The Eckhart Tolle School of Awakening

“The Teacher Called Suffering”

ECKHART TOLLE: With regards to suffering, it's important to distinguish between suffering
that is clearly caused by having to face very difficult life situations, such as the death or
impending death of somebody close to you or somebody going through a painful illness,
somebody close to you, or experiencing loss of a marriage.
Sometimes, after many years, suddenly there's the separation and the loss of the person
you have lived with for many years. The suffering that is experienced by children already, in
home environments that are dysfunctional, the suffering that children experience when the
parents get divorced, suffering that comes while losing your livelihood, losing your home,
becoming destitute-- many kinds of situations can arise that are very difficult. And so they lead
to suffering.
And then there is another type of suffering that is entirely created by the human mind. A
typical example, of course, would be if you are plagued by worry, if you can't sleep at night
because you worry so much and you're experiencing an enormous amount of fear that is linked to
the worry. Worry is a certain type of thinking that produces a certain type of emotion.
Worry is a typical example of suffering that is entirely mind-created, because in the
moment of worrying you're not actually facing the critical situation. But the mind is saying that
there is a critical situation. It might happen. It could happen.
Another example of totally mind-created suffering is something in the past that you think
about. And you revive it constantly, through dwelling on it mentally. And you're constantly re-
experiencing an event that happened in the past-- sometimes the distant past. And through

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thinking about it, talking about it, you're experiencing the emotions associated with it. And some
people live with something like that for years.
So you have the suffering that can arise from dwelling on the past. You can have the
suffering that arises from projecting to possible bad outcomes in the future, which is the type of
suffering created by worry. These are just two examples.
Then you have the suffering created by the complete misinterpretation of another person's
intentions, the complete distortion of how you perceive things, because you might have certain
types of mental conditioning that become a veil through which you interpret reality. And it could
be that-- and this is the case with many people, they have a certain type of conditioning through
which they interpret things around them. And in many cases, the conditioning is dysfunctional.
So, for example, they see themselves threatened by other people. They might have an
underlying belief that people are out to get them, that people are out to deceive them. And they
are suspicious of other people. And this is a form of suffering because it brings conflict and
problem into every encounter with other human beings, because you misinterpret the other
human being because you only judge the human being through your conditioned mind.
And so for many people, the mental conditioning that they carry around with them-- it
becomes a veil through which they perceive reality, what's going on around them. But not only
that, it's not only a passive thing. It also determines how they speak and determines their action.
So if you misinterpret somebody's intentions or you misinterpret a situation, then the action you
take as a result of your misinterpretation will be dysfunctional and will create more suffering.
So many people, without knowing it, are the main cause of their suffering. So it's a very
important topic. This is one type of suffering that is perhaps triggered by an external situation,
but fundamentally, virtually entirely caused by faulty conditioning of your mind, dysfunctional
conditioning of your mind.
And if you are completely unconscious, spiritually speaking, you have not awakened in
any way at all, then you don't know that the way in which you perceive events and people around
you are distorted through your mind, through the interpretations of your mind, the judgments of
your mind. To you, when you are unconscious in that way, your interpretations are the reality.
You cannot distinguish between how you interpret a personal situation and the actual person or
situation.

