Navigating Life's Challenges with Spiritual Awareness | Eckhart Tolle

or by the way when you awaken spiritually it doesn't mean this is the end of challenges they don't stop the only difference is and it's a big difference you no longer unconsciously transform the challenges of life into unhappiness the entire psychological self that you think you are that your identity that is derived from whatever it is that your mind identifies with your past what happened to you in your past what you did what people did to you what you achieved your successes your failures your sufferings victories and defeats from your past they gradually a story

forms in the mind and the story is thought certain thoughts they come together as a bundle and so after as you grow up and you become an adult and you grow this becomes more developed this th this mental image of who you are and that becomes who you sense yourself to be as a person that becomes the your personality your and that is uh the foundation for most people's sense of identity that is all they know and that is the unawakened State of Consciousness so you are confined to this ultimately mindmade sense of self that

consists of a story line a narrative that you you think about and you call it my life me and my life and that exists in time this is where the time Dimension becomes very important because the the me and my life is me the person that I am now which is conditioned by my past all the things one the past that has that make up the person that I am now and then future becomes important for this me and my life because you can look to the Future as a destination a source of possible greater

fulfillment because strange thing is the sense of self that is that arises from the past that is that consists of a bundle of uh um recurring thought forms plus emotional formations mental mental emotional entity that entity that you call me and my life is uh a lot of the time spends uh it time worrying about me and my life and considers itself problematic or you carry you as that entity you as that person you everybody here carries a life situation with him or herself you carry a life situation with you and everybody here has certain

a certain set of problems in their life situation which whether they are related to your relationships whether they they related to your health situation whether they're related to your financial situation your work situation uh your any of these areas it's rare that the the you're totally you're free of perceiving yourself as being kind of almost burdened by problems and that many people uh have a view of the themselves of their identity as a problem to be solved unconsciously they don't they don't say they don't say I am a problem to be solved but there's a

there's an underlying current of unspoken thought that says there's something that is not quite right here and you and then you look at others especially on Facebook and you see they don't don't have those problems so what's wrong with me what's wrong and even if you walk in the street they seem to be okay and you could perceive why am I always have all got that stuff going on and then of course you begin to pretend too you don't know that the others are pretending but you are pretending and then you start taking the Selfies

for your Facebook post [Music] so this this mental image that people have we now have the technology is isn't it great to amplify this mental image and send it out into the world and we can polish it up so that it looks great out there but the greater it looks on your face which tast the worse you feel inside so the interesting fact is then that uh everybody carries the the burden of their life situation and whether it's a heavy burden for you at this time or whether it's a relatively light burden for you at

this time as you sit here may vary from person to person but there is not a single person unless there's a baby here somewhere there's there's not a single person who does not carry this burden of their life situation whether it's heavy or light at the moment and it could change if it's heavy today it might not be heavy anymore tomorrow and but then it'll be heavy again and another time so and that's an interesting fact um and that is part of person's sense of identity is what I call the life situation what is me

and my story and there's always and that's a strange fact there's always something missing there's always a sense an underlying sense of I am not enough I haven't arrived yet what there is a there's a search ultimately for greater fulfillment a search for yourself ultimately for a better version of yourself now there's nothing wrong with uh engaging in activities that help you learn a new skill or new acquire new knowledge and so so you gradually be you become a better version of your yourself you become let's say you acquire more better education whatever it is

a skill dance whatever uh that's that's fine but whatever it is you acquire on one level you can improve yourself no doubt but on a deeper level that sense of dissatisfaction will resurface again and again and no matter what you achieve or attain for a little while sometimes it happens that a person is totally feeling now I'm fully myself I have arrived this happens it could happen when you win the lottery and there's been many things written about lottery winners many of them became more unhappy after winning the lottery there were just there's a moment

of elation and then there was greater unhappiness so there's that sense of the underlying sense of not enough not enough yet I'm not enough and you never actually arrive and then you reach retirement age and you suddenly realize that you've always been waiting to start living uh and that's a pity you without knowing it you've always been lived for the next moment or some other future moment and thought I'm going to get there one day I'm going to make it whatever it's a weird expression what make it really make yourself I suppose that's one day

