You Do Not Have a Life - Eckhart Tolle Explains

What is the essence? Let's go there slowly. What is the essence of who you. Of who you are? What is the essence of the life that you are? I'm not saying that you should not try to improve the conditions of your life, but more importantly is to realize that you do not have a life. Because that's. People say my life. Now, if you look at the structure of that sentence, my life, there's a duality there. Because if you say my life, that implies that you have it. It's mine. So it implies two duality. If you say my life, there's you. And the life that you have, it belongs to me. It's mine. So this thought, this language, creates a duality in your mind. Call it my life. That's interesting. So there's me, and I have a life. And then the fear comes in. If I have a life, I might lose it. And of course, then you visit the cemetery and they say, yes, they all once had their life and they lost it. They lost their life. And that's going to happen to me too. Not realizing. You are trapped in certain mental formations that create an illusory identity and actually create delusion. You don't have a life because there is not a duality. Without life, there is no you. So you can't have it. You are one with life. There isn't you and life. You are life. You don't have it. Now, if you are it, you can't lose it because you are it. But of course, we'll have to see more deeply what we mean when I say you are life. But let's for a moment stay with that. You are, you are life. You don't have a life. You are. So you can say it for yourself, I don't have a life. I am life. This is the end of duality. You realize there's a oneness of you and life. And when I say life, we can use another word. The essence of being alive. What is the essence? Let's go there slowly. What is the essence of who you are? What is the essence of the life that you are? Okay, now, normal humans, which means unawakened humans say, well, the essence of my life is my. Whatever they identify with in there. It's my possessions, what I have, what I know, what I. My body, all those things that I identify with. That's the essence of who I am is whatever I derive my identity from. It could be the physical body, or it could be my car or my house or my work, my function in society. It could be Friends that I have, things that I have attained. It could also be these things are all in the mind also. Because when you identify, let's say, your sense of identity, which is you compare yourself to others all the time, which is you do, when you're in your mind, you compare yourself to others. Let's say your body looks better than other people's body. For a while, this too will pass. But for a while you can get in there and then you become, this is my body. That also is a mental formation. So it's not so much you identify with the body, you identify the thought of my body. That's what you identify. You don't identify with your Ferrari if you have one. It's the thought of my car which makes you superior to others who only have a little car. Or your body makes you superior to others who have a puny and weak body. So you can display. For a few years, you display your body on the beach and feel good about yourself. And after a while, the day comes when you look in the mirror, what happened? There's something wrong with the mirror. In the past, the mirrors that people made were so much better. The mirrors now. So for a while you identify with this or that. That is quite normal. And so when you ask, what is the essence of who you are? Most people would tell you, well, I am. This is who I am. This is what my identity is derived from. This, this, this and this. And this bundle of things is who I am. It's not always positive, because I was just talking about having a body that looks better than other people's body. You could have a body that looks worse than other people's body. And so that serves too. You could either. Either you look for something else that gives you an identity, like actually, you're more intelligent than all these stupid beach bumps. So you can say, look at these people. But you have so much more knowledge and intelligence. You can look down on them or you can be more spiritual. So if you, I can't afford a Ferrari, I'm on my bicycle. And you say, look at this materialistic person, a Ferrari. So you can still. Or if that doesn't work, you can see how unfairly treated by life you have been and how much, so much more miserable you are than most people. And you've really been a victim of circumstances. You've been a victim of your birth and of your parents did a dreadful job with you. Maybe if their parents had been more conscious, things could have worked out, but they weren't. So. But that also gives you A strong conceptual identity. So if you can't have a positive one, the negative ones can be just as strong, if not stronger. You can have a huge victim identity. It's a favorite thing. Sometimes in the collective, certain egoic things become fashionable for a while. Nowadays is the victim identity for certain groups of people are very fashionable. So people can feel, oh yes, we have all been victimized by those people. And of course there is some truth in it in some cases. But to derive an identity is a delusion. To derive a sense of identity from that is a huge delusion. That is not who you are. That's all my life. That's all. So if you are not all those things. So when I ask who are you? If I ask that question, don't go, let's do this for a moment. Don't go into the past. Can you feel or sense who you are without reference to the past in you? You don't even need to remember your name right now. What for? You don't remember your email address or your phone number or what happened to you 10 years ago. Don't need to remember that. Can you still get a sense without reference to your personal history? Can you get a sense of beingness or presence? There's no past in that at all. But what is that? You can't really describe it. All you know is that you are, I am. You can sense the underlying beingness or presence of you. But to really sense it, what needs to happen is that for a moment the stream of thinking needs to subside. And it may be happening for many who at this very moment, the stream of thinking that is normal for most people, that never stops except when they fall asleep, the stream of thinking for a moment subsides. And when I asked you whether you can sense yourself without reference to your personal history, what I was really talking about, what I was really asking was, can you get a sense of your presence without thought? Ah. And there's enormous revelation here. This question, who am I? Does not have a real truthful answer. On a conceptual level, it's not in thoughts or words. The true answer to who am I? Has no thought in it. It is a sense of presence or beingness. And you can only sense that even it's only a moment. So the stream of thinking subsides and what happens is you are completely present without your mind saying anything. You can perceive everything, you can see, you can hear, you're fully there and your mind is still. Still does not mean that you've gone to sleep. It's the opposite you're actually more alert in that stillness than you would be if you were identified with this continuous stream of thinking. That's the stillness, the inherent stillness that actually every human has. That you don't need to work hard to attain stillness. Or think that if I follow the right course of action, it might take me 10 years and then I'll be able to have a still mind. No, it's already there. And if you are not totally miserable and unhappy every moment of your life, that means without perhaps you knowing it, anybody who is not extremely miserable all the time has a little bit of access, without even knowing it, to that stillness within. They don't know it all. They know it from time to time. They feel a little bit good. They feel. They don't know. For three seconds they stop thinking. They might have some other explanation of why in that moment they felt good. Maybe they were looking at a dog in that moment because the dog wasn't thinking anything about them. Because the dog doesn't think. The dog is conscious, but not conceptual thinking. The dog does not have an opinion about you. And so when you were petting the dog for, perhaps you suddenly felt good about petting the dog. Why? Because for a moment, the dog freed you of the judgmental conceptual mind that otherwise would be very active. If you were petting a human, it would say something. Of course, you can't do that because people would think you're insane. You can't go up to a human mayor pat you. That would be nice if they did that to each other. But. But the humans have judgments about you. So whenever you go to a human, you know that he was certain thoughts about you. So the other human cannot free you from your thoughts. But the dog or the cat can for short moment free you from your thoughts. And in that moment, it feels good. That's why people love their pets so deeply. There's a reason, a deeper reason, why they love. Because the pet frees them a little bit from their minds. And there are moments when you interact with your animal that you can hear. Brief moments of thoughtless awareness. Two seconds, three seconds. But it's enough to keep you going. It's enough so that your life doesn't become totally miserable. And then you might have other moments. You might have moments when you engage in some physical activity. You swim or you climb a mountain. And then there are moments that your total presence is required by the activity so that there's not enough left for thinking. And again, you feel intensely alive. Oh, that was so good. Why was it so good? Well, it just. I love it. It's just so good. I don't know why. It's good. Well, it's good because it freed you for a moment from the incessant stream of thinking and there was some degree of awareness or presence arising, but you didn't even know that.