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 So it comes down to even the smallest, seemingly most insignificant things with many
people. For example, when they're driving in traffic, somebody cuts them off. It's a huge reaction
of anger, because the interpretation is that somebody is not respecting you. Somebody is showing
you complete lack of respect, or wants to annoy you, or whatever the interpretation is.
And then you have an enormous sudden influx of anger in a traffic situation because you
personalize what's happening in the traffic. And you ascribe intentions to others that probably are
not there at all, because if somebody cuts in, it probably is not because he disrespects you,
because he doesn't even know who you are, might not even have seen you behind the wheel. He's
probably just somebody who is unconscious or is talking on the phone while they are driving.
Many kinds of misinterpretations happen. For example, jealousy that arises-- that's
another example-- in relationships for no particular cause; somebody who has that particular
mental dysfunction. So whenever the partner arrives a little bit late, there's a continuous
suspicion that he or she may be deceiving you with somebody else. And you don't even realize
that that is in you.
And so it's a terrible thing to be burdened with the type of mental conditioning that
causes you an enormous amount of suffering. And you don't even know it. You're mistaking that-
- you believe that the situation or the person is causing it. But you are causing it. You are
creating it for yourself.
So a vast amount of suffering is self-created through dysfunctional use of the mind and
complete identification with the mind. And when you're completely identified with the mind--
which, of course, means that is the egoic state of consciousness-- then suffering is actually
inevitable. Then you create suffering for yourself. And you create suffering for others. So when
you create suffering for yourself, anybody who is close to you will also suffer. You've created
for others. That is usually the case.
So it's important to become self-aware in any situation and see, how does this suffering
arise? Now, what I've just described is the types of suffering that are entirely self-created. Then
there are types of suffering that are linked to a particular situation. The situation itself may be a
challenge. But what you then provide-- the reaction-- suffering that arises out of reactivity to a
challenge.
And many challenges are relatively simple. You either take action or you sit down and
see what possible courses of action you could take. Or you realize, "There is a charge here, but

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there's nothing I can do at the moment." So it's relatively simple. Is there anything I can do?
What is it? Or, there's nothing I can do for the time being.
But the ego, when it's facing a challenge, becomes reactive. The challenge could be
something that you want is not happening right now. You think there's a delay. You had been
planning something. But it gets disrupted by whatever-- people who are not doing their job
properly, some other external event. Countless reasons why things don't go the way they're
expected to go.
And everybody encounters that on a regular basis. And that's just how it is-- from simple
things like being held up in a traffic jam, just as a very simple example. Or your flight is
canceled. Or you're planning something, then suddenly you catch the flu. And you can't go on
this vacation. We have hundreds of possible scenarios.
So yes, there is a certain challenge that comes into your life. The challenge itself is
relatively easy to deal with if you look at it rationally, and place the light of your awareness, and
you face the situation. And you see-- what is it that I can do? Is there any action I can take? If
you can, then you take action. Or there's no action I can take-- I have to accept it as it is. Or I
need to focus attention on what possible courses of action it could be.
And that's fine. There's no suffering in that. But the suffering arises out of reactivity
which says this should not be happening. This is a very common dysfunctional mindset that
millions and millions of people are trapped in. And they don't know it. So they react to an
external event as if the external event were a kind of enemy that they need to fight.
And there are millions of people who live in that way. And they don't even know it. Life
is then experienced, to a large extent, as hostile, as almost out to get you. Life is experienced as
not helpful, something that continuously puts obstacles in your path.
And you get angry. And you complain. And you try to make people wrong. And you try
to blame people. They're all unconscious egoic patterns that create suffering in you because the
emotion that you feel is not pleasant. And the body doesn't like it because it interferes with the
otherwise harmonious functioning of the body. And so this is very, very common.
So just to stop for one second now, just summarize, I talked about certain types of
suffering such as worry that create certain emotions that are not pleasant-- fear and so on. That's
entirely mind-created. There's nothing happening right now that is challenging you. And yet you
are imagining in your mind huge challenges coming towards you.

