A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

by Eckhart Tolle

When you recognize the unconsciousness in you, that which makes the recognition possible is the arising consciousness, is awakening.

Buddha, the human mind in its normal state generates dukkha, which can be translated as suffering, unsatisfactoriness,

He sees it as a characteristic of the human condition.

Fear, greed, and the desire for power are the psychological motivating forces not only behind warfare and violence between nations, tribes, religions, and ideologies, but also the cause of incessant conflict in personal relationships.

Gautama Siddhartha,

What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.

Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms.

“A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm.

When you look at it or hold it and let it be without imposing a word or mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.

When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought.

They are ultimately no more than thoughts held together precariously by the fact that

they are all invested with a sense of self.

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

And so in many cases you are not buying a product but an “identity enhancer.”

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.

Do certain things induce a subtle feeling of importance or superiority? Does the lack of them make you feel inferior to others who have more than you?

“Do you realize that you will have to let go of the ring at some point, perhaps quite soon? How much more time do you need before you will be ready to let go of it? Will you become less when you let go of it? Has who you are become diminished by the loss?”

“Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel.

but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it’s the ego.

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.

ego isn’t personal. It isn’t who you are.

making yourself right and others wrong is one of the principal egoic mind patterns, one of the main forms of unconsciousness.

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

just be aware of your attachment to things.

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

having—the concept of ownership—is a fiction created by the ego to give itself solidity and permanency and make itself stand out, make itself special.

there is another more powerful drive underneath it that pertains to the structure of the ego: the need for more, which we could also call “wanting.”

wanting keeps the ego alive much more...

Unease, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, dissatisfaction, are the result of unfulfilled wanting.

Intense wanting that has no specific object can often be found in the still-developing ego of teenagers, some of whom are in a permanent state of negativity and dissatisfaction.

In the West, it is the physical appearance of the body that contributes greatly to the sense of who you think you are: its strength or weakness, its perceived beauty or ugliness relative to others.

is no more than a physical form that shares the destiny of all forms—impermanence and ultimately decay.

In fact, as the body begins to weaken, the formless dimension, the light of consciousness, can shine more easily through the fading form.

feel their “inner hands” at the same time

Then incorporate other parts of the body—legs, arms, abdomen, chest, and so on—into that feeling until you are aware of the inner body as a global sense of aliveness.

Make it a habit to feel the inner body as often as you can.

Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego. It also strengthens the immune system and the body’s ability to heal itself.

Ego is a conglomeration of recurring thought forms and conditioned mental-emotional patterns that are invested with a sense of I,

When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking.

When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream. Another dimension of consciousness has come in.

precarious

ephemeral,

Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself.

Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the ego.

Nonreaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego.

from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction.

To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.

Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right.

Sometimes it becomes obvious that the ego doesn’t really want change so that it can go on complaining.

In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice.