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Eckhart Tolle and What Shaped Him
By Jenn Lawlor


.Meditation - According to Eckhart Tolle - more...


Eckhart Tolle was originally born Ulrich Leonard Tolle on February 16, 1948 in a small area near Dortland, Germany. He lived with his father in Spain from the age 13-19. During those years Tolle refused to go to school, complaining that the environment there was too "hostile". Instead he studied literature, astronomy, and languages at home, on his own. When he was about fifteen, he studied seriously five books given him by a German mystic, Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken. He credits those with touching him deeply. Eventually, Tolle moved to the United Kingdom. He received a graduation diploma from the University of London and studied but did not complete his doctorate at the University of Cambridge. His studies focused on literature, languages, and this time, philosophy.

Long periods of suicidal depression plagued Eckhart Tolle until, at about age 29, he experienced an inner transformation. He would spend the next ten years trying to formulate a philosophy around his experience. Tolle has credited the New Testament, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, and the Teachings of Buddha with helping him become enlightened. His conclusion is that most religions have become so complicated they are more divisive than unifying.

In 1995, Eckhart Tolle moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he has remained. He travels extensively, giving retreats and seminars as well as lectures. He has conducted at least one retreat at Findhorn in Scotland. In 2005, he wrote and published The Power of Now. Unsure of its potential popularity, he had only 3000 copies printed which he hand-distributed to stores in Vancouver. By 2009 his book had been on the New York Times Best Sellers list for 62 weeks. Since then he has written further books explaining his philosophy. He has also founded Eckhart Teachings, a company that handles his products, including CD's, DVD's and picture books for children as well as adults. He has more recently started an Internet site with monthly meditation groups.

Eckhart Tolle believes he has the solution to curb the violent tendencies that plague our world. He teaches that if we can move away from the tyranny of the ego and mind's control of our consciousness, we can be free to live in the present and enjoy our lives and each other to the fullest extent. He has a growing following, included the very influential Oprah Winfrey. It remains to be seen if his eclectic world philosophy will have a lasting influence on the planet about which he cares. (more...)

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The Egoic Mind
by Eckhart Tolle

Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head—the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it—that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are. This is the egoic mind. We call it egoic because there is a sense of self, of I (ego), in every thought, every memory,every interpretation, opinion, viewpoint, reaction, emotion.

This is unconsciousness, spiritually speaking. Your thinking, the content of your mind, is of course conditioned by the past: your upbringing, culture, family background, and so on. The central core of all your mind activity consists of certain repetitive and persistent thoughts, emotions, and reactive patterns that you identify with most strongly. This entity is the ego itself.

In most cases, when you say "I," it is the ego speaking, not you. It consists of thought and emotion, of a bundle of memories you identify with as "me and my story," of habitual roles you play without knowing it, of collective identifications such as: nationality, religion, race, social class, or political allegiance. It also contains personal identification, not only with possessions, but also with... opinions, external appearance, long-standing resentments, or concepts of yourself as better than or not as good as others, as a success or failure. The content of the ego varies from person to person, but in every ego the same structure operates. In other words: Egos only differ on the surface. Deep down they are all the same.

In what way are they the same? They live on identification and separation. When you live through the mind-made self comprised of thought and emotion that is the ego, the basis for your identity is precarious because thought and emotion are by their very nature ephemeral, fleeting. So every ego is continuously struggling for survival, trying to protect and enlarge itself. To uphold the I-thought, it needs the opposite thought of "the other." The conceptual "I" cannot survive without the conceptual "other." The others are most other when I see them as "enemies."

Complaining

At one end of the scale of this unconscious egoic pattern lies the egoic compulsive habit of faultfinding and complaining about others. Jesus referred to it when he said, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" At the other end of the scale, there is physical violence between individuals and warfare between nations. In the Bible, Jesus' question remains unanswered, but the answer is, of course: Because when I criticize or condemn another, it makes me feel bigger, superior.

Complaining is one of the ego's favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don't have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such an ego, complaining, especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don't know what you are doing.

Applying negative mental labels to people, either to their face or more commonly when you speak about them to others or even just think about them, is often part of this pattern. Name-calling is the crudest form of such labeling and of the ego's need to be right and triumph over others: "jerk, bastard, bitch”—all definitive pronouncements that you can't argue with. On the next level down on the scale of unconsciousness, you have shouting and screaming, and not much below that, physical violence.