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 Or you already imagine you're in it. That's a total figment of your imagination creating
suffering in the present moment. But nothing is happening around you. So that's one type.
Then the next month that I have just explained to you is, yes, there is a situation that you
are facing. There is a certain disruption in the course of action you wanted to take. Something is
interfering with that-- a difficult person. Many of these things happen through difficult people.
And so then if you are not conscious and you're not able to look at the situation without the veil
of your conditioned reactivity-- which actually, the ego loves the reactivity because when you
can be against something that's just been happening. So when something is disrupted you are
internally against the situation. There's an antagonism.
And to the ego, that is a good thing because the ego becomes bigger. It inflates itself. The
more it can be antagonistic and regard an event, a situation, a person, or whatever it may be as an
enemy that you have to fight and complain about and shout about or whatever you do-- internally
or externally-- the ego becomes inflated and becomes bigger.
And so it's an unconscious process whereby you-- this is very important. You need to be
able to observe it in yourself, because if you don't understand the mechanism behind this, you
will continuously be deceived by it. You'll be drawn into it.
So this is important. As you might remember, I said you cannot understand presence.
And this is very true. But you can understand how presence is obstructed. You can understand
the unconscious strategies of the ego to keep you trapped in the unconscious state. So that's an
amazing realization, when you begin to see the possibility of separating the event from your
reaction, rather than experiencing the event and your reaction as a single phenomenon. You can't
separate the two. They become one.
So for example, let's say you're going to the airport. And now they tell you the flight is
cancelled. The next flight is tomorrow. And there you are. And you had made big plans, because
you wanted to arrive there. Maybe you expected to be at some event at the other end, at your
destination. And you're not getting there.
And so the normal egoic way would be an enormous amount of anger and complaining--
and internally in your mind, externally to others. And of course, you need to see, "Is there
anything I can do? Anything I can do? Can I book at another airline--" just an example-- "and
take action? Yes, I can try."

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 But how do you experience an event like that when you separate your reaction from the
event? And there you have-- this is what is. Suddenly you look at the is-ness things. It's been
canceled, OK.
And then you can notice your reaction. You can feel the anger, the desire to make
somebody wrong-- for example, the airline, the inefficiency, whoever else there may be you can
make wrong and blame. If it's the weather that's disrupting air traffic, then it becomes a bit more
difficult. But you can still make people wrong.
Some people get angry about the weather. Why is this happening to me? It shouldn't be
happening to me-- snowstorm. Why is it always disrupting my plans, for example.
So if you can separate the challenge and your reaction, and you look at both, and they can
still feel the anger or the irritation, and you can see the mind movement that has a story-- that is,
"how bad things are right now." They're really bad. And you can post on Facebook and Twitter.
You can send your posts-- how bad things are. And then you get others who agree with you--
that you feel even better.
And then you can see, "OK, how would I experience the situation if I did not add the
baggage of my reaction to it?" because you begin to awaken then. As you begin to awaken, you
can see the futility of your reaction. Your action is only useful to the unconscious you, which is
the ego. To the ego, it's not futile. The ego, it's a great thing and it works.
But you are not the ego. When you awaken, you realize that entity that basically enjoys
the suffering is not who you are. And then you look at the situation through being present with it.
And then you see the is-ness of it. The is-ness is a simple fact-- this is what's happening.
Whether it's caused by human inefficiency, or whatever it is, no longer matters. This is what is.
And this is what I feel right now. You're becoming present. You're looking at what's happening
in the present moment.
And then you might discover the possibility-- because you have nothing to do. The flight
is canceled. So you might as well stay with what is. You're able to see an experiment, and see--
how would I experience the situation if I not add the baggage of my reaction to it?
And that's an interesting question. It can be applied to many, many situations, not just the
relatively easy challenges, because on the scale of challenges, finding that your flight is canceled
and you can't get another flight until tomorrow-- on the scale of the degree of the seriousness of

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challenges, that is a relatively minor challenge. Life has many more difficult challenges in store
for you. You can be sure of that.
But the mechanism behind it is the same. So it will start with something relatively minor.
The mechanism behind converting a challenging situation into suffering-- that mechanism is
always the same, whether it's a missed flight or whether it's you arrive home and your house has
gone up in flames; even to the more extreme forms of somebody close to you is facing a large,
life-threatening situation, even to the extreme of being involved in an accident and whatever it
may be.
Now, when you're facing extreme challenges, then that requires a much higher degree of
Presence to cope with that so that you don't transform that into suffering. Let's stay with the
relatively more simple challenges. And life is full of those, of course. So how would I experience
this if I did not add the baggage of my reaction to it?
And then you sense, internally, what that would feel like. And of course, in the moment
when you imagine experiencing this situation without the baggage of your reaction, then actually
you're not just imagining it. Imagining, experiencing the situation without the baggage of a
reaction is experiencing the situation without the baggage of a reaction, because when you
imagine it, suddenly it's gone because it was all in your imagination. It was all in the mind.
And then you're in the same situation. And suddenly you see the simple is-ness of the
situation without anybody complaining about it anymore. And suddenly all you're faced with is a
certain inconvenience. Yes, this requires you to take-- you may have to find a hotel room, just to
continue with this example. You have to immediately adjust your course of action to the new
situation.
And life continuously requires you to do that. You're embarking on a course of action. It
gets disrupted by a difficult situation, unexpected event, or a difficult person. Then you
immediately need to see-- OK, it requires a readjustment. What action can I take in order to
overcome this obstacle? Or, for the time being there's nothing I can do. This obstacle right now
cannot be overcome, in which case you just are with what is.
And so gradually you learn, as you awaken, to separate your reaction from the event. And
the reaction is a mental, emotional thing. It's a mental, emotional reaction. It's a judgment. It's a
story. It's a narrative through which you interpret the event.