I'm going to make it and ultimately several times you think you made it but then you realize the your life situation again sabotages you that's what it does you might have noticed you you do your best you you you do your best your best intentions and you should and but no matter how good your intention how well focused you are and how much positive thinking you do which which are all great things I'm not saying don't do them do them but even there you do not escape this fact that challenges come one after another and

challenges sometimes come in the form of uh some form of uh chaos there's it's good to strive for order but no matter how good you are in bringing about order in your life and it's a great thing you will periodically encounter the eruption of disorder in your life whether it's an illness or some kind of loss or some huge drama in your relationship or toxic you might have noticed by the way uh a great source of challenge in your life one of the greatest apart from the fact that the as you grow older the body

is being consumed that's the a great source of challenge in your life is human beings it's so if you look your life situation you realize where do where does my lot of that suffering but that and happiness where does that come from it's other [Music] people and sometimes the very people that make you happy for a year few years suddenly the very same people make you unhappy the person you fall in love with today 5 years from now you hate each other at the divorce court the worst person you ever met so everybody carries a

life situation and there's a certain heaviness to a life situation and if you're totally trapped in your life situation you think about it you talk about it uh compulsively either you think about it in your head or you talk about to others uh the more you are trapped in it the more unsatisfied ying your life is that is really the temporal Dimension because you as the person you as the personality you that has a life situation you that is the story of me me and my story that exists in time and the wonderful thing is

there there is a way out there is a dimension of Consciousness where you're not trapped on that level so one could almost say that you can get off that speeding train but not as a physic not with your physical body but there is a possibility of transcending a sense of identity that is exclusively derived from mental emotional patterns in you because that's what the person or the personality is now most humans don't even know that but there's the the ancient teachers pointed to it using different sign po Buddha said life is suffering what did I

just talk about I just didn't use those terms Buddha said life is suffering but he also said I teach suffering he said and the end of suffering which means I te when he said I teach suffering is he meant I show you how suffering arises and when he said and the end of suffering what he meant was I show you how suffering can end lovely statement I teach suffering and the end of suffering so the the the Buddha talks about the possibility of the end of suffering Jesus talks about the necessity of on the possibility

of what is called salvation and in other spirit Traditions other terms are used Liberation Awakening so they all pointed to it using different signposts different terminology and yet very few humans realized what they were talking about so even like Christians they most Christians don't know what salvation is they might miss they might think an emotional high is salvation or a certain belief you say I believe this which is a story in your head that you don't question thought in other words thought forms there's a story in your head and say this is how it is

I don't you don't question I believe in this narrative and then they say this narrative will save you if you believe in it I would suggest to you that what Jesus was pointing to was much deeper than that but there was a the beautiful truth hiding there I say hiding because you don't very rarely do you actually hear the depth of the teaching explained to you in in churches so it is possible there is a possibility of transcendence you can internally transcend the limitations of the p person which doesn't mean you're no longer a person

you continue to be a person you also continue to have a life situation and you continue to be challenged by life the difference is or by the way when you awaken spiritually it doesn't mean this is the end of challenges really oh they keep coming they don't stop the only difference is and it's a big difference you no longer unconsciously transform the challenges of life into unhappiness you no longer transform the challenges of life into an unhappy me an unhappy sense of self a dissatisfied person with an in the background always a sense of dissatisfaction

discontent irritation not enough uh but sometimes of course you smile how are you great I'm just great great haven't you seen my Facebook page on this is the food I'm eating [Music] now now as the Buddha said I show you suffering I teach suffering I show you how suffering arises now how does It ultimately arise how does the unhappiness let's use that kind of generic term unhappiness uh which could be all kinds of things unhappiness starts with a slight irritation when you're waiting in line and the mind is not moving and you have a slight