Resentment

Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people's greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said, what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn't have done.

The ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identify. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the ego. Sometimes the "fault" that you perceive in another isn't even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.

Nonreaction

Nonreaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego. But you can only be in a state of nonreaction if you can recognize someone's behavior as coming from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it's not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were. By not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out the sanity in others, which is the unconditioned consciousness as opposed to the conditioned.

At times you may have to take practical steps to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people. This you can do without making them enemies. Your greatest protection, however, is being conscious. Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Nonreaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for nonreaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence. The ego loves to complain and feel resentful not only about other people but also about situations. What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy.

The implication is always... This should not be happening; I don't want to be here; I don't want to be doing this; I'm being treated unfairly. And the ego's greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment, which is to say, life itself.

Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right. And to refrain from complaining doesn't necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or behavior. There is no ego in telling the waiter that your soup is cold and needs to be heated up—if you stick to the facts, which are always neutral. "How dare you serve me cold soup..." That's complaining. There is a "me" here that loves to feel personally offended by the cold soup and is going to make the most of it, a "me" that enjoys making someone wrong. The complaining we are talking about is in the service of the ego, not of change.

Ego Identifies with the Body

Apart from objects, another basic form of identification is with "my" body. Firstly, the body is male or female, and so the sense of being a man or woman takes up a significant part of most people's sense of self. Gender becomes identity. Identification with gender is encouraged at an early age, and it forces you into a role, into conditioned patterns of behavior that affect all aspects of your life, not just sexuality. It is a role many people become completely trapped in, even more so in some of the traditional societies than in Western culture where identification with gender is beginning to lessen somewhat. In some traditional cultures, the worst fate a woman can have is to be unwed or barren, and for a man to lack sexual potency and not be able to produce children. Life's fulfillment is perceived to be fulfillment of one's gender identity.

In the West, it is the physical appearance of the body that contributes greatly to the sense of who you think you are: its strength or weakness, its perceived beauty or ugliness relative to others. For many people, their sense of self-worth is intimately bound up with their physical strength, good looks, fitness, and external appearance. Many feel a diminished sense of self-worth because they perceive their body as ugly or imperfect. In some cases, the mental image or concept of "my body" is a complete distortion of reality. A young woman may think of herself as overweight and therefore starve herself when in fact she is quite thin. She cannot see her body anymore. All she "sees" is the mental concept of her body, which says "I am fat" or "I will become fat."

At the root of this condition lies identification with the mind. As people have become more and more mind-identified, which is the intensification of egoic dysfunction, there has also been a dramatic increase in the incidence of anorexia in recent decades. If the sufferer could look at her body without the interfering judgments of her mind or even recognize these judgments for what they are instead of believing in them, this would initiate her healing.

Those who are identified with their good looks, physical strength, or abilities experience suffering when those attributes begin to fade and disappear, as of course they will. Their very identity that was based on them is then threatened with collapse. In either case, ugly or beautiful, people derive a significant part of their identity, be it negative or positive, from their body. To be more precise, they derive their identity from the I-thought that they erroneously attach to the mental image or concept of their body, which after all is no more than a physical form that shares the destiny of all forms— impermanence and ultimately decay. Equating the physical sense-perceived body that is destined to grow old, wither, and die with "I" always leads to suffering sooner or later.

To refrain from identifying with the body doesn't mean that you neglect, despise, or no longer care for it. If it is strong, beautiful, or vigorous, you can enjoy and appreciate those attributes while they last. You can also improve the body's condition through right nutrition and exercise. If you don't equate the body with who you are, when beauty fades, vigor diminishes, or the body becomes incapacitated, this will not affect your sense of worth or identity in any way. In fact, as the body begins to weaken, the formless dimension, the light of consciousness, can shine more easily through the fading form.

It is not just people with good or near-perfect bodies who are likely to equate it with who they are. You can just as easily identify with a "problematic" body and make the body's imperfection, illness, or disability into your identity. You may then think and speak of yourself as a "sufferer" of this or that chronic illness or disability. You receive a great deal of attention from doctors and others who constantly confirm to you your conceptual identity as a sufferer or a patient. You then unconsciously cling to the illness because it has become the most important part of who you perceive yourself to be. It has become another thought form with which the ego can identify. Once the ego has found an identity, it does not want to let go. Amazingly but not infrequently, the ego in search of a stronger identity can and does create illnesses in order to strengthen itself through them.

