Love the isness of the present moment, no matter what.In this podcast, Eckhart says, as we grow spiritually, we approach the challenges in our lives differently.
We may encounter obstacles or difficult people, but he says, if we face the issue in front of us consciously, we've learned to accept the present moment with ease.
He explains the ego, believes fighting against situations is real power, but the opposite is actually true.The ancient Romans had a phrase, amor fati.Eckhart says it means to love what is.
He explains true power comes when we love the isness of the present moment, no matter what.
Whatever you do, obstacles will arise on your path.And when it's ego-motivated, when you encounter an obstacle, you react to it and you become either angry or stressed or fearful, antagonistic.You get, ah, ah, ah.
Sometimes often the obstacle appears in the form of people not wanting you to do what you're doing. or whatever it may be, and obstacles will appear.
In the new way of doing things, you look at an obstacle, don't complain about it, you face it, and you become still.And then you either circumvent it,
Or you turn it around and it becomes something helpful in the same way that in martial arts, in certain martial arts, you use the force of your opponent. and transform it into something that no longer attacks you, but is turned around.
So the force of your opponent throws him, and not you.So the way in which you approach difficulties and obstacles changes.You don't get discouraged.You don't complain about obstacles, about these dreadful people that are
preventing you from achieving whatever it is you want to achieve.So there's a different way in which you approach these hindrances, obstacles, and so on.This is part of acceptance of the present moment.
This is an essential part of living aligned with, because often in the present moment, something appears that does not look optimum, not the best thing. And there you come to an all is the acceptance of the is-ness.
You will notice that then you stop complaining about people.Because if you're egoically possessed, then you will continuously be complaining about other people or they're not doing what they should be doing. Or they're doing the wrong thing.
And then you tell the stories of, he was supposed to do that, but did he do it?No.And then he did it totally wrong.Stories after story after story to strengthen your ego.That goes away.The complaining drops away.
And there's just the is-ness of the present moment. There's another talking about ancient Romans.There was quite a bit of wisdom in antiquity.The Romans and the Greeks, the Romans adopted many things from the Greeks.
There's a famous saying again in Latin, which is, well, it's just two words, amor fati. which means the love of, fati could be translated as fate, but really it is the love of what is.Amor, fati, f-a-t-i, the love
of what is, that is again inspired by stoic teachings, to love the is-ness of the present moment, no matter in which form it manifests.And with that comes enormous power. The ego thinks that by fighting against something, that is power.
But that is pseudo-power.The true power comes when you're aligned with whatever is arising in the present moment.Because that is an important aspect of what we call the power of now. or the Tao Te Ching, which is the same thing.
To be aligned with the Tao.Tao is the intelligence that pervades the universe and also dwells within you.Wow.So intensity arises, but not stress.
And I believe there are some people who have great enterprises who are somehow able to conduct their business in that way.I haven't met them personally, I think.
And also you don't know, just by meeting people, you still don't know how they actually conduct their enterprises.Are they aligned?Are they, I don't want to mention any names.Some names act in that way, but I'm not sure if they do.
You don't really know until you observe a person in action.Then you can learn a lot about their state of consciousness. You can also learn a lot about their state of consciousness when you observe a past being confronted with a challenge.
What then the person, but the moment ago was so spiritual.And then the challenge comes.
Sometimes people can be effective spiritual teachers, relatively effective, can give good talks, and yet in their private life, it's not happening, still unconscious.
So a good test, if you want to learn about your state of consciousness and not deceive yourself, it's not to do with how good a meditator you are. The real test is how do you face challenges?
And another test is how do you act when you are given power in an organization or whatever it may be?How do you act when you are given power over other people through rising in an organization or whatever it may be?
Again, the ego comes most strongly through facing challenges or through giving power.There can be a very seemingly egoless person and suddenly this person is given power.
It could be within a spiritual organization to a disciple of a great master, seemingly no ego whatsoever. So he surrendered.And then the master gives him or her a powerful position.
And suddenly this meek person, the ego blows up and total transformation.This happened to, I don't know if you are familiar with Osho Ashram.It goes back a few decades.There was a woman in his ashram and he gave her power over the organization.
And she was wonderfully spiritual before she got power. And she went crazy when she was given power.The overblown ego doing the most absurd things and eventually the whole organization dissolved through madness.
