A New Earth: Create a Better Life

by Eckhart Tolle

Until the new consciousness, which is awareness-based, grows and becomes more firmly established in the human psyche, temporary regression to the egoic state of consciousness (or rather unconsciousness) can easily occur.

Thoughts can spread like a virus, and if thoughts proliferate in the collective psyche, they distort our perceptions and cause us to act as if they were true, and so subsequently they manifest as our reality.

Acute crises and dysfunction always precede or coincide with

any evolutionary advancement or gain in consciousness.

The primary factor in all of this is your state of consciousness in the only time there is: the Now! Make sure the present moment is your friend, not your enemy.

Honor it by giving it your fullest attention. Appreciate it by being thankful for it. Become internally aligned with it by allowing it to be as it is. That is the arising of the new earth.

The Flowering of Human Consciousness

The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition.

You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.

THE ARISING NEW CONSCIOUSNESS Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight—that our “normal” state of mind is marred by a fundamental defect. However, out of this insight into the nature of the human condition—we may call it the bad news—arises a second insight: the good news of the possibility of a radical transformation of human consciousness. In Hindu teachings (and sometimes in Buddhism also), this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus, it is salvation, and in Buddhism, it is the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation.

The word “I” embodies the greatest error and the deepest truth, depending on how it is used. In

“an optical illusion of consciousness.” That illusory self then becomes the basis for all further interpretations, or rather misinterpretations of reality, all thought processes, interactions, and relationships. Your reality becomes a reflection of the original illusion.

The good news is: If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.

What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of “I” in your mind and whatever the “I” has identified with.

When a young child learns that a sequence of sounds produced by the parents’ vocal cords is his or her name, the child begins to equate a word, which in the mind becomes a thought, with who he or she is. At that stage, some children refer to themselves in the third person. “Johnny is hungry.” Soon after, they learn the magic word “I” and equate it with their name, which they have already equated with who they are. Then other thoughts come and merge with the original I-thought. The next step are thoughts of me and mine to designate things that are somehow part of “I.” This is identification with objects, which means investing things, but ultimately thoughts that represent things, with a sense of self, thereby deriving an identity from them.

Most of the time it is not you who speaks when you say or think “I” but some aspect of that mental construct, the egoic self. Once you awaken, you still use the word “I,” but it will come from a much deeper place within yourself.

The egoic mind is completely conditioned by the past. Its conditioning is twofold: It consists of content and structure.

Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more.

A large part of many people’s lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things.

When you can no longer feel the life that you are, you are likely to try to fill up your life with things.

As a spiritual practice, I suggest that you investigate your relationship with the world of things through self-observation, and in particular, thing...

Will you become less when you let go of it? Has who you are become diminished by the loss?”

“You can only feel it when you get out of your head. Being must be felt. It can’t be thought. The ego doesn’t know about it because thought is what it consists of. The ring was really in your head as a thought that you confused with the sense of I Am. You thought the I Am or a part of it was in the ring.

“Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it’s the ego. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has ‘I’, ‘me,’ or ‘mine’ in it. Whenever you completely accept a

loss, you go beyond ego, and who you are, the I Am which is conscious...

sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious.

When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don’t take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn’t personal. It isn’t who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,”

If you take away one kind of identification, the ego will quickly find another. It

ultimately doesn’t mind what it identifies

with as long as it has an...

As we shall see later, making yourself right and others wrong is one of the principal egoic mind patterns, one of the main forms of unconsciousness.

In other words, the content of the ego may change; the mind structure that keeps it alive does not.

The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison.

The ego’s sense of self-worth is in most cases bound up with the worth you have in the eyes of others.

How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

If you are aware that you are identified with a thing, the identification is no longer total. “I am

the awareness that is aware that there is attachment.” That’s the beginning of the transformation of consciousness.

The ego identifies with having, but its satisfaction in having is a relatively shallow and short-lived one. Concealed within it remains a deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction, of incompleteness, of “not enough.” “I don’t have enough yet,” by which the ego really means, “I am not enough yet.”

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.

This is the psychological need for more, that is to say, more things to identify with. It is an addictive need, not an authentic one.

Most egos have conflicting wants. They want different things at different times or may not even know what they want except that they don’t want what is: the present moment.

Unease, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, dissatisfaction, are the result of unfulfilled wanting. Wanting is structural, so no amount of content can provide lasting fulfillment as long as that mental structure remains in place.

The thought forms of “me” and “mine,” of “more than,” of “I want,” “I need,” “I must have,” and of “not enough” pertain not to content but to the structure of the ego.

The content is interchangeable.

No content will satisfy you, as long as the egoic structure remains in place. No matter what you have or get, you won’t be happy. You will always be looking for something else that promises greater fulfillment, that promises to make your incomplete sense of self complete and fill that sense of lack you feel within.

Many people feel caught up in the routines of daily living that seem to deprive their life of significance.

the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are—that is to say, your state of consciousness.