The Collective Ego

How hard it is to live with yourself! One of the ways in which the ego attempts to escape the unsatisfactoriness of personal selfhood is to enlarge and strengthen its sense of self by identifying with a group— a nation, political party, corporation, institution, sect, religion, club, gang, football team. In some cases the personal ego seems to dissolve completely as someone dedicates his or her life to working selflessly for the greater good of the collective without demanding personal rewards, recognition, or aggrandizement. What a relief to be freed of the dreadful burden of a personal self. The members of the collective feel happy and fulfilled, no matter how hard they work, how many sacrifices they make. They appear to have gone beyond ego. The question is: Have they truly become free, or has the ego simply shifted from the personal to the collective? A collective ego manifests the same characteristics as the personal ego, such as... the need for conflict and enemies, the need for more, the need to be right against others who are wrong, and so on.

Sooner or later, the collective will come into conflict with other collectives, because it unconsciously seeks conflict and it needs opposition to define its boundary and thus its identity. Its members will then experience the suffering that inevitably comes in the wake of any ego-motivated action. At that point, they may wake up and realize that their collective has a strong element of insanity. It can be painful at first to suddenly wake up and realize that the collective you had identified with and worked for is actually insane. Some people at that point become cynical or bitter and henceforth deny all values, all worth. This means that they quickly adopted another belief system when the previous one was recognized as illusory and therefore collapsed. They didn't face the death of their ego but ran away and reincarnated into a new one. A collective ego is usually more unconscious than the individuals that make up that ego. For example, crowds (which are temporary collective egoic entities) are capable of committing atrocities that the individual away from the crowd would not be. Nations not infrequently engage in behavior that would be immediately recognizable as psychopathic in an individual.

Grievances

There are many people who are always waiting for the next thing to react against, to feel annoyed or disturbed about, and it never takes long before they find it. "This is an outrage," they say. "How dare you ..." "I resent this." They are addicted to upset and anger as others are to a drug. Through reacting against this or that they assert and strengthen their feeling of self.

A long-standing resentment is called a grievance. To carry grievances is to be in a permanent state of "against," and that is why grievances constitute a significant part of many people's ego. Collective grievances can survive for centuries in the psyche of a nation or a tribe and fuel a never-ending cycle of violence. A grievance is a strong negative emotion connected to an event in the sometimes distant past that is being kept alive by compulsive thinking, by retelling the story in the head or out loud of "what someone did to me" or "what someone did to us." A grievance will also contaminate other areas of your life. For example, while you think about and feel your grievance, its negative emotional energy can distort your perception of an event that is happening in the present or influence the way in which you speak or behave toward someone in the present. One strong grievance is enough to contaminate large areas of your life and keep you in the grip of the ego.

It requires honesty to see whether you still harbor grievances, whether there is someone in your life you have not completely forgiven, an "enemy." If you do, become aware of the grievance both on the level of thought as well as emotion, that is to say, be aware of the thoughts that keep it alive, and feel the emotion that is the body's response to those thoughts.Don't try to let go of the grievance. Trying to let go, to forgive, does not work. Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the ego in place. The seeing is freeing. Jesus' teaching to "Forgive your enemies" is essentially about the undoing of one of the main egoic structures in the human mind. The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. And what is a grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion.

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Eckhart Tolle's talks at a retreat in New York
transcribed from a recorded video online





The impermanence and the fleeting nature of all phenomena

Welcome again wherever you are, here or elsewhere. (Tolle addresses people sitting on the screen and watch his talk live via streaming video) We are in the tropics now… (It was hot in New York) That may slow you down a little, which is a good thing. There is a Zen saying which goes, "hurry slowly." But what that really means is not that you necessarily slow down on the external. You can both be fast on the external and be still on the inside. I briefly mentioned that before at some point. And than of course you’re not stressed, you are still very effective, in fact more effective and yet there is always that still core, that still space, and the rest if it has to be fast can move fast.

There was an ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus or Heraclites who became famous. Well, his most famous saying - he was a pre-Socratic philosopher before Plato, before Socrates - the pre-Socratics are wonderful but their teachings only survived in fragments - and one of the surviving fragments by Heraclitus is the saying in ancient Greek, I don't know much ancient Greek but it just happened to know this one, 'Panta rhei,' which means everything flows or everything is in flux. And he is also known for his saying: "You cannot step into the same river twice."

