Ego Identity & The Path To Inner Peace

so it seems that we are going to spend the afternoon together most of us that is from some of you a few it may at some point get too much that you might feel the urge to remove yourself from here and go to a more stimulating place such as the beach or even more stimulating such as the adjacent Expo [Applause] the primal urge will have been stronger than the urge towards higher consciousness but most of you will probably stay here and to the extent to which the what I sometimes call the new consciousness has already arisen in you to the extent of that you will actually enjoy being here and listening for the whole afternoon with a short break listening to a man sitting on its hair talking it seems a little strange how could that be interesting there must be something extraordinarily important in what he has to say to keep you here and that is true but of course there needs to be something in you that recognizes that there's something extraordinary important not in the person speaking but ultimately in you so that a recognition needs to be there in you and it's nothing to do with how much knowledge you have spiritual knowledge or accumulated education or PhDs or degrees nothing to do with that kind of mental faculty there is another faculty in humans that in most humans on the planet is as yet dormant and in some a growing number of humans has awakened actually I call it faculty something the dimension of consciousness that's different from the prevailing ordinary dimension of consciousness on the planet so that's a spiritual awakening that is the next step in human evolution because humans have not come to the end of their evolution humans are a work in progress it's not finished yet it would be terrible imagine that humans as they are now a finished product crazy and that's why some people because they have misperceptions about humans and they have misperceptions about God and then they say how could God allow all this to happen all this this is based on two misperceptions that humans are a finished product created by God a long time ago and that God is patriarchal figure controlling things from above or has lost interest completely and walked off maybe somewhere else because he realized he didn't do a good job so the our afternoon here works on two levels there's the level of words and thoughts and that is necessary but more importantly there is that to which the words in the thoughts that underlie the words point and that is the essence of our gathering here and that to which they point is the essence of who you are and the purpose of our afternoon is to either awaken or in the case of many of you to deepen the realization or the connectedness with who you truly are and when I say truly I mean in the depths of your being and I mean a dimension that is deeper than your personal history and most humans are completely unaware that there is a dimension of consciousness in them that is deeper than their personality their personal self so they are trapped trapped on the surface level of reality and that is not a pleasant place to be you are basically then trapped in your conditioned personality the person the egoic self and you know somehow you know that there is something not right you know somewhere instinctively you know there's something so important that's not here yet and that's missing in my life there's something wrong and how humans interpret that mentally what we perceive or feel to be wrong varies from person to person one person might say what's wrong is that all humans don't have the same religion that we have there's something deeply wrong so we need to either convert them or kill them or other humans say there's something deeply wrong about society that projected outward of course there's everything Lots wrong with society but there's what is society it's the sum total the individuals there's something deeply wrong with what I with my personal history it so I'm satisfying why why did so many things go wrong in my life things that weren't supposed to happen I imagine things going very differently not all these failed marriage and divorce and always dreadful suffering and then there was the illness and there was that and then there were great achievements and then they were okay in the opposite something is looking for the next thing to feel fulfilled by possessions recognition something missing is always something missing what they don't know is that what is missing what they look for outside or they blame others for preventing them from finding it you can blame entire groups of people for making you feel unfulfilled it's a very common thing these days and very satisfying to the false sense of self because if you can see yourself as a victim either on a personal level or collective level that gives you a somewhat satisfying sense of identity satisfying in a completely non satisfying way it's a paradox you feel good about feeling bad the more you can complain about others and the better you feel but it's bad but the ego thinks it's better and you feel it now you know who you are more fully so fiction so you can you can emphasize your victim identity on the personal level to give you some kind of stronger sense of self or you can emphasize your identity as one who is victorious in the world me the ego doesn't mind which one they're both equally strong and equally false usually ego the ego itself is interpreted by people as people who have a a high sense of exaggerated sense of who they are they think they're better than others and that is one aspect of ego but there's another aspect of ego which is equally strong and that is people have a self image self identity of being more of a victim than somebody else or others well that works too so whichever is most convenient to you you can use that people so people use all kinds of things to create a more satisfying sense of identity for themselves but it's all in the head it's ultimately all consists of the structure of thought and that is what I call to be trapped on the level of the person or the personality another way of putting it is to be to be trapped on the level of form the form of who you are which is the physical and the psychological form of who you are them that me me and my story me and my personal history and then all the conditioning the opinions and viewpoints and convictions and through which you interpret everything according to the conditioning of the personality then you look at things and you immediately have immediately relatable things and situations and people as they come into your perception as they mediate blabling and you think it's all true you don't realize that you are looking at reality true through a veil of your condition mind and really what you're seeing is the vein of your conditioning there's something there behind it but you can't clearly see it at all so grateful state to be in but it's normal this is why I sometimes say normal equals insane so you I and this is no such a fundamental question the question of identity is the most important question in your life Who am I and and you know that you know that it's important but you don't know where your true identity is because it's cool nobody thought you should be the most important thing that children are taught discover your essence identity is that a subject it's cool I haven't heard of it never to come across it so your form identity relies on external things you cook you compare yourself to others and according to what is most appropriate you emphasize those aspects of your form identity where you we are a little bit superior to others and that's where the ego gets in and forms mental construct it could it could be your / your the history of your family as you come from a family not so much in the new world here but in the old world to some extent a little bit still in Europe even more so in some more traditional cultures you think back you have your family history your ancestors and you have this long line of your ancestors going back and they're all more important than the rest of the population and you have come out of this long line of ancestry and that gives you your identity you might even have a title in some countries they still have titles so you grow up your and your your 10 year old girl is told or your name is Lady so-and-so oh now if you're trapped in that to get out of that not easy you've been given that sense of specialness and you know that the main the core of your identity lies then in your ancestry and it can have you in its grip until you on your deathbed and you never know that you are trapped in an illusory sense of identity now most people don't have that but they may have other things they may have more positions than others from their family or they may have achieved months in that they came out of nothing and then they had achieved this that and that and then they identify with the material achievements and so on possessions and that can give you great sense of identity - never satisfying for long that's the thing there's always this element of unsatisfactoriness of something really important is missing and even if you are if you have an aristocratic title Lady Diana example going back she was not fulfilled by her title and her ancestry which goes back hundreds of years and but was very unhappy and so and this is quite normal that you have that identity but your entire trapped in it and you are there's always in the background the unhappiness and then of course you might have a body that's more beautiful than others then you can focus on that and that gives you a sense of superiority towards others so and that's a temporarily a nice thing and then as the years pass a day will come and you look in the mirror and something has changed that beautiful body as strong or expanded whatever the case may be I see I saw the other day in in Sydney walking along the harbour front on a beautiful sunny morning pleasant not hot less warm than it is here people walking there was one man who probably who had taken off his shirt and he was walking through these crowds of people and the strange coincidence is this this man of course must have been so hot in this weather that he felt compelled to take off his shirt but but by strange coincidence he had the most wonderful physique extremely masculine just very impressive and many things and many people looked in some tried not to look at just and you could see how satisfying it was for him to walk through there so he was lucky that he felt so hot that he had to take off his shirt and of course there will there will have been other egos ego identities walking and looking at him who felt diminished by looking it's normal for the ego it felt diminished and so and then looked the other way I'm not trying to look at him so it's normal for the ego to feel diminished if because it always compares itself to others and then the ego sometimes tries to compensate again you have to arrange your identity somehow when he tries to compensate for this diminishment for example by saying well it's just a few thoughts compensate for the diminishment of the ego and they're all it's all unconscious thinking for example the thoughts go oh look at that beach bum there I bet all he does is to hang around the beach every day in surfing not a thought in his head ok that makes you feel better for a little while if you are in your big car you can feel superior towards others then others look but then there may be a man on a bicycle he's looking at you in your big car say look at this materialist whereas I am completely non attached to these things and I'm totally happy on my bicycle because I'm beyond these things that's a very subtle so-called spiritual ego you can feel superior because you're more spiritual than others not realizing that also is a mind made sense of self a mind made identity amazing and many people carry a very unhappy or predominantly uneasy unhappy complaining insufficient personality with them and that's what we think they are awful way to be and nobody has taught them that that ultimately is not who you are that's the conditioning of your mind and that is the emotions that also accompany the conditioning of your mind and so the question arises well if I'm not that I'm not that Who am I and that is the most important question you can ask yourself now in our mainstream culture these they will tell you that that question makes no sense whatsoever because they believe obviously you are your past and you are who you are as a person they deny that there is anything else so as you're here I would suggest that that which is beyond the personality in you has already awakened and that has brought you here and that goes far beyond a personal thing that which has beyond the personality a dimension of consciousness in you in the human that is deeper you could say higher but I prefer the term deeper than the personality and then the the continuous stream of thinking which is the basis for the personality has already awakened in you and has brought you here but that got something beyond the personal that is something what is ultimately brought you here is the fact that human consciousness is evolving and the evolving human consciousness through you has brought you here in order to deepen the awakening with a few exceptions there may be some who didn't to come of their own free will they were dragged here by somebody and and then they reluctantly agreed okay I'll come along and listen to this guy for four hours oh my god and then they say to you what's he talking about it just makes no sense whatsoever and because the the the words get the words are being perceived by this person this imaginary person which may not be imaginary maybe the words are being perceived but they do not go beyond the clutter of his or her mind so they get trapped in the clutter of the mind so you listen to the words but there's nothing in you'd and recognize that to which the world's point and so all you have is they get trapped in the clutter of your mind and so it's completely meaningless and so there needs to be a little opening in the stream of in the mind stream there needs to be a little opening a little crack and most of you that's there it is somebody who is more than that already and in that opening then the words can go in and then that to which the words point is recognized so when I say for example the essence of who you are when I say beyond the personality beyond your personal history there is a deeper essence of who you are and for a moment you can sense the recognition within you of the truth of that you you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

Views: 559,682

Rating: 4.8902793 out of 5

Keywords: find your inner peace, the ego identity, what is ego, eckhart tolle ego, path to peace, inner peace, ego identity, the ego, peace, consciousness, mindfulness, happiness, identity, awakening, spirituality, awareness, ego, enlightenment, eckhart tolle 2020, eckhart tolle youtube, eckhart tolle

Id: TcsgCytw1BA

Length: 24min 12sec (1452 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/coppersgottago]

Eckhart released this on YT this afternoon. I've been loving the relevance of his stuff since February. I keep wanting him to come out as a revolutionary 😂 but this is still super solid- revolutionary in a super radical way really

[u/highAF94]

Even looking at him gives me peace