Eckhart Tolle explains how the ego is a bundle of thought forms that creates a false sense of self. He explores consciousness beyond thinking and describes awakening to a deeper awareness that exists beyond the mind's conceptual identity.
All the things that you identify with as yourself, whether it's your possessions, your relationships, or the things you have achieved, or the things you fail to achieve, your successes and failures, what other people think of you, they're all thought forms. They're all thought forms in your mind. And then these thought forms in your mind, they come together, they congregate in a bundle. And then this bundle of recurring thoughts become the place where you derive your sense of self from. It's a story based entity, the me, me and my story. Me and this story is called my life, not my life. People think about. My life is, I have to think about my life, I need to work out my life. But my life is actually a mental construct. Me and my life. It consists of your past and the memories and the things, the ways in which you interpret your memories. Because the things that you think happened to you, that may already be a falsification. You know that when you ask siblings, ask one sibling what the parents did 20 years ago, and ask the other sibling, no, this is not what happened at all. They experience something, their memory is totally different of the same event. So there's the egoic entity, the me, consisting of thought, and this little me, the person, the historical person, is never at ease for very long. And many egos live in an almost permanent state of underlying discontent. They don't even know it because it's so permanent. In the same way that you don't know the noise of a refrigerator, the humming when you're in the kitchen, and suddenly it stops and you go, oh, wow. And you had no idea that the noise was going on all the time. So for many people, their state of consciousness is this underlying discontent or unhappiness is there except for brief moments when they step out of thought. But usually because they're falling below thought, they're not rising above thought, they're falling below thought. So you need a few more drinks in order. At least now I can be a little bit happy. Of course, it doesn't work all the time. In fact, some people, when they drink, they become even more unhappy and violent. So it doesn't necessarily free you. So you have the. Your sense of self is derived from this thinking in your head, which is maybe predominantly personal, but there are also collective aspects to it where you derive your sense of self from. And in some cultures, more traditional cultures, a person's sense of self is predominantly a collective one, which means there are collective thought forms that this person identifies with. They have been taught at school and through their family background. And this May be an idea, a political ideology, or it may be a religious ideology that you totally identify with. And it has you in its grip. You don't know it. You don't know that you are in the grip of certain deep, see, deeply lodged thought forms that. And through the screen of those thought forms, you look at the world and then you interpret it through that and you react and you take your act through that screen. So you. You are a. You inhabit a conceptual reality cut off from the deeper levels of your being. Terrible. Terrible. But that is a transitional stage for humans. The awakening is to realize that you had been trapped in those thought forms which we call the ego. And suddenly you realize there is something else in me that is not thinking, but it's conscious, so I can think. The universe is telling me to stop speaking for a moment and come back to where we started, which is you. Remember I said, when you listen to the silence underneath and in between the words, what happens inside you and what happens inside you is you stop thinking. You cannot notice the silence, even just notice it. Like now, in the moment of noticing, you are conscious but not thinking. That's an amazing discovery, that you are able to be conscious without thinking. Now, how long that can be sustained in you is another question. It's. But first of all, don't ask, okay? Don't try to sustain it by applying willpower that doesn't work. Or stop breathing, okay? And don't push your thoughts away. That is not. That is not to be recommended by. You cannot. You may be able to stop thinking by using willpower and saying, okay, I'm not going to think now. And you will have to stop breathing too. And you can hold it for a while, but when the thinking comes back, it will be as if you had taken a lid off a boiling kettle because you have some catching up to do. The most amazing discovery, and that is the awakening of consciousness. And let's see if we can go more deeply into that. The most amazing discovery in yourself is that the arising of that dimension of consciousness where. Where you are conscious but you're not thinking. I call that rising above thinking as opposed to falling below thinking. We talked about that already. Both free you from this problematic level where humans have lived for thousands of years. That is the conceptual thinking mind. Now, we had to go through that. The conceptual thinking mind is a wonderful, wonderful thing where it becomes a burden and a huge source of suffering is when it becomes the source of your identity. That when you look to thought for your sense of self. And that is a very unsatisfying place to look for yourself, because that is what the ego does. And if you look for yourself on the level of thought, you will never be satisfied for very long. You will always come back to the state of dissatisfaction where you say, okay, that wasn't it. I thought that would free me. I thought that would make you happy. Make me happy. I thought that person looked so ideal until we started living together. It didn't work. They were supposed to make me happy. That was a deal. We even signed a paper. And then you get really angry. You can get angry at that person because you didn't fulfill your side of the bargain. You can become angry at God. Why don't you send me the right person? I want to. I demand a partner that makes me happy. And so you look for the other thing. And maybe you look for happiness in an acquisition of something. A bigger house or bigger car might give me a more satisfying sense of self. But this house or that car, when you get it, it's not really the house or the car that gives you temporarily a more inflated sense of self, because you only experience the house and the car as a thought form, as my house and my car. So you are looking to the enhancement of your sense of self, not really through the car or the house, but it's because you only experience the car or the house as this thought from. This is my car. And this is my house. Have you seen it? It's mine. Look. Now, that temporarily enhances your sense of self. But if that. That also is based on thought, because these things are thought forms.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