So, he very much was aware of, like The Buddha too, of the fleeting nature of all phenomena, the continuous fluctuation of forms. And I am sure he also told that if we get attached to the fleeting forms, than we suffer. Although I don't know any fragments that say that. The emphasis of his teachings is on the impermanence, and the fleeting nature of all phenomena.

And than, I don't remember one generation before or after him, there was another philosopher, Parmenides, who said the exact opposite. He said: "All change is an illusion, nothing ever changes." And if you begin to study philosophy at University, they will tell you that this are two totally conflicting views of reality. But if you enter the spiritual dimension, than you realize that they are both right. One refers to the dimension of being which can be realized within; where you find that that point of absolute rest which however is not dead but vibrantly alive, that which Jesus called fullness, which Buddha called emptiness; that absolute stillness like the very center of the hub, the wheel, is still. And everything else revolves around it. So that's the still point where nothing ever changes.

The essence of who you are

And from there ones you realize that that is actually the essence of who you are, seeing from there you look around, and than you see something that many of those people who had that realization, when they looked out upon the world said: “Oh, this is a bid unreal, it all looks a bid unreal, because it's very much like a dream, all this forms." Tomorrow, of course tomorrow - when it happens is the now we know that, but we have to use this words - tomorrow you will wake up somewhere else and you think: "Omega was that a dream, or did that happened?" (Retreat was at te Omega Institute N.Y) It dissolved. The experience receded and dissolved. And at some point there will be nobody left who remembers this experience. It could be many years from now until the last person here dissolves. And even their descendants to whom you told about your wonderful Omega experience, they will remember that their grandfather talked about being at a place called Omega, and he realized his true identity there.

But than they died too. And finally no traces left of this particular experience, its dissolved completely. But what does not change actually, is a consciousness that has emerged through the various forms into this dimension. And than because it has emerged more fully here, expresses itself more fully through other forms. So, there is an essence which is not to do with the level of forms. Everything on the level of form eventually dissolves, dissolves, (and) dissolves.

Illusion and Oneness

So Parmenides realized (that), as did many Indian saints and gurus, teachers. They said: “it’s all an illusion what happens out here.” And than of course other people come and they read what they said, and than they repeat. They might even start giving spiritual teachings, and they have read that it’s all an illusion and than they say: “its all an illusion”. But when you look at them in their daily lives, they get extremely upset about things when they happen. Where is the illusion now?

Some Zen master sometimes when the disciple said: "All is one, everything else is illusory," sometimes the Zen master would hit you and than the disciple gets: "Why did you do that? And then the Zen master says: "If all it’s an illusion than where does that anger come from?" So it’s not true until you realize the truth of it. It doesn't become true, because it needs to be true for you. Not as a mental concept, but as a realization in the depth of your being. And than you can say compared to that vibrantly alive stillness that I am at the center of my being so to speak, or the being beyond form that I am; compared to that it all looks a little bid unreal. That's how I would put it. I wouldn't say it’s all an illusion because on its own level it has a certain reality, you can’t deny that. But it’s just; it feels a little bid unreal and a little bid insubstantial, but quite pleasant and interesting. The continuously changing forms of life. So, everything flows, yes, everything moves, and yet nothing moves.

Ultimately Parmenides said: "it’s an illusion." But it’s a pleasant; it can become a pleasant dream. That's the transition. I call it lucid dream. You know, you may have experienced at night in the middle of a dream, suddenly you realized that you were dreaming. And that's quite an interesting: "wow this is a dream?", and than you might even have thought I can do anything, I can try out anything. But usually what happens is, very soon you wake up. It’s the continuing to dream and being aware that it is a dream usually they are not compatible, and than very quick you wake up out of the dream.

And lucid dreaming happens, we use that as an analogy. When you are rooted in that sense of spaciousness, your spacious inside; there is an aware presence in you beyond the person. And from there whatever unfolds in your life is a kind of dream. You’re no longer totally attached to it in it. Like the dreamer who doesn’t know he or she is dreaming, you’re totally in the grip of the dream. When you know you are dreaming the dream changes. The nature of the dream changes. So, the realization of being - which is what this is - the realization of being also changes the way in which you dream the dream of every day life. As there is than, you have a spacious relationship with the dream of every day life. In other words nothing that happens is any longer of absolute importance. It still is of relative importance, but it is not of absolute importance.