So be very careful then even in yourself.It's always easier to recognize the ego in others.A bit more difficult to recognize the ego in yourself.But self-observation is vital. So self-observation is, how do you face challenges?
This world can give you continuous feedback about your state of consciousness, how you face challenges.Or if you have power, how you use power over other humans.What does that do to your ego? A similar example one can give concerning power.
In certain parts of the world it is almost customary for periodically the government to be overthrown in a coup d'etat because people become so unhappy with the corruption of their government that finally they overthrow the government and some idealistic, perhaps idealistic, new person comes in and takes over with their followers.
And often the person who had the best intentions of creating a better place, the moment they achieve power, suddenly they turn again into the same person that they've just overthrown.The moment they achieve power, all these things come in.
So that's vital for self-observation.How do you conduct yourself in the face of challenges? How do you conduct yourself when you have power in any capacity?
So coming back to the example of writing the book, then the book got written, and it was satisfying that the book got written.I was satisfied that it was.
A few thousand copies were printed and then I spent several months putting always a few books in my plastic carrier and going from bookstore to bookstore and saying, would you like to take two or three copies of this book that I wrote, The Power of Now?
If you don't sell them, I'll take them back. And some said, yes, great.And others said, no, not interested.Okay, it's fine.I wasn't attached to the outcome.And then something happened and it grew and grew and grew.
First slowly, and then as everybody knows, then Oprah came in.
But if I honestly compare my state of consciousness and my state of happiness or satisfaction, when the so-called success was achieved, the worldly success, and before when I was just writing the book, there's no difference.I wasn't any happier.
It was satisfying to have the success, but basically I was not any happier having been successful in this endeavor than when I was engaged in creating it.It was just as beautiful, one could almost say more beautiful, the act of creation
even more joyful than tasting the fruit, the final outcome.In fact, probably even more joyful.
If it had not achieved much, maybe only had had 10 readers or something, that's fine, 10 people, maybe one of the 10 experienced a change in consciousness through it, that's good.What would I have done?Would I really have sold tomatoes?I don't know.
And the outcome always brings up a new situation.The outcome, when everything grew fairly quickly, it doesn't mean suddenly life doesn't challenge you anymore.The other big challenges suddenly come in.So it was... And limitations, too.
Every situation has its opposite.You gain something here, you lose something there. So the first few retreats I had were great.I could hug everybody after the retreat.We had hugging sessions.
If I do that with you, I'll be here for several days probably. So the intimate interaction with people as the groups grew and grew was no longer possible.That is a limitation.I always enjoyed that so deeply.
And yet, far more people were being reached.So you'd gain something here, you lose something there.So with any success you ever achieve, you will find the polarities.
So there is, in this world, no absolutely satisfying situation in this, on this horizontal dimension. There cannot be an absolutely satisfying situation.There's always gain and loss, gain and loss.
The true satisfaction is derived only from the vertical dimension, only there.And if that is your point of departure,
Then whatever is created out of that is enjoyable, particularly because you no longer demand situations or achievements to provide you with absolute satisfaction. You enjoy, yes, but you don't place a demand they cannot meet.
So whatever you achieve is maybe enjoyable, but it will always have another side to it.And sometimes the very thing that people achieve gives them satisfaction for a while, And then it turns into its opposite.
The very thing that makes you happy, that makes you unhappy.So knowing that, make the primary focus of your life, the now, be rooted in the vertical.There are two purposes in your life.
Your personal purpose, whatever you want to achieve as a person here, and your deeper purpose, which is the alignment with consciousness.The deeper purpose is the fundamental one.
The deeper purpose is to be conscious in anything, whatever you do, to be aligned with only universal consciousness, whatever term you want to use for it, the deep eye, as I call it often, to act from the deep eye.
Your primary purpose is to be aligned with that, to embody that.The rest is secondary purpose.So it's all bearing in mind primary purpose and secondary purpose.Primary purpose is your state of consciousness in this moment.
no matter what you're doing or even if you're not doing anything.Primary purpose continues to be there until you leave this body.So if you are 95 years old, there's still the primary purpose of your life.
It is less likely that age of 95, you will still have other purposes on the horizontal dimension, probably not. But who knows, maybe at 95 you can take up something new, learn something new, but it becomes less and less important as you get older.