irritation and you're beginning to be unhappy and then it builds up into something more perhaps or unhappiness is when you arrive home and your house is gone up in Flames a little bit more unhappiness or unhappiness is when suddenly your spouse leaves you and uh you go bankrupt and you lose your job and you don't know what going to happen next month where you're going to live another form of unhappy happiness many forms of unhappiness can arise but when you look at uh the the you need a little bit of awareness to to detect and

this is already kind of the beginning of a beginning of a spiritual awakening when you develop the ability to know what's going on in your mind and when you develop and this is awareness slowly arising when you develop the ability to know what's what your mind is doing what your thoughts are going through your head then you may detect uh where does the unhappiness come from does it come and you can then divide it into two two types of unhappiness one is completely unrelated to to unrelated to an actual event out there it's entirely produced

by dysfunctional thinking a typical example of that would be worry you wake up in the middle of the night and you start to worry worry means you you have create scenarios in your thoughts about things going wrong you create scenarios about things which you might lose things you might not get but you need something may happen to you and you play it out in your mind you worry about problems that you say you have but while you worry there's no worry is never given a solution to anything it's just pointless going around in your mind

and you don't even know it many people are addicted there's no awareness there they are addicted to worrying their sense their personality to a large part is a worrying personality take the worrying away and a huge chunk of their personality is suddenly gone of course they don't want that they want to hang on to that I need to worry well I mean if I don't worry I'm not not taking responsibility for Mali everybody worries don't they when I look at movies they worry everybody worries you have to worry okay let me worry a bit more

uh now worry is is a very good example of dysfunctional thinking and it produces an emotion it's not just in the mind you have certain types of thinking the body reacts responds to the the thinking and creates an emotion that reflects the type of thinking the the energetic frequency of that thinking the story that you create in your mind the body can't tell the difference between an actual real event out there and something that only your mind is creating so when your mind is creating critical situation your body believes that you are in a critical

situation or that you're lying in bed at 3:00 in the morning it is very nice and warm and soft but you're in a critical situation in your mind and the body believes this is bad and then you experience the emotion that you would experience if you were really in a critical situation and and then that becomes and the emotion fuels even more that type of thinking so you're trapped in a vicious circle and so are there are human beings who are burdened with these personalities that continuously produce totally Superfluous unnecessary unhappiness all unhappiness is Ultimate

supervis but in this particular case this type of unhappiness has nothing to do at all with any situation that's actually happening it's created by dysfunctional things Thinking by dysfunctional thinking here means every thought that comes into your head absorbs your Consciousness totally and that you when I say identify this is the key when you identify with thought there's a sense of me of Self in every thought there's no space between you who you ultimately are Beyond thought there's no you're totally unaware of who you are Beyond thought because you're so totally identified with that voice

in the head that never stops talking goes on and on oh why don't you shut up shut up but that's the voice too that's just another aspect of the voice says why can't he shut up shut up shut up well that's the voice also so that doesn't work and some people are so unconscious when I say you have a voice in the head that never stops talking say what are you talking about what voice say I don't have a voice well it's that one oh so for anybody who is not who is totally uh identified

with mind is virally trapped in this in that particular dimension so you have U unhappiness arising simply as a product of your mind even without an external Challenge and then you have other types of unhappiness arising because there is an external challenge in your life there is a difficult relationship situation there is a difficult work situation a difficult financial situation a difficult Health situation so you might think well I'm fully justified in being unhappy because let me tell you about what's going on in my life and then you will tell me that yes you have

a right to be unhappy and so yes but if you look more closely at those things uh and again it requires a certain degree of awareness when you seemingly become unhappy and I'm using again just reminding you I'm using this as a generic term it could be anything from slight irritation to extreme anger or extreme sadness or anything in between or or even an undercurrent of an undercurrent of unhappiness which many many people almost everybody has unless they have awakened there's an undercurrent of dissatisfaction of unease and it comes in every situation whether they know

