Freedom from reactivity. In this podcast, Eckhart talks further about freeing ourselves from the ego. He says, while it served a powerful purpose for our spiritual growth, it's now time to let it go. Eckhart explains, one of the pitfalls of the ego is our emotional reactivity. He says challenges have the potential to pull us into anger and fear. He believes when we react, we're at the mercy of situations and other people.
They affect us internally. However, they don't have to because Eckhart says it's an enormous discovery to finally realize difficulties don't have to derail us. He says things can still go wrong, but we don't have to react. Instead, he believes when we practice presence, we suddenly find we're more conscious. and as we grow in awareness our emotional reactivity recedes. We cannot return to a pre-egoic state of consciousness.
although many humans try to do it because they can't stand living with themselves, so they try to return to this pre-egoic state by perhaps desensitizing themselves with certain substances and so on. and it slows down your mind, and you become more like, some people become happy temporarily when they take a sufficient amount of alcohol.
Then they become happy. Life is suddenly fine, but you're going to the pre-thinking stage. You're moving towards unconsciousness. We can't go back. We have to go forward. transcend the ego, and then we become free of this burden. But we had to go through it. It was part of our evolutionary process. So the vital thing here, what we are talking about is this state of, the state of presence, the state of almost as if you were.
but you're not expecting anything, but it's a similar alertness. And then you go and you look around outside or here. without too much interference of the conceptual mind, you'll then begin to sense the aliveness that surrounds you. And then you choose, sometimes you choose one particular object, for example, a natural object like a flower. It's a very important meditation, powerful meditation too.
contemplate a flower, for example, or a tree. Give yourself three, four minutes to contemplate it, not think about it. just observe, be that acute observation, without any tension, just give it attention. They found that Plants that are given attention actually grow better than plants that are not given attention. So attention is an energy that flows. towards it and that connects you with it. And so the plant, this sounds a little mystical, the plant or the tree can actually sense you.
not in the same way that the human senses, but it actually responds to the attention that you give it, and it loves it. So you contemplate the tree. Or the flower. And if thoughts arise, they're not important. Just let them go. You don't have to hug the tree. You can. But it's not necessary. But if you feel inclined, then you may do so. That may add tactile sensation. But it is not necessary to sense.
the presence of the tree, but the tree can sense you also. And as you are aware of the beauty of the tree, The tree realizes through you its own beauty, so to speak. That is a mystical statement. Do with it what you will. I strongly sense that this is the case. And there have been many studies that show that the natural world responds to human consciousness. And then also take in the totality of.
a space where you are, the totality of a landscape or wherever you may be, in a forest. Sometimes it's good to focus on one thing. and then take in the totality and again, beyond sense perceptions, there's an energy that you can feel. And then if you get much more advanced in this beautiful practice, and you have to be really advanced now to do this, you apply it to other human beings. Not as easy. Nature is easier. Your dog is easier. Your cat, the bird.
With humans, often there's a lot in the way that obscures the being. There's the human, but where is the being? It's there, but... It may be obscured. The personality may be very heavy. The egoic sense of self may be very heavy. And it's like a dark cloud that obscures. that which is beyond the being behind the human. So with some humans it's a little easier where there's already being shining through.
It's perhaps easier here to connect with other humans. In many or most or all of you, the being already shy, if not 100%, if that is. or may not even be possible because you're still here as a personality, but it can shine through the personality to a greater or lesser degree. And so when it does shine through, the connection is easier and you can then sense the personality and that which is beyond. And you connect with that, but you can only connect with that.
if you have connected with it within yourself first. Only that can recognize it. The ego cannot recognize it. and only that can penetrate beyond the ego, unless it could be that the ego is so dense that you cannot sense the being of that person, it's possible. And then you just have to accept and that's how it is. But in many cases, even with obnoxious personalities, it sometimes happens that you meet such people.
