Simple Recipe for Overcoming Suffering | Eckhart's Life Practices

and every human suffers every life form suffers because life is hard and challenging and precarious for every life form from the moment life comes into being life is challenging and precarious for humans for animals for plants every life form encounters obstacles in its attempt to grow and expand and it continuously encounters obstacles to its expansion every human in one form or another if you come into this world very quickly you'll find obstacles seeming obstacles to your expansion and growth and well-being and flowering i think you can all if you think about your so-called life how many obstacles life seems to have put in your path towards happiness and some people perceive life as life continuously is sabotaging my attempts to find happiness why is that and then they have these strange theories that god is against me or whatever the theory is but it does seem like and this is related to the buddhist term dukkha or suffering wherever you go you will find life is sometimes helpful and then obstacles again and all and this is perceived as some people believe if you only protract this positive thinking continuously you will no longer encounter obstacles but that unfortunately is not the case positive thinking is a great thing can be extremely helpful and bring about certain shifts in you but it does not free you from experiencing the obstacles that life will put on you up in your path and the challenges that come so those obstacles whether they come in the form of loss or illness or relationship problems many of them arise from their own mind because your mind creates an enormous amount of problems that are quite unnecessary but the mind doesn't know that so the mind creates an enormous amount of conflict that is unnecessary in your life that's one kind of obstacle is your own mind then and again you are you need to experience the consequences of the obstacles that your own mind creates the conflicts and the unnecessary problems that your own mind because you identified with the mind creates you need to experience the suffering that you create for yourself out of that unconsciousness of unconsciousness means completely identifying with the mind the egoic mind which in many cases transforms challenges which could be solved easily into much bigger problems so you have the your mind created obstacles that you ultimately create yourself because you're not conscious enough and then you encounter suffering this is one level of suffering and this is you need to experience the suffering that comes through unconscious use of the mind in order to awaken it's only through the suffering that eventually you go i can't take anymore as i happened to me when i was in bed one night and said i can't live with myself anymore and it's and then somehow i realized this myself that i couldn't live with anymore was an illusion an illusory entity and very unhappy mind-created entity but before i realized that i had to go through this suffering for years and years so the suffering worked it fulfilled its purpose and then you have another level of suffering or obstacles obstacles come to you seemingly from the outside that suddenly you have an accident an illness that's a kind of outside it's just something seems to happen to you that you have not contributed to uh something happens to somebody close to you dies as an accident many things can happen but you seem i haven't created that of course in new age it's very normal to say when things go wrong in your life the typical new age person will say how did you create that you slipped on a banana skin and broke your leg why did you create that how did you create that it's an interesting question i don't want to go into this whether even those obstacles or challenges that come to you not seemingly not from your own mind but from the outside did you still create that or not let's leave that aside i don't want to convince anybody one way or another i have a much more simple recipe here which goes like this instead of telling people you better look at your life and see why you created that or how you created that i say accept each moment as if you had created it accept each moment as if you had wanted it or caused it wanted it to happen i can't remember my own writings it's always not good to go into memory don't quote just present moment so but if you live whatever happens you accept this moment as if you had chosen that's the one i wrote except accept each moment as if you had chosen it so that's a good recipe for working because if it already is the case you might as well accept whatever is as if you have chosen it because it's already here so i'm not telling people you chose it maybe you did maybe you didn't doesn't matter it still accept it as if you had chosen it that shifts things that your whole attitude shifts and you it dissolves more quickly than whatever the obstacle is but let's go back to the suffering the first the suffering that derives from your own mind creates conflict and all those things that create suffering and then at some point you awaken and then what remains is the suffering that comes with having a body for example because eventually the body gets older no matter how much you go to the gym every day no matter how fantastic your nutrition is no matter how many pills fall longer life you take which is all fine and good but of course every form eventually dissolves and the time comes when the body can be perceived as a burden almost the older you get the more likely it is to happen and so of course you might then say old age isn't so bad if you consider the alternative which is you die younger and then you don't have to experience the body getting fragile and old but if you get old the body can become problematic a source of suffering potentially but the those challenges if approached correctly don't have to turn into suffering accept each moment as if you had chosen it if you can go with the isness of things there's no complaining entity that says something about being a victim and complaining how dreadful things are now i wish my mother had learned that lesson when she suffered in that way because she had always identified very much with her body good looking always nicely dressed going out and like to be looked at very normal thing for many people and then the body got older and older and then hip problems and other fractures and this and got worse and worse and the unhappiness grow and grow not so much of the limited movement but the identity and so so much was in the body that was tremendous suffering i tried to free her and occasionally there were moments when she could disidentify from body but very very brief and that is the destiny of many humans but this the suffering is really that every end every life form encounters the obstacles that every life form encounters whether they come in younger age older age middle age in whatever form [Music] these things are absolutely necessary without which there would be no human evolution whatsoever and no life form would ever evolve if the life form did not encounter obstacles so that which looks like an obstacle is actually always potentially an opening potentially it that seems to stop your progress in life always potentially can make you more conscious so you can use every obstacle that arises in your life if you can especially works especially quickly if you accept each moment as if you had chosen it and when it looks this moment is an obstacle you go with it instead of complaining or running away from it and and then accept and then act if action is possible or don't act if no action is possible you identify with thinking and the identification with thinking becomes ego and there are many people in this world who are stuck with hostile life denying continuously critical and attacking entities that they carry in their head and they believe that is who they are to become free of ego means becoming free of thought identification with thought that's the end of the eagle [Music] you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

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Keywords: lost in suffering, emotional suffering, eckhart tolle, eckhart tolle 2019, eckhart tolle suffering, dealing with loss, dealing with suffering, eckhart pain body, emotional pain, overcoming depression, avoiding suffering, depression, daily practices, life practices, eckhart tolle life practice

Id: xANjrN3rVvE

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020