That dimension in you that is not really touched by whatever happens on the level of form

Of relative importance is whether you are, you live in a tent, you’re homeless and live in a tent, on a park bench, or in a pleasant house. Of course in relative terms it does make a difference to your life, on the level of form. Whether you have a nice family around you, or, whether you have nobody, in relative terms it makes a difference. Whether your body is healthy and vigorous, or your body is fragile and getting old makes a difference. Whether you are successful in the world, or completely unsuccessful in the world is a relative difference to your life experience, of course, and perhaps you would prefer to be successful. When this things are regarded as absolutes than each one of this things have the power to make you either happy temporarily, or quite unhappy. When you see them as relative, than anything that happens on the level of form still matters to some extent but, as I put it, it matters but it does not matter absolutely because there is always, there is a space within you from where, whatever is there unfolding on the level of form is witnessed and allowed to be. There is always that dimension in you that is not really touched by whatever happens on the level of form, and than you discover the amazing thing that even when you are homeless you can be very deeply peaceful, and even when you have lost everything that deep peace remains, it might even become stronger.

But you may also find because you than embody that deep vibrantly alive peace; you may also find that that also emanates from you into the world. And so it does influence the way in which you experience life, and how other people and life situations respond to you. So if you are homeless and sit on a park bench, and feel this absolute peace - of course you may think: “Ok, I may need to take some action, to see if I can get a roof over my head and find somewhere to stay,” fine, but in the meantime you’re sitting there. It happened to me for a while and than somebody comes sits next to you and asks a question, or says something and than you give an answer, and its perhaps a tiny glimpse of something spiritual in your answer, or in his question, and suddenly you find teaching is happening; somebody gets drown to you, and then he comes back (that happened to me) he comes back the next day and sits next to you again and wants to ask another question; and than that’s the beginning of your career as a spiritual teacher. (Everybody laughs)

It also happened to me several times that as I sat, not knowing – at that point I wasn’t totally homeless, I was staying sleeping on somebody’s floor, but during the daytime I would still sit around on park benches and than I looked in my pocket … Oh, I’ve only got two pounds left (in England) and suddenly somebody comes by and says: “Oh”, he recognized me from a job I’ve done before, “Oh you’re just the person I need. I need some language classes, can you teach me?” German, I think it was. At that time my Spanish was so good I could even teach Spanish, I couldn’t do that now probably. So he needed I think both, German and Spanish. “Ok, for two weeks you teach me for three hours twice a week,” and that was enough to keep me going for another two or three. (weeks). And always at the last minute the Universe came and was supportive.

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The experience will be added unto you

So circumstances than are there but there is a space around them; there is always presence in you, the transcendence dimension. And that’s a wonderful sense of freedom. And the paradox is that, as this transcendental dimension is present in you it affects even the circumstances of your life. But that’s secondary, that’s… Jesus used the words for that when he talked about that, he said: “All those things that you thought you needed, seek only the one thing that matters and seek that, pay attention to that. All the other things that you thought you needed, will be added unto you.” And that’s the experience. This adding unto means you no longer need it for your sense of identity, for your happiness, for your sense of fulfillment, for... to give you a sense of who you are -usually people look for all kinds of stuff to give themselves a more complete identity - and those things you don’t need anymore because your core identity is consciousness and that can be realized at any moment. It can only be realized in the one moment, in the vertical dimension, now. “Ah!” So, and than it's almost as if the Universe has a sense of humour or irony, when you don’t really need it anymore on the level of fulfilment or identity, and than the Universe says: “Oh, here it is.”

When I had a big ego in my twenties, and so on, - of course I was unhappy too, that goes with it – to be a great spiritual teacher, "Wow!" Oh, I would have given anything; my ego would have. And than something happened and the need to be anybody in particular dissolved, and I was happy, very happy being nobody in particular. In other words one could say I was happy being a valley whereas the ego, the egoic self, wants to be a mountain.