They seem to be around quite a bit. And even there, you can sometimes, instead of reacting to whatever the obnoxious personality is saying, you acknowledge something deep and you treat this person instead of being pulled to their level of unconscious through reactivity, you treat this person. as a noble, let's say, I believe it's a saying from Buddhism, I'm not sure, treat everybody as a noble guest. You treat everybody as a noble guest because you recognize.
that which is beyond the personality and if only very faintly it's there. And instead of, this is an important skill not to react to the. egoic personality of other humans. And especially if the egoic personality of other humans is amplified by the pain, by their pain body. The pain body, when you are identified with it, becomes part of the ego and gives enormous amplification to the ego, the pain body.
But when you recognize the pain body in yourself, it is no longer part of the ego. So I believe everybody knows what I'm talking about, a pain body. emotion that lives in you from the past, painful emotion that still lives in you from the past and from time to time needs to rise up into your mind in order to feed either on your thoughts. or on creating drama with other people. And it loves the drama and it feeds on it. Give me more of it. And the pain body feeds on that.
If you are completely identified with the pain body, it becomes part of your ego, and then the ego becomes an awful, awful thing. In some cases, you can even go as far as... physical violence. So let's put the pain body aside for a moment because that's a difficult task to not react to the pain body, you know, to be really present.
Let's just talk a normal ego, which may still be not very pleasant or dysfunctional, maybe accusing you of something or complaining about something or trying to show off. trying to devalue something that you have, all kinds of weird things that egos do. Being angry for some reason and just taking it out on you and all these things. This person can pull you into unconsciousness or it can help you to be more present. There's always, you can go either way.
That applies to any challenge, by the way, not just challenges that come from other humans. Any challenge in your life will either pull you into reactivity and unhappiness and anger and irritation and fear. or it can make you more present, more conscious, more awake. You can either go this way or that way. Same with humans.
It's very important not to react to human unconsciousness, which is the ego, but stay present and somehow, sometimes... you may be able to just ignore the dysfunctional part of their behavior and just address, not necessarily through words, sense that there's something else beyond the personality. So you treat this person as if he or she were very conscious, a normal guest. There was a story of a Zen solitary.
and during the night a robber came in and wanted the few possessions that were there in the hut. the Zen master treated him as a noble guest. Oh, sure, yes, please. Would you like this also? And then he said, I wish I could give you the moon also. And according to this story, the thief or the robber was so astonished by this. that he experienced a complete change of personality. In other words, he experienced an awakening and later he became a disciple of this master.
This is not a general rule for behavior. It is something that happens spontaneously in this instance. There is no general rule. you don't necessarily give everything away unless it arises in the present moment spontaneously. Again, we have the famous parable of Jesus, turn the other cheek if somebody slaps you. It's not really to be taken literally. Jesus talks in parables. He doesn't talk literally.
So he says, turn the other Jesus. Hit me here too, please. This is simply, I believe he gave this story to, as an extreme example of. reactivity and non-reactivity. Because in most cases, if somebody slaps you, you will immediately respond in kind and go do the same thing, and there's no. There's not even a time gap. There's automatic reaction. So he's talking about be so conscious that you're free of unconscious reactivity.
So there's the absence of reactivity. Reactivity not only towards people, but also reactivity to situations that you find yourself in. Through reactivity, you're always at the mercy of whatever situation you find yourself in. The situation determines how you feel, determines your inner state. So if something goes well, you say, oh, that's so great, and then something doesn't.
or you find yourself in unpleasant surroundings, or an obstacle appears, literally or metaphorically, on your path. This shouldn't be happening. Reactivity also implies this should not be happening, but it is. Yeah, but it shouldn't. And then the arguing starts in your mind or out aloud. and the complaining happens, other people, situations, and so on. So you're at the mercy of what happens in your life internally through reactivity.
And it's an enormous discovery if you see that something can go wrong, so to speak, in your life, and suddenly you find yourself being free of reaction. Unless something can be done about it, then of course you take action. You arrive at the airport and there is a lineup of half a mile. at the security, and what do you do? What do you do? Do you just stand there and look around and breathe? Maybe you go home.
