge stories around people and events and about the past and about the future, the worry, the regret, the anxiety. These are all mental events. These do not have to be part of the difficulty of life. These can be transcended here and now. What then remains is the actual. And once you have tackled the problem making dysfunction of your mind, and this is of course what we are all here, one of the reasons why we are here, and that is part of the spiritual awakening. Once you go beyond the problem making dysfunction of the mind, it becomes so much easier to deal with the difficult things in life. They are far less complex than the mind made them out to be. And there's always just looking, giving attention. Then you become intelligent. You only become really intelligent when you can suspend for a moment the thinking function. So you rise above thought, then you become alert, and then you look, and then you'll know what to do. And if the doing succeeds, it's fine. If it doesn't, you look again. It's the art of living. So without the dysfunctional mind, things get easier. The dysfunctional mind isn't there anymore. When you accept the isness of the present moment. So the challenges come. They are external and internal. Your own mind is a big challenge, but that is you already in the process of transcending that. The other challenges remain, and that is good. Do not wait, however, for difficult situations to push you into presence. It's good if that happens. But choose presence even when you are not being challenged. That is vital. Otherwise life will. The universal intelligence that underlies all phenomena will see that. Oh, this guy needs more problems, because otherwise he goes to sleep all the time. Let's give him a few more met.