The egoic self

The egoic self wants to stand out and say: “Me, look at me how successful I am," or if I can’t do that it says: “Look at me how miserable I am, definitely more miserable than you.” It wants to in someway wants to stand out, be special through knowledge, through possessions, through appearance. Some people hit you over your head with their knowledge. They are so highly educated and they throw it at you, so that you feel very small. That’s one way the ego could do, or others show of how much better they look than you. Or in a very subtle way, the spiritual image, seeing yourself as a spirituall highly evolved spiritual being can also be part of the ego.

Having an image of yourself as highly evolved it always involves comparisment with others; when the ego always compares itself with others. You have to be alert to it in case it happens to you; when you detect a subtle sense of superiority or inferiority towards others. When you see others here at Omega, “Well I’m so much more spiritual than this person,” or if you look in admiration and you say: “Wow, they have gone a longer way further than me, they are so much more evolved than me, will I ever reach that point?” So, comparison, a sense of either inferiority or superiority always associated with ego. Because beyond ego there is just a sense of aware, spacious beingness, and that doesn’t need to compare itself to anything or anybody.

So that is really the need to stand out, to exist one could say, because to exist means to stand out, ex- means out –ist comes from stand in Latin. To exist means the need to express your opinion when it doesn’t really matter what your opinion is, because there is no decision making process involved, you just have to express your opinion when things are being discussed. You can feel how it pushes forward in your mind and you cannot stop yourself, you have to … and that’s part of wanting to be defined in form more strongly, the ego wants to define itself, its form identity more strongly, and so it uses all kinds of strategies to enhance its form identity. Another one is as we know, is criticizing others. Because when you’re criticizing others you’re strengthening your form identity as a superior being, because the implication is of course when you criticize somebody you are superior morally, or intellectually, whatever, to that person that is being criticized. So its an unconscious attempt of the ego to enhance its form identity.

The ego strengthens its form identity

Another way in which the ego strengthens its form identity is to regard people as enemies. To say: “he is such and such", "what he did to me.” You make people into enemies, you make situations into enemies. When you complain about a situation you find yourself in, “Oh, why should they?". "They should have!” in your head or out lowd. Again even complaining about a situation you find yourself in, or a place, a location where you are, the complaining strengthens your form identity and you are making the situation into a kind of enemy.

And many people spend large parts of their lives converting situations that they find themselves in into enemies. It’s an ego pursuit. It’s quite insane. And so they spread a lot of unpleasentment, because whoever they come into contact with gets infected by their energy field of hostility towards things that are around them. So, this are very rigid, egoic identities and it's all unconscious, but it's all an attempt to get a stronger sense of me as opposed to others. As I sometimes put it the ego tries to emphasize the otherness of others.

And even collectives do it, nations do it sometimes towards other nations. The collective mind of one nation makes the other nation into absolute devils. This has happened a lot in the past. To some extent it still happens, maybe a little bid less so, when you look at the propaganda of a nation in the first World War and so on, it's an attempt to make the others, like the other neighboring nations, they are all evil. Or, you make another race into they are all evil and we are the good ones. But that goes back thousands of years where when tribal identities, when humans lived in smaller tribes, and the neighboring tribes were sometimes regarded as not even human, because they were a totally different tribe. They were conceptualized. Already than that was very much there already, conceptualizing other humans as the other. And so when you have the other and emphasize the otherness of others, than you get a stronger sense of your own self. But that self is an illusory sense of self. But to the ego, which is the illusory sense of self, it is very satisfying to do that. And that's how a lot of the insanity happens, that we see in human history.

But its all related. That can be traced back like to simple things like feeling the need to complain all the time about people and things and situations. All the way in which one enhances unconsciously ones egoic identity. Wanting to be somebody. Not liking to be overlooked. If somebody don't gives me enough attention get very angry - you know the saying, the sentence that just precedes an act of violence: "Hey I'm talking to you!," which is "give me attention I'm here look at me," and if you will not give them attention than they will hit you. Than they will get attention. "I'm talking to you!" Oh dear. (One might say)

The power to get to the source of all life in yourself

And all the spiritual teachings emphasize trying to instead of trying to be the mountain, seeing if you can become comfortable with being the valley. The Dao Te Ching actually talks about the valley spirit as the essence of the Dao. The valley spirit, being nobody in particular or Jesus saying: "when you are invited to a feast, don't sit at the best seat, seek the lowest seat when you are invited." And this is a parable, it's not to be taken literally, he isn't going to advising you where you're going to sit at a dinner party, it's not that - it means something else; it points to something else. "Seek the lowest place" means to not seek to emphasize the form identity, be comfortable with the simple beingness, which might include not emphasizing your form identity.