That's another possibility. Or are you getting very upset? Most people would get very upset. And they start thinking, thoughts. and every thought makes you more upset. And then they post what's happening on their Facebook and Instagram. You won't believe what's happening here now. And then they post angry messages to the airline or whatever. And I always recommend certain spiritual practice here in any situations like that.
that any situation that makes you unhappy, yes, if you can remove yourself, fine. We're not talking about that. It's a situation that at the moment there's little choice for action. You just... I have to endure it. How do you do that? Now, as an experiment, and some people, for some people, that's their first spiritual lesson. I sometimes mention it when I give a talk in a big city.
oftentimes people who never come much into contact with anything spiritual. So I suggest to them, in any situation they find themselves in, that makes them unhappy. It could be a traffic jam. It could be all kinds of things. It could be on the telephone you're trying to talk to your bank. You know how frustrating that can be. Because you cannot reach a human being. on airline, you lost your luggage, and you're trying to get some airline, and nobody will answer. So as an experiment.
Ask yourself, because you have plenty of time while you're on the phone, nobody's answering. How would I experience this moment if I did not add any thought to it? How would my experience of this moment be if I added no thought to it? Okay, that's a strange thing, why people think. Okay, you're in the same situation.
that we feel very irritated, very angry, and then you ask, okay, now how do I experience this without any thought? Then you have to somehow let go of thought. May not be that easy, but it's possible. You become aware of your breathing. That's a good way of taking attention away from thinking. And you look around, sense perception, another way of becoming free of obsessive, unnecessary thinking. Breathing.
Sense perceptions and feel the aliveness inside your body. Breathing, the breathing already takes your attention into the body and you begin to sense the aliveness. And then there's sense perceptions also. And that all becomes part of this moment, the now. And you're not thinking anymore, there's just this. And suddenly there's a shift.
because you suddenly realize it was not the situation that made you unhappy. It was your narrative that made you unhappy. The mental narrative made you unhappy, not the situation. That's amazing. How many people are being made unhappy by their mental narratives? And that includes, for many people, that includes their entire life.
because what you describe as your life is a story you tell yourself from your past. It's not just things that happened to you in the past, it includes your interpretation of things that happened to you in the past. which may not be correct. It could be very subjective. It almost certainly is. But let's put that aside. So there is... The narrative of me and people have this narrative that they live with, they call it my life, and it makes them very, because it's an unhappy story.
So many things happened that people did to me and that I did to people, and things I lost, things that I gained, and some narrative of a mixed bag of happy and unhappy things. That's better than totally negative narratives. But there are millions of people who are burdened with almost completely negative narratives that describe as my life. And they experience their so-called life as an enormous burden to carry. And they experience their life as a problem that needs to be solved somehow.
Their entire identity is a problem that seeks a solution, but they never find a solution. Sometimes the solution is, I have to move somewhere. Well, sometimes a move is good, but... Probably it's not the solution to your unhappiness. Or I find a different partner. It's good sometimes to find a partner, but probably not a solution to your unhappiness.
The unhappiness, so much of it arises through a narrative in your mind, not the situation. And your life isn't really your life because what do you call your life? The only place where you can experience your life is in the present moment. This is your life. It's never not your life. The present moment is always your life. Only the present moment. Only this.
never anything that happened in the past. That is part of your life situation, one could say. So I distinguish between life situation and life. Their life is now, only now, always now. And this is a place of freedom. So how do you experience the now? To be free of reactivity. Experiment with not attaching unnecessary narratives to what's going on in your life. And that includes complaining, for example.
I mention complaining because it's an important part of many people's ego structure. Complaining is for many egos. Complaining is the main thing that keeps them going as egos. And they're always at it. There's always something to complain about. It could be a situation. Or it could be other people, that's of course a very common thing, what they did or didn't do but should have done, et cetera.
And you know what he said then, and I said, and then he... how dare you, I said, can't you do, but, and then he said, and then he accused me of, and I said to him, how dare you accusing me, look at yourself, and then he said to me, And it just goes on. Gossip is part of that also. You'll never guess what she did. Oh, my God, no. Don't believe it. She did that.