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 And then you realize the suffering in all those cases is not caused by the event. It's caused
by the narrative in your mind, the judgment in your mind, the story in your mind through which
you interpret. That is the thing that causes the emotion, the unpleasant emotion, the emotion that
does not feel good, the emotion that the body doesn't like, that affects the body in many, many
ways. It interferes with the harmonious functioning of the body.
And that's an amazing, amazing realization, that the suffering is not created-- in the
majority of cases when you experience whatever form of suffering, you have to look at where
and how it arises. Is it caused by the event? Or is it caused by what I'm telling myself about it,
my judgment about it, and what I'm telling others and so on? And in most cases you will actually
find when you separate the event from your interpretation of the event-- the interpretation of the
event as bad-- and you separate that, then you become free.
And then life will continue to confront you with challenges. But now the important thing
is you're awakening. Less and less will you convert the challenges of life, which are inevitable--
even if you practice positive thinking and positive outcomes. And this is a good thing. Positive
thinking is not enlightenment. But it's better to think positively than to think negatively.
But you cannot avoid the challenges of life, no matter what your state of consciousness
is. Life is designed to challenge you. And it does it all the time. The question is, though: are you
unconsciously converting the challenges of life continuously into suffering?
And that's the unconscious state. And that is a state where the ego continuously renews
itself and feeds on your reactivity, and feeds on having enemies in the form of situations, people,
events, something going wrong. They will become enemies.
And after a while, certain types of egos that are very much operating that way, when a
person gets older you can look at them and you can see they're in a state that they've been
trapped in for decades. They're just waiting for the next thing to go wrong. They actually--
unconsciously, they want the next thing to go wrong because then they can complain again.
So know that life will not leave you alone without challenges for very long. Sometimes
you have periods-- you could have a few days, a few weeks, maybe even with just very minor
challenges. But they come.
So one of the most fundamental things on the spiritual path, on the path of awakening, is
the realization that you have the freedom of separating the event or situation and your reaction.
And then the reaction actually subsides. And then what's left is situations that you look at and

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you see what you can do. They become neutral. And it's a wonderful shift that means a huge
amount of problem-making drops away, an enormous liberation-- all the baggage that was
unnecessary, that you unconsciously created in your life.
And so that's a huge liberation. And that is realizing that a huge amount of suffering
actually arises in your mind. And then that begins to fall away. And then you can deal with
things. You can deal with situations in a conscious way without transforming the situations and
people and events into enemies anymore. You don't complain anymore, for example. And that's a
huge thing, because many egos are sustained-- especially egos who have little else to identify
with, to feed on. Many egos are sustained by continuous complaining-- in your mind and in
words-- how bad things are, and those people and that, and what they did to you, and all kinds of
stories, stories, stories, stories-- one story after another; one unhappy story after another.
People are trapped in a nightmare of their own minds. So that's a very important part of
awakening-- is you no longer look at things through a dysfunctional veil of the ego. And you
become free of reactivity.
Now, when it still happens, you may not be totally free immediately. You may
understand how the mechanism works. But that doesn't mean, necessarily-- and probably will not
mean that once you understand the mechanism behind it that then you're totally free already. No.
That is a good start. You understand now the mechanism.
It does not mean that from now on, whenever you're faced with a challenge, you will
immediately be free of this unconscious mechanism. The unconscious mechanism has been there
for a long, long time. And you've inherited it from the past. It's been in the unconscious of
humanity for a long time. So you will get taken over-- most likely-- still many times by this
unconscious mechanism. And then you will realize it afterwards. Soon afterwards you'll realize,
"Oh."
And this is what sometimes people begin to feel bad about. They say, why did I become
unconscious again? Again the mind will come in and say, "Oh, you see? You're no good. You
can't do it. What's the point?" You feel guilty. You feel you're not spiritual enough. So you have
further mental interpretations about yourself.
The fact is, actually, to realize-- even retrospectively-- that you have been drawn into
unconscious reactivity and thereby have created suffering for yourself-- and, of course, it's not

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just for yourself. As I've mentioned many times, when you make yourself suffer you make others
around you also suffer. These-- they go both ways.
So the freedom from suffering-- for example, the central teaching of Buddhism is
freedom from suffering; that there is a possibility of being free from suffering. The Buddha
encapsulated his whole teaching with the words, "I teach suffering and the end of suffering." "I
teach suffering" means, "I show you how suffering arises." And "I teach suffering and the end of
suffering" means, "I show you how suffering arises and I show you how suffering can end."
So this is the beginning of living more consciously, where a huge amount of suffering
drops away. Now, this is suffering that is unconsciously created in the life of an individual. But
now let's look briefly at collective-- the life of a nation, of a collective. The suffering that is
unconsciously created in an individual-- now put millions of individuals together who are
unconscious in that way.
Then let's say they form a nation or a tribe. And this tribe will have the same
characteristics in their behavior as the individual. It's just magnified. So, the ego's need to define
itself through fighting an enemy, to emphasize the otherness of others, to judge others as not
good enough or inferior or evil or bad, thereby elevating its own fictitious sense of self and
feeling superior.
Superiority-- you have to know an important fact. Superiority is always the main
motivating force of the ego. So it wants to be superior to somebody else. So when you have an
enemy, when you are fighting, you just want to assert your superiority. When you are
complaining about something-- where does superiority come in when you're complaining about
something?
Whenever you're complaining about something, you are implicitly regarding yourself and
showing yourself to be morally superior to the person you're complaining about or even a
situation you're complaining about. You're the judge. You elevate yourself. You are the judge of
the situation. And you pronounce a situation of "not good enough." So whether it's people or
situations, you preside over the situation. And your pronouncement is "this is not good." So
whenever you complain, there's superiority.
There are people who have other ways of feeding their ego. They may complain less.
Perhaps people who are very successful in this world, they can identify with their social status.

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They can identify with their position. They can identify with many things and incorporate it into
their sense of self. That's a friction also.
But there are many people who don't have that. They need other kinds of ego food. They
don't have the Rolls Royce or the private jet, or may not have the house, or whatever it that
people identify with-- the good looks, the clothes, or the physical strength, or all the things that
people have to identify with. It's me. There are millions of people who just don't have very much
that they can have.
So what they do is they complain. And by complaining, not only are they unconsciously
making that superior, there's always also an element of victimhood in complaining. And when
you make yourself into a victim, the ego loves that because when you complain about the
situation there is an element of victimhood there because you are the victim of another person
who is morally inferior to you-- by implication-- or situation.
And so you are a victim. And that makes you morally superior. And this is a huge ego
device. For all those people who don't have the possessions or status that gives them their
fictitious sense of self, they have that.
And so the victim strategy of the ego is huge. You need to be careful in yourself whether
this still occasionally appears in your life. And catch it if you can. It requires alertness. It's a very
common ego strategy. Superiority has a strong element of victimhood.
Now, the fact is, of course, that a lot of bad things are done to people by other people. So
victims exist in this world, obviously. There are children who suffer dreadfully through
whatever-- their caregivers, their parents may be extremely unconscious. Their children go
already through an enormous amount of suffering.
They may have an alcoholic and violent father. And the mother doesn't care about them.
They are totally neglected. And then they go into a foster home, and then to another foster home.
Already at an early age, who can say that they are not victims in a practice way? Well, yes, they
are victims of these people. On a practical level, this is the case.
You can even have groups of people, in the past or in the present, who are victimized by
other groups. You have certain minorities. I mean, slavery was there. We've had a whole group
of people who can say, justifiably, that they were victims. And that is the case.
But the danger is when you take that and make it into your identity-- the fact that you or
the group that you belong to were victims-- you incorporate that into your sense of who you are.