it or not there's an undercurrent there that's also it's emotional the the these are emotions that have been created by years and years of dysfunctional thinking and that undercurrent is there so something in your life situation is challenging uh we can look at one small example how unhappiness arises uh you let's say let's just something seemingly insignificant but life is full of seemingly little things and they accumulate so if you become irritated with one little thing after another little thing after another little thing that eventually grows and you be you becomes part of your personality

and you become an irritated person and the irritated person is actually without knowing it look looking for more irritation just waiting just the slightest thing to go wrong it's going and then you make a phone call to your bank please wait we appreciate your call but we are we are in the Philippines and we can't answer immediately well they don't say that you you have to you have to wait please wait okay there you are and 5 minutes pass we value your call very much but there's nobody yet ready okay and then the mind starts

saying things if it hasn't started already this is Dreadful how can they do that I'm going to change Banks but they're all the same aren't they but they why can't can't I why do I always can't I get a human being to talk to what is the what's wrong with them see I I hate this whole civilization anyway what all kinds of things and you become unhappy if you weren't unhappy already because you were probably a little bit unhappy already and then it grows and then then you're dealing with the next thing or if you're

lucky you get a lovely Filipino person is Hi how are you it's oh but you have to be open if you're not open you don't even know that there's in the finally there's a human being there but you don't even know that anymore I've been waiting for 25 minutes on this and then the next thing comes up in your life and you're already bringing that into that situation and there goes an irritated person and Ang angry person so it's and then you have to go to the airport and you wait in line it is not

moving why can't they why don't they they're completely incompetent what just oh now if now if you look how does the unhappiness arise and you again needs a little bit of awareness so that you're aware of what your mind is doing if you're totally identified with your mind you don't even know what's going on you are the thoughts every thought has a self in it a sense of self in it there's an awareness you can suddenly see oh where is the unhappiness arising is it because I'm I'm sitting or standing here waiting for this or

that or is it because I am telling myself something about sitting here waiting and about standing here does that where is the happiness coming from could it be that the narrative that I have created around this particular situation rather than the situation is calling the is causing the unhappiness H it's possible but you have to figure it TR try it out now how because you've got plenty of time because they're not answering the pH uh so you investigate it's a spiritual investigation while you're wife uh how would I experience this situation if I did not

add these thoughts to it if I didn't add the the unnecessary possibly unnecessary burden of thought to it how would I experience this moment without the the addition of a narrative okay let's find out a got plenty of time and so there you are holding the receiver and okay well I would experience this moment as my I'm breathing I can I feel myself breathing and I'm looking out of the window and I'm looking around the room and as i' I'm breathing uh I can feel the energy in my body there's an the energy that's the

body is alive and I can feel that it is alive I've got nothing else to do right now I can feel the body is alive there's an aliveness that pervades every cell of the body and suddenly you now realize what this is without the addition of thought without the addition of thought that says this should not be happening this because ultimately that's what it's saying this should not be happening or it might say this should not be happening to me or it says why is this always happening to [Music] me those are that's the type

of thought and then you experience okay that's a relatively small situation but you are looking into the origin of unhappiness so you can become free in little situations of the mental emotional reactive patterns that before you were completely identified with so identified that they became you that they became part of your personality part of the person and so that's that's an amazing thing and then you can after a while these are all little challenges in life and then occasionally a bigger challenge comes and again and a big challenge comes you lose your job you go

to a doctor and there's a Health Challenge uh relationship comes to an end or relationship is very difficult and toxic uh something collapses around you and again you can there it's a similar yes you are you realize there is a challenge here and you realize that it may be necessary to take some action but in the meantime you can experiment and see this requires by the way more developed more intense presence when a bigger challenge comes into your life but you've practiced already with little things telephone calls and lineups in the supermarket and airport and