And whenever all these things are being told, gossip and complaining about people, the implication, which is unconscious, is the ego is seeking. a sense of superiority. Because whenever you complain about somebody, by implication, you are superior to this person that you're complaining about. And even when you're gossiping about somebody,
But the other person must be devalued through that in some way because you are superior. You can see something that they can't see. They are so stupid. And so gossip happens in the same way. The ego is always in search of superiority and it fears inferiority. It always compares itself. When it encounters inferiority, it immediately tries to compensate through trying to diminish something that you have. So these are very fundamental things for the ego works.
If somebody has a possession that you don't have, because you can't afford it, and you're still in ego consciousness, then you would try to... diminish the value of that person's possession or explain why this person is inferior to you. So on the one hand, let's say you have one man is in his Ferrari. and feel superior because most people don't have a Ferrari. So the Ferrari becomes a mental object that he identifies with, mine, and he looks at others.
And there's a guy on a bicycle pulling up next to him, and the guy on the Ferraris looks at him, thought, a loser. And the guy on the bicycle... who is very spiritual, thinks, look at this superficial, materialistic, obnoxious jerk. polluting the environment into this horrible, horrible car. I'm so happy I'm beyond that. Each one is superior to the other in their own mind, one way or another. So the ego seeks identification with something. Somewhere it must have a superiority.
In some cases, it might be physical strength or beauty, good looks. That is a big thing for many people. And you identify with that naturally when you're young. If you look better than most others, it is almost inevitable that that comes from a very important part of your egoic sense of self, your looks. I don't know if it's politically incorrect to say that for women that even in these days of equality could still be more the case than for men, but can also be the case for men. The looks.
That is fine. You have that. And if you have great looks, then... that will last for quite a few years, can keep your ego happy. And because you feel superior to others, don't look not as strong and muscular and great. That can keep the ego going for a while, but not forever, because time does something to your looks. Then suffering begins. It could be enormous suffering if you haven't gone beyond it by then. You've had a few decades.
Life gave you a few decades, but you didn't go beyond. But then the suffering starts. It could also be possessions. It could be status of some kind, family background. high social class in some places, not so much in North America anymore, but in some places in Europe still high social class. England is diminishing a bit, but still exists. It could be knowledge. I know more than you. I'm knowledgeable. You are not. Or you become part of a group that feels superior to others. You join a group.
and then you have a collective ego, and it could be a religious group, it could be a sect or something, and you join that, and then your ego adopts a collective ego, that group that can be very... fulfilling for the ego, and always implication is this group is superior to others. If it's religious, often it means we are the only ones in possession of the truth.
The others are not. And the others will probably go to hell anyway. But we are the ones who are going to be saved. And this is quite common, and many sects have that, and people don't know. Collective ego can be very, very strong and powerful and is even more insane than the personal ego. The collective ego can commit the most horrific atrocities.
in the name of the collectivity that the individual ego would not be able to perpetrate. That is how cultural revolution in China, national socialism in Germany, many other... Cambodia, Pol Pot, the collective ego, a horrible entity. So the ego will identify with this, that every youngster looking for... ego food, how do I find my identity? They're looking for something. I had to do, I remember I had to look for something as a youngster. What was there? What could I, my body wasn't very strong.
And so I wasn't an achiever in sports at all. My family was fairly poor, so we didn't have a car. So I couldn't say, my dad has such and such a car. My dad didn't have any car. So that was a bummer. So what to do then? For a long time I was looking and... Even in my teenage years, I was still looking for a better ego. So I didn't have family background or possessions or status or physical strength or particularly good looks.
I don't think so. But then gradually I found, as I was moving towards my 20s, I found, oh, I can become an intellectual. and become very knowledgeable and then I started reading books and so on and so then I got to university relatively late and I developed an ego there as a very highly... accomplished intellectual, and I could show people, show off my knowledge. I could look down on others who didn't know that much as I did. But I was unhappy.
