The Challenge of Presence in the Face of the Ego | Eckhart Tolle

the conditioned thought processes never stop they go through continuously this voice talking to you or you're talking to yourself or you're having a monologue or you're having a dialogue some people argue with themselves is all the voice in the head never stops for most people and that is spiritually speaking that is a state of unconsciousness completely identified with the conditioned mental emotional patterns which make up the so-called person personality the ego so if you are completely identified with it you every thought has you in its grasp every emotion that arises has you completely his grasp and you and you're thinking you think you're thinking but you're not thinking thinking happens to you there's no there's no you don't have a choice if you're unconscious there's no choice this all your thought processes happened to you you're at the mercy of your thought the condition thoughts in your head and all the reactions that come that every situation you encounter there comes a conditioned reaction to the situation it's the person or the personality that reacts and you don't even have a choice why don't you have a choice because you're asleep spiritually speaking this thing is taken you over it's a it's a a dreamlike state also and you can see often people are completely up there and they never really they're not really here that you can see sometimes the complete absence in a person's eyes they're not really here they are asleep but they're thinking very hard so they and even at night when there's nobody around to talk to you're still this voice is going on and it's telling you I have these problems oh what's going to happen to next awful think my God I can't take any more of this what's my life come to I imagin something different when I was 20 years old I imagined something very very different why why did it all go so wrong well that's a well many people actually have that feeling that something that has gone dras drastically wrong in my life and with others it's a mixed bag some things went okay and others didn't it depends what their mind and your mind tends to focus more on the negative than the positive much more memorable the negative than the positive if you go on vacation and everything goes perfectly fine okay you remember some nice moments and sunsets but if something went drastically wrong you remember that for the rest of your life and you talk about it continuously you tell the story of what went if everything went fine you don't talk about you be had a wonderful holiday oh yeah okay so that's the end of it but you know what happened we went into our room and there was these cockroaches crying on the floor and then the water was coming through the ceiling and then and then they stole all my bags oh my God so interesting and you and then you know what he said to me he said how dare you and I said how dare I what about you are the you are the one with the biggest ego I said and and then he started hitting me and and whatever and the stories go on and on and so a lot of things you the negative things are more much more memorable that the ego focuses on that it create it loves its enemy is and every negative situation is the ego's enemy and then it can claim it can uh enhance its fictitious identity through the more enemies you have the stronger your fictitious sense of self becomes entire nations do that too they need their enemies except Sweden so peaceful all the non peaceloving people have left Sweden a long time ago they were called the Vikings and and they occupied other lands so then we have um in Indian spiritual philosophy of psychology uh there's a word that's been around for a long time it's called Tua Tua means the force first second third fourth Tua is the force it's the force is it refers to State of Consciousness they divided the human consciousness into these four parts there is dreamless sleep there is the dream state in sleep there is the state of wakefulness that is ordinary human consciousness and Dua is the awakened State of Consciousness that's the fourth state of consciousness they've been talking about that for hundreds of years thousands of years the possibility of the this this dimension of consciousness rising in humans the fourth state this is what this is all about and it is not some distant possibility that you may achieve in some future lifetime as many people still believe that uh many Buddhists I've met Buddhists who say I think I'll need another 15 life times and then in fact my teacher told me they say he told me 15 more lifetimes and then I I'll be enlightened oh wow okay that's right well you have plenty of time so you can stay unconscious now it's okay but the strange thing is the awakened State of Consciousness is already there within you it's just just covered up hidden