countless other things so you've already been successfully practicing with that just getting ready for the next big challenge to come into your life and it will come and there it comes like and then you have already developed the muscle Presence Power in you has already grown the ability to relinquish dysfunctional thinking and and being able to be with a situation as it is right now without the addition of this burden of Superfluous suffering creating thought and that's so you have developed that already and then the Big Challenge comes and there you are let's say you

lose your job and one day you go to the office and the boss has the famous expression uh they don't usually say you are fired that's somewhere else in in in in in New York somewhere they'll say you're fired but usually they are much more kind say I'm afraid we'll have to let you go as if you had been longing to go for a long time and perhaps you have you just didn't know it we'll have to let you go really oh thank you so much finally are they're letting me [Music] go we'll have to

let you go and but usually it's not people usually react as and there comes the slightly bigger challenge because who knows how you're going to pay the mortgage next month who knows uh then there we go and if you if presence has grown in you you can then walk out of the office building with a carrying the box of your belongings from your office and then you put it in your car and then you sit in your car and again you question if I didn't add any thought to this how would I experience this moment

it is as it is and right at this moment it's actually fine it's actually this moment is actually better than it would be if I were still stuck in the office this moment certainly now the mind says yeah but you've got the future to think about and of course yes you may have to take action but the question is how what is the quality of your Consciousness in the Pres present moment because that determines what kind of action you take is the basis for your action a sense of fear or anger or panic I need

to write another job and then if you go if you get another interview you're so so tense that they don't want you I nobody can't have a nervous person like that but so you differentiate between taking action and even perhaps focusing your mind on what what is it that I can do to what steps can I take what are the possibilities I usually when I do something of that I get a pie I'm a paper and Pen person I write it down a piece of paper and then see the possibilities and then you return into

this present moment you develop the ability to always have your conscious attention anchored in the present moment rather than in your thinking mind so you read this is the you you you're becoming aligned with the present moment and it requires I must admit a uh some situations require more intense presence than others if it's a bigger thing more intense presence you go to the doctor's office and the doctor says okay you have about 12 months and then maybe not Beyond that's a Big Challenge it's a huge challenge because it means it but by the way

it may be wrong but it means time has been taken virtually been taken away from you it's like like a like some deity malevolent dity or maybe a good dity that suddenly just you have no more time because you had been looking for some self fulfillment Through Time unless you're 95 years old but maybe even then you've been looking for self fulfillment for some kind of completion of who you are of the story you want you want the happy ending of the story of me of course it never comes but don't tell anybody it never

the happy ending of the story of me never comes and then somebody takes away time from you you and that could be the most Dreadful shock to you as a person because then you mentally go somewhere that doesn't exist anymore no more vacation no more this no more that and so some people have become terribly terribly dreadfully un happy in that situation which is would only be normal I suppose one would say normal but others have become intensely present through having no more time and they went I've met some and with some the body began

to deteriorate more and more more quickly and they were like luminous light and they were just sitting there looking at me and I remember a lady years ago who came to see me when I was still seeing uh people she had developed this illness only had a few more months and she was just every time she came she was more luminous you just sit there and we were just present together there was nobody left there was no person left there was only a space of conscious presence so the person had been burned up completely by

this that was amazing how there's another thing I read a couple of years ago there was a a musician in England apparently quite famous but I had never heard of him which doesn't mean anything so there was a pop musician and he went to the doctor I don't know if he is still alive now or not he went to the doctor and he says he told him the doctor told him something like that and this is a very rare case he said in an interview he walked out of the doctor's office in a state of

enormous Elation he was just and suddenly he said he he in was able to enjoy every moment intensely and he said why didn't I do this before and what happened to him so some people are forced into Awakening by a situation now any big challenge in your life potentially is that it is a way of how life forces you into Awakening and there are some people who have never come into touch with any spiritual teaching and it happened to them others encounter intense suffering and they suffer and suffer and then they come into contact with

the spiritual teaching that that points to the POS possibility of transcendence and suddenly the very same suffering situation suddenly becomes the opening