Primary purpose, secondary purpose is to do with you as this form identity here on this horizontal plane, which is not to be disregarded.It has its place.It also has a certain importance, you as a person.It has a certain importance.
It is not primary though, it's secondary.The two need to come together.So whatever your purpose is on the horizontal plane, the primary purpose must flow into it so that are not separate.
It's not enough to be a good meditator and then the rest of your life as unconscious as everybody else. They have to come together.Now you know what your primary purpose is.
If you don't know what your secondary purpose is yet, because I know there are some people here who don't know the question they often ask. What am I supposed to do in life?I want to find my purpose.Not everybody has found it already.
And perhaps not even everybody has some big purpose that they need to pursue.Not necessary.And to embody the primary purpose in whatever activity you engaged in, even if it is seemingly insignificant, may well be enough.
Although it is totally possible that a seemingly insignificant activity could grow into something bigger.But it doesn't really matter.For some people, whatever they are doing is fine.It's not for everybody to create something big and new.
Maybe you do, maybe you don't.The volume, so to speak, of your, whatever your personal purpose is, doesn't matter that much.
If you don't know, if you feel there is something for me to do, but I don't know what it is, then I suggest you meditate on it.You become still. And don't ask yourself, what is it that I really want to do?
But ask yourself, what is it that the universe wants me to do that could point you in the right direction?And then you might get a vision of what may be helpful to the totality of life and other people.
Your secondary purpose almost inevitably has something to do with other people.It will connect you with people.And so that's the, your primary purpose flows into that and changes the way in which you deal with other people.
All your interactions change.What is my purpose? What is it that the universe wants me to achieve, to create?Is there anything?And nothing may come immediately.If you feel strongly there is something, you could use an affirmation.
I used an affirmation.I knew after awakening, I was beginning to teach, not teach, counsel people, spiritual counseling individuals for several years.And I knew I had, there was an important, I had an important truth that was coming through.
It grew and grew through the counseling sessions.It developed more and more.But I was only reaching a few people. And then I was beginning to do workshops, occasional weekend workshops.Sometimes 10 people came.
Once I had a workshop when one person turned up.I did it anyway, it was good.But I felt this is moving very slowly.It was enjoyable to do the sessions, but I could see I wasn't reaching many people.
So I found myself in a church in a village in Somerset, where I was living at the time, an ancient village church, and I was alone in the 1,000-year-old church.I loved those.Every village had one, beautiful.
So I sat in the church and I was contemplating the situation.And then I said, suddenly it came to me, I want acceleration.I visualized acceleration for my work.My work is becoming accelerated.Please give me acceleration.
Then I could feel that it had already been granted in that moment. Yes, I want acceleration for my work.And I'm getting acceleration for my work.That has a strange feeling it was already happening.And then I left and went back home.
Nothing much changed.Weeks passed and three or four months passed.And then suddenly one morning, I woke up and I knew I had to leave England and move to the west coast of North America.I didn't know what the purpose was.
And I didn't know that was part of that purpose, the acceleration. Later, I realized I needed the energy field of the West Coast to even be able to write that book.The energy was necessary for me, but I didn't know that consciously.
Just, I knew I had to do it.Later, much later, I realized that was part of the acceleration that was beginning to happen at that point. So sometimes an affirmation can also point you in the right direction.
For example, you could affirm, all the things that I need for my work and fulfillment are coming to me.All the things I need for my work and fulfillment are coming to me.
the things that I'm meant to do in this world, the service that I'm providing in this world is coming to me now.Whatever the realization, what I need to do is coming.Or you affirm that it is already happening.
That's the most powerful type of affirmation.And then you may find after a time gap, things begin to move. You have to find your own affirmation, what works best.Use it in the present tense.
It's just a thought form that you put out into universal intelligence.These things work especially They're much more likely to work if they're not egoically dominated.
So it's not, you're not asking for something to satisfy your ego or to remove your sense of lack or not being enough.It needs to come out of a sense of fullness, not a sense of lack.
Many people want to attract something into their lives to fill a sense of lack that they feel.That is not an efficient way of manifesting circumstances.They need to come out of the sense of fullness of life.That's an expression that Jesus used.
Jesus said, I want you to have the fullness of life. What is the fullness of life?It's the realization of your essence identity in the now.That is the fullness of life.It's amazing that he said that.
