Break Free: How to Stop Living in the Shadow of Your Past | Eckhart Tolle

and you want to go back to this dangerous activity again and again because this dangerous activity frees you while you're engaged in it from yourself but then of course the moment you come back to your ordinary activities the self reemerges undoubtedly you are here as a person with a history a historical person and hopefully with a future how much future depends to some extent on your age but who knows you never know even a young person can suddenly disappear like a soap bubble so you undoubtedly the your history this that is made you into who

you are but if for a moment you forget your history and pretend that there is no past we can do it now I say [Music] pretend the reality is there is no past but I don't want to say something that you find too hard to accept so I say pretend let's pretend that there is no past why do I say there is no past because you've never experienced the past it was always the present moment whatever you remember from the past was the present moment when it happened otherwise it could not have happened and you

can only remember it now in this moment in the light of Consciousness you remember what something that you call the past Let's Pretend a moment you don't have it you don't have a past and the most Dreadful thing let's pretend that also you don't have a future you don't don't have a past okay I'm okay with that but don't take away my future because that's a Dreadful thing if you if you went into a doctor's office and he says I'm afraid you have little future left so but let's pretend there's no past and no fut

there only this moment and you don't need to remember conceptually who you are why no need to remember the the self-concept the image of Who You Are uh no past no future who are you how do you perceive yourself how do you what does it feel like to be You In This Moment without past and future is there anything left of You In This Moment without past and future which means without Concepts which means without thoughts but not without Consciousness is there anything left of you in this moment if you have no past and you

have no future who are you without past and future and you cannot answer that question because any answer would be a concept concept is from the Past who are you so the answer to who are you without past and future cannot be conceptual words no the answer of who or what you are without past or future can only be a realization a moment of ah so who am I without past and future what does it feel like to be me without memory without memorizing who who I am and that's now you you're getting there there

is something that is we have to use words of course which distort it but there is a strange sense of presence of beingness you know that you are but without adding you know I am but you don't know what or who because that's conceptual the the the bare sense of beingness or presence is left when there's no past or future just that's just a pure sense of beingness or presentence at first it seems to be nothing and you cannot analyze it and it's very hard to talk about but you know there's there's something or you

could even say that's there there's just a spaciousness a space perhaps that's what the Buddha meant when he talked about emptiness there is a spaciousness and that's and then if you if you're aware of that it it tends to deepen sometimes for brief moments you can get it accidentally in certain situations in life brief moments of Liberation from the self and you go a perhaps you see something very beautiful and for a moment you're transported out of yourself there's just a pure perception against against the background of awareness oh for a moment you are liberated

from yourself or is a dangerous activity that requires your absolute presence you can't be thinking about your problems or your your life situation you have to be absolutely totally there and you feel so much more alive and you want to go back to this dangerous activity again and again because this dangerous activity frees you while you're engaged in it from yourself but then of course the moment you you come back to your ordinary activities the self reemerges oh I have to climb Another Mountain now and that's good then then going beyond the self and as

you know I've often spoken about there's a huge desire in every human to become free of themselves they don't know they cannot verbalize it they wouldn't say it in this way but there's a huge desire there's even a lot there's an obscure Fascination that humans have is most fear and but also a pull about the end of the world everybody is fascinated by stories of the end of the world is coming oh there's there's fear but there's also kind of longing because the end of the world is also Freedom From Myself And there no taxes

anymore to pay and no exams and no worries about careers the end of the world especially if the world is making you unhappy the end of the world would be a great thing of course the world is largely in your mind so you don't need the end of the world to be free of yourself it'll happen soon enough but of course you can lower your level of Consciousness so that you fall below Thinking by drugs taking drugs or or alcohol in large amounts and they they have the effect of pulling you below thinking which but

they liberate you temporarily from yourself also not always but but often they liberate you from yourself and you feel this why people feel happy when they drink not everybody some people get even more aggressive when they drink that's another story we might go into another day many feel happy because they don't remember their problems and this is a this is also there are some humans who exist below the level of thinking which is the level of egoic the egoic mind uh and in the past they used to be called fools or idiots these words you

must not use anymore nowadays uh people who are who live below thinking and these people don't have a problematic sense of self because they hav arrived to that yet it's like the dog dog hasn't doesn't have a problematic sense of self what problems does the dog have self-esteem do you have a problem with self-esteem do you have a weight problem are you anxious about the future yes my next meal I not looking for but that's all once the meal is there it's fine the fool is a mythical figure too uh in mythology and literature the

fool can do things that more highly developed humans cannot do in more recent manifestations of that in uh fiction for example the The Hobbit he's not highly intelligent he's most other people he The Hobbit interacts with are more intelligent than The Hobbit of a simple creature and yet only he can do certain tasks because he's still more deeply connected with being with the source has not developed a conceptual sense of self and does not inhabit a conceptual reality Forest Gump the movie another character like that who does great things and is supported by life but

doesn't claim credit because he has no ego yet hasn't arrived at it yet so you're not here to go that way we are not attempting to regress from the thinking mind and fall below thinking this is why this may be a good moment to mention it I discourage certainly excessive consumption of intoxicating beverages while you're here even any consumption of intoxicating or if English is not your native language I'm talking about alcohol if you cannot enjoy a meal without a glass of wine that's fine but two or three or four will can greatly interfere with

the rising of awareness or presence unless you're really deeply rooted in it then it doesn't matter anymore but then you wouldn't want to drink a lot so that's something to be aware of here because it will pull you below thought and then you might think you're present and you might even convince somebody sitting next to you at dinner that you are enlightened oh so that's one thing that can pull you below thought and we don't want to be pulled below thought naturally you will go below thought every night when you get become tired and you

go to sleep you will feel yourself moving below thought and for that brief moment you're free of your yourself also it's delicious to be tired at night and you you're in bed the pull is very strong and there's a moment when yes there's a delicious feeling but you can't have it for very long and then you disappear and then another reality merges with the dream world and then you back in some other form and the problems continue another way of uh becoming addicted to a substance is and again this is important here uh cell phones

and other similar devices it's a huge challenge humans have not realized yet how huge this challenge is of addiction to those devices so my recommendation is here if you want to take real advantage of this situation engage as little as possible with these devices perhaps briefly for 5 10 minutes a day if you have to uh and for the rest of the time don't even leave it in your room or your safe and if you carry it around the Temptation maybe too great you might not be able to resist and you know it's in your

pocket and some of your attention will move there I wonder what's going on [Music] there and it might even still be beeping a message a Facebook post I wonder what they're saying how many people liked my last post so and you may find a certain withdrawal symptoms if you don't engage but that's okay just observe it and you can say oh that's isn't that interesting I can feel this wanting to get there but you're saying okay I can feel it but I'm not going there and then it'll dissipate