So it didn't help the unhappiness. I still felt inadequate, but it was a temporary measure. A very common thing for people to, when we talk about ego, most people imagine. If you have a big ego, you think of yourself as the greatest. I am the one, the possession or power. or great looks, you feel you are the greatest. But ego can be of many, many kinds. A very powerful, very strong ego identity that is as strong as a victorious one is the...
a victim identity of the ego. If you consider yourself, if you derive your sense of identity from having been a victim of someone or some situation or imagine. having been a victim or actually having been a victim. Now, the world is full of victims, obviously, because humans are unconscious and they do bad things to other humans. Many children.
are the victims of their parents because the parents are completely unconscious. And so many people are actually victims, but the question is the memory of those events. Does that become incorporated into their ego structure and they see themselves as victims of a particular person or a group of people? It could be also collective. Yes, people have done bad things to other groups of people, collective, whatever it may be. Yes, undoubtedly, that is the case. The danger is...
If the ego adopts that and incorporates it into its sense of self, then the main part of your identity then becomes your victimhood. And you talk about it and you think about it, and it gives you superiority. How does it give you superiority? If you're a victim, by implication, you are morally superior to those others who might have done bad things. It could be millions of people. Who knows? So superiority is important. I do not deny the fact that many humans have.
suffered at the hands of other humans and groups of humans have suffered at the hands of other groups of humans throughout history. That is true. The danger is if that becomes incorporated into your sense of self. So, being not at the mercy of other egos, not at the mercy of circumstances, that's what we were talking about before we got into ego. Develop the ability of being free of reactivity in events, situations, or with certain people. That is very important.
part of spiritual practice and awakening, and you practice it throughout daily life, you can practice with that. Gradually, all the things that you experience in your daily life. you can have an internal shift. Whatever situation you have to deal with at any given moment, if you can achieve this internal shift, realize that whatever situation you're dealing with.
in any given moment, there are two aspects to it. The situation itself, where you need to do something or take action or whatever it may be, and your inner state of consciousness. The primary thing in any situation is the state of consciousness with which you meet the situation, that you face the situation. That if you remember that this is primary. And whatever the situation contains and whatever you do is secondary. Primary is the state of consciousness with which you meet the situation.
And then any situation that you encounter in your daily life then becomes your spiritual practice. When you do that, there's a very rapid awakening. If you can transform every situation, what is the main thing about this situation? It is my spiritual practice. That's the main thing about it. The secondary thing is I need to talk to my lawyer. They saw that. Talking to you, and even if you sit facing your lawyer and talking about something, continue to realize.
This is my spiritual practice. And then you deal with it, but you stay present as you deal with it. Then everything changes. You may not succeed every time because the world is a way of pulling you into it. It wants to hypnotize you into saying, this is what matters, nothing else matters, just this, no. What matters is your state of consciousness, that's primary. Even from the slightest irritation to the most serious form of suffering in your life, including impending death.
Whatever it may be, use that. What is your state of consciousness in which you meet it? This is my spiritual practice. And you can go so far as to be grateful for any situation that arises. Thank you for that spiritual practice. And then difficult people become your teachers. Easy people, not so much. You can enjoy them, but difficult people are real spiritual teachers.
And even if you remove yourself after being with them for five minutes, at least for five minutes they were your spiritual teacher. So your entire life changes if you regard every challenge that arises, every situation, as part of your spiritual practice and as part of staying conscious. and then reactivity gradually dissolves, and your ability to respond to a situation increases enormously. Response is conscious response.
Some situations require you to take action or to say something or to do something. Not a reaction, but action that arises out of presence. And that is... wise action. Buddhists have a term, they say, skillful action. And if you do something unconscious, Buddhists sometimes call it unskillful action. It's a nice term. I wish you a peaceful rest, night, sleep. And if you are not asleep, practice inner body awareness.
And think as little as possible. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Eckhart Tolle, Essential Teachings, the podcast. You can follow these essential teachings on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you haven't yet, go to Spotify and follow this podcast. Join us next week for more enlightened teachings from Eckhart Tolle. Thank you for listening.