In some translations it says, I want you to have abundant life.In other translations it says, I want you to have the fullness of life.Fullness is better than abundant.
Because abundant could mean many, many things, but it's not to do with many, many things.The fullness is the one thing.The one thing that is of absolute importance and is not a thing.
So the fullness of life is to already, the experience of that is the satisfaction. that is inherent in the essence of your being.This is the eternal, the invincible summer in you.To have that, and that is the departure point for manifesting.
Then whatever vision you bring into the fullness of life, is then empowered by the fullness of life.So the vision and this sense of fullness, of deep satisfaction that is in the present moment, they come together.
And then the vision is empowered by this.So you feel that you already have, you feel as if you already had it.It's not going to make you any happier, really, if you do attain it.
Jesus said it all in just one sentence, the entire secret of manifestation.You don't need any more books.Just that one sentence, Jesus said, all the things that you pray for, believe that you already have them and they will be given to you.
Believe that they're already yours and then they come.So he never said believe that you will get them.But what is this belief?This belief is not a thought.It is also a thought. But fundamentally, it is the faith behind the belief.
There's these two words.Faith is a thought thing, and that has its place too.But the faith is the power behind the thought, and that comes from the realization of your essence identity.
Your essence identity is the power that then empowers the thought, which is the thought is the belief.Faith is something deeper.Faith is Immediate power.Faith is the, what in the Tao Te Ching is mistranslated as virtue, is faith.
Faith is the internal power, this inherent in your being, the essence of your being.So, Belief is the thought structure.Faith is that which empowers that particular thought.And then you experience that as being as a reality already here and now.
I kind of, I had that vision even before I wrote The Power of Now.The vision came to me what it was that wanted to be created and I even wrote it down.
It was not so much an attempt to manifest as almost a realization that that was going to be manifested.There was already that certainty it was going to be manifested.So that is the, you play around with that Nothing is deadly serious.
You play around with forms, creating new forms and so on here in this dimension.It's not this seriousness, I must have that, I must, and I'll be unhappy if I don't get it.I must have it.No, you play the lila, the divine play.
You play around with forms, you enjoy the play of forms.There can be an intensity behind it, but not stress and enjoyment.Sometimes the intensity comes when you touch upon something that's now being created.
You can feel how power flows into your action and even into your mind.And that's beautiful, but it's not serious. Don't take anything too seriously in this dimension.
It's a play, and it dissolves after a while, whatever you create, except the growth in consciousness.Behind it is consciousness.Consciousness evolves and grows, and that remains.
The forms dissolve otherwise, that everything has a certain lifespan, everything is fleeting. Eventually, of course, things leave you or you leave them.Then it's fine.It's quite an adventure.
But once you know the secret, which this is what it is, it becomes enjoyable.The journey becomes enjoyable. And gradually the world gets better too.
After it goes through a period of a little bit of chaos, where we're going now, that's fine too, because that will add to the driving force behind the awakening.
As things begin to dissolve collectively, the awakening intensifies the awakening of consciousness. And that's the beauty of it.There's nothing to fear at all.Well, the end of our retreat has come, but the essence of the retreat is within you.
So you carry it with you. And then the scenery around you changes as you move away.And you're always, consciousness is the space for whatever happens, the space of consciousness.It's been wonderful to share the presence with you.
It's not my presence, it's not your presence, it is divine presence manifesting through each of us.Now comes the rest of your life.And I predict that for the rest of your life, the person that you are also, the person, the personality,
recedes a bit more and more and becomes a bit more, more and more transparent.
For the personality I call the surface eye, the surface eye begins to gradually recede more and become almost transparent for the light of the deep eye to shine through the surface eye.So that is the process of transformation.
The personality is still there.It'll be there until you die.There's a personality there, the surface eye.But more and more, the deep eye shines through.And when you reach the end of your life, the so-called your life,
Yes, there's no your life, because you are life, you don't have it.
You reach the end, and then there's the deep eye manifested powerfully, and the personalities begins to... And as death approaches, just the light of consciousness of the deep eye shines through you, shines through the personality and through the physical form.
And that's beautiful.And that is, you have fulfilled the purpose of human existence, the flowering of human consciousness.It doesn't matter when death comes, whether it comes next year or in 50 years time.When it comes, it'll be the present moment.
So I thank you, and I'd like to say goodbye to you.And also, I love you all.
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.
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