I talked about that a little bid in A New Earth (book) also. It first it feels strange when you give up the need - perhaps there is a discussion, people are putting forward their point of view, you have a point of view - and than as an experiment you decide you will just drop it, and just be there as a presence. At first it seems that you are beginning to disappear and than you find there is a - you sink down to the bottle so to speak; instead of being up here you go ... (become silent), and at first it's a little disconcerting when you don't emphasize the me, but than certainly you can sense a sense of peace, and than you can actually sense true power. True power is, comes from a different place; when you are rooted in the beingness, the aware space, you sense an enormously powerful energy field that has nothing to do with the world of form, and you can rest in that. And that's a wonderful thing. You are than free of the ego and have become, have succeeded true power in yourself. But not power in the way the ego would think of power; power over somebody else, or power as having more than. A deeper sense of power to get to the source of life, the source of all life in yourself. And than the wonderful liberation is, you don't need to emphasize the me anymore.

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You need to focus on that which is beyond the mind which creates the ego. Which is, focus on space, on awareness and in that the ego naturally begins to dissolve.

And so one sometimes sees - occasionally I've seen in movies, characters in movies that are virtually ego-less - whether this has happened accidentally or whether the screen writer knew what he or she was doing I don't know. Well on the one hand you have certain characters that are pre-egoic like Forest Gump, or The Hobbit, and than you have, they haven't gone through the egoic stage yet they are pre-egoic, therefore connected more with the totality of life and the source of life. And than in some movies I've seen characters who are actually ego-less and seem to have gone beyond... There is even I may have mentioned it before - there is an older movie that I saw in the Eighties "The Adventurer", the man that always plays the adventurer that goes seeking pleasures and so on. "Indiana Jones" kind of movie. I think it was called "The Jewel of the Nile." The jewel of the Nile has one character in it who is supposed to be a Sufi master, a spiritual teacher. And that Sufi master in Egypt I think it is, that Sufi master - normally when this masters are depicted in movies the're huge egos because that's how the script writer, or the director thinks that the master must have a massive presence - and this master has no he is functioning without any ego whatsoever in a childlike way and it's quite wonderful to watch.

I also noticed, one can sometimes watch movies from that point of view. there was another movie I think it's called "The fastest Indian", or something its about a motorbike race with a famous English actor Anthony Hopkins based on a real person. The character that he plays in that movie also functions without ego. He is never reactive, immediately goes with the situation and it's wonderful to watch. So you don't need to really try to tackle the various manifestations because there are so many ways in which the ego manifests, if you examine them one by one and try to kind of get rid of them in your life that doesn't work and you don't need that. You need to focus on that which is beyond the mind which creates the ego. Which is focus on space, on awareness and in that the ego naturally begins to dissolve.

But you become also more aware of it when it does appear, and you can smile at it. "Oh, there it is again" (laughter in the audience). And for a while it has a momentum, it will reappear and before you know it you've gone name dropping and you've said in order to enhance other peoples opinion of who you are, you say like, whatever: "Oh, I just got a phone call from Oprah, I just had to mention that." I didn't that's just an example. And sometimes its totally invented, there are people who invent all kinds of things to enhance other peoples opinion of who they are. Or you drive in a big car, because you want to be seen by others, with a roof down. Now of course this are more rudimentary manifestations of the ego, most of you are beyond that. Wanting to be seen by others its totally meaningless, because all that others see is a man or a woman sitting in a car, it has nothing to do with anything but to the ego it's a kind of food to be admired or envied by somebody else, if its only for a second and they have no idea of who you are.

By observing my diet when I was a child I learned a lot about the ego, a lot, often fifty percent of what he said about when he was visiting us and I noticed very quickly that's not true ... I didn't knew that it was called ego but just don't knew why does he invent this things just to make himself more interesting. But it was a great need to be more, to stand out more in the eyes of others. Because the ego loves to see its reflection, it sees itself very often through the eyes of others because it's part of the self-image. Quite amazing, so I had all this teachings there and only later realized oh, that was called, that is the ego.

You may remember in A New Earth (book) I talked about the ancient saying: this too will pass, which is again comming back to impermanence, the fact of impermanence, this too will pass as a reminder that whatever happens is fleeting.