Can We Trust our Feelings? | Eckhart Tolle Teachings

can we trust our feelings now often you hear people say trust your feelings i would suggest however that that's not necessarily true acknowledge your feelings yes be there as the observing presence for your feelings yes be aware of your feelings accept that they are there trust which means to take them to be the truth or the truth for you or using them as a guide to correct or skillful action that may be doubtful because it depends where these feelings arise in you a little anecdote from my life to illustrate that when i lived in england in the country in that alternative town glastonbury for three years i lived in a cottage and once a month i would travel to london or other cities in my beloved russian-made lada car air to do a workshop and usually a weekend workshop called things like transcending time or be here now nothing much has changed except that like the average number of people i had was about 10 and since my income was not enough i had to rent out a room upstairs my cottage so i had to over these three years college three years a few people even was a second room also occasionally went out anyway the room became vacant i advertised in the local local paper several people came to apply and finally chose a young woman who had just been offered a job in that town she came she moved in and after the first night in her room she came down for breakfast into the kitchen which was a shared kitchen and she said i can't stay here i said what's wrong it's just just it's just a feeling and i always listen to my feelings i just i just can't stay at something not right so i was very nervous and i said okay that's fine and that she found that very disconcerting because she had expected a more conventional response which would have been what i have to interview to all these people i've chosen you and now what you're doing this to me i'm you're not getting your rent money back that you paid in advance but i said okay i'll give you a money back it's fine so she was even more confused after that and i said he said i'd spend one more night or two more nights she spent the second night and then in the morning she said uh no i think i'll stay i have a different feeling now and i said oh that's fine that's good and again she was a little disconcerted because the conventional response would have been which i did do i just put another ad in the paper and now you're telling me this this this is how to make the conventional responses are how to make life complicated for yourself and others but it's normal it's how the ego responds and so whenever somebody does not respond in that way life becomes simple but when life becomes simple people who expect the conventional responses become confused what this is a weird person and so she decided to stay and a few weeks later when i got to know her better she explained to me that that first night she was in her bedroom and she said i found you so weird that i i thought you might creep in in the middle of the night and murder me and later she said living in the same house with you is like living in a float tank i think she learned a lot not so much through me explaining things to her just by being there not that she didn't go through her episodes of neurotic reactivity which is quite normal for most people but that's fine so feelings now where did her her the initial feelings that she experienced that she that she then uh believed that they were a correct guide for action of course they were not because they originated in fear and they were also originated in a misinterpretation of reality which is so easy to do for the mind to misinterpret another person to misinterpret the situation you misinterpret because you see it through the conditioning of your mind now a lot of the time people misinterpret reality because they look at reality through the veil of their conditioning and that that contributes to a huge amount of conflict in life in relationships and so on and not only they misinterpret they add this what i call unnecessary baggage to situations through their reactivity which is an ego device in order to strengthen the ego's always deficient sense of identity so coming back again to that story what had happened if i had reacted in the normal way becoming angry and accusing her when she said after one night he couldn't stay and that would have strengthened the it would have come from my ego it would have strengthened my sense of self the separate sense of self and again the if the reaction had been when she finally decided just after the second night decided to stay i could have again said i thought no now i've just spent i mean it wasn't that much an ad in the local paper is was relatively cheap but the ego would have dwelled on that and said now i've spent that and all these people that are already said they couldn't come now they have they have already found accommodation i would have again made somebody wrong and the ego loves that to make somebody wrong because when you make somebody wrong and you would be the ego could even explain you're totally justified because that's not fair the person shouldn't just change like that she's just but instead of saying how people should be if you just this is what is you can either accept it or you cannot you or i won't repeat it here but i think you you may all remember the story i told i believe it's in a new earth about the zen master who was accused of having fathered a child and what his responses were at every stage of the process is that so now that's an interesting so the you if you remember the parents accused him that he was the father of their daughter's child and then the parents brought the baby to him and at each stage when he was the parents told him something you are the father you is that so you bring the now you look after the baby we don't want it you are the father and he had lost his reputation etc people were commenting about him on the internet and he did not participate in the story making and he didn't defend himself and he didn't injustice okay so it means a total refusal to go into any kind of story cut is that so yeah oh and finally it all became resolved itself the daughter confessed that he was not the father and so on and the parents came wanted to baby back please give us the baby back we now know that oh you're not the father please forgive us we did a terrible thing by accusing you terrible thing is that so okay that is that's whether this story actually ever happened i don't know whether it's just a teaching story or actually happened but it doesn't matter it's it shows you an extreme form of not being engaged in a story not engaging in the story making that is that is ego strengthening so you can practice that in many many situations in your life refrain from calling up people or telling our people what other people and tell them about what other people did wrong or how they failed how they were deficient how somebody lied to you most dishonest or expressed an objectionable opinion and then conflict becomes almost eliminated from your life or 90 percent of it you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

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Keywords: can we trust our feelings eckhart tolle teachings, can we trust our feelings, eckhart tolle teachings, eckhart tolle, eckhart, tolle, feelings, can we trust our feelings and intuition?, emotions, spirituality, feelings and emotions, can i trust my feelings, should i trust my feelings, intuition, feelings and decisions, effects of emotion on decision making, emotions and decisions, can we trust our emotions, eckhart tolle youtube, eckhart tolle 2021, eckhart tolle ego, mindfulness

Id: xUjUcXbN344

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021