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And then you start thinking in terms of victim and moral superiority and so on. This is
dangerous.
So if you have suffered personally-- as a child, for example-- there is the danger that you
could have a sense of identity that is built around having been mistreated as a child. Or
collectively, you could have a sense of identity about your group having being mistreated by
others. And this may be true. It probably is true. But the ego uses it for its own purposes.
And it will disempower you. A victim identity disempowers you. It gives strength to the
ego. But it takes power away from you to change your life, for example. The more you get
trapped in victim identity, the less your ability to change your life for the better.

It's so satisfying-- the sense of superiority that comes from being a victim. And that can
become your life purpose. Then you're-- "I am the victim. We are the victims." It's very
seductive. And so you have to be very careful that you don't become a victim. Even if you once
were a victim, don't incorporate it into your sense of self, because it's a conceptual sense of self.
That is a narrative in your mind that gives you your sense of identity.
And that is not empowering. It's a false sense of self. In the same way that somebody who
identifies with possessions, it's a false sense of self. You are trapped in an egoic and a false self.
So be very careful with complaining, complaining patterns, and so on.
And when you catch yourself complaining, when you catch yourself being a victim,
realize-- oh, there it is. It doesn't mean you have failed. When you catch yourself after having
been drawn into unconsciousness, it's a good thing.
Don't believe your mind. When it's your mind, then immediately interpret it as-- oh, I got
drawn into reactivity again. I got drawn into this again. Oh, that's a great thing. Now I see it. If
you didn't see it, that would be bad. But you wouldn't even know it.
If you see a pattern from your past, maybe an hour ago or yesterday-- you got drawn into
reactivity, you became a victim or whatever it was, even a person who is complaining at the
airport who is reactive because the flight is canceled, the victim element is there. He's a victim of
that situation. He's a victim of the airline. He's the victim of the inefficiency of others. But at the
same time, he's superior because he is pronouncing judgment.
See how bad this is-- very seductive. Be very careful. Identity-- there's a search in every
human being for a more complete sense of identity. Everybody is searching for identity, identity,

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identity. And they are all searching in the wrong place unless they awaken spiritually, and
realizing that the essence of who you are has nothing to do with any story in your mind, has
nothing to do with any narrative, and certainly does not require any enemies at all.
So you don't condemn yourself when you feel yourself being drawn back into a reactive
pattern. This will happen, probably, quite a few times. But then there will be other times when,
where before you would have reacted, you're suddenly able to just look at a situation and be with
it.
And the ability-- the Presence power grows in you. And as Presence power grows in you,
you no longer deal with things gradually. You no longer deal with things and situations and
people through the conditioning of your mind. You're becoming truly intelligent.
This is the rising of true-- which is awareness, the arising of awareness, which is
something deeper or higher-- whatever word you want to use-- than the conceptual, analytical
mind. That has its uses also. It has its purposes too. But in itself it's not enough. It does not free
you from a false sense of self.
So the suffering, then, that the Buddha speaks of-- all that suffering is created by the
unconscious mind, which is the ego. And the collective-- when millions of people come together
who are unconscious, then the entire collective is unconscious. Now, this is how you can see
while there's suffering that is self-created in an individual's life, that's reflected by the enormous,
vast amount of suffering-- unbelievable suffering-- that is created by collectives. So, humans
inflicting suffering on other humans because of a dysfunctional collective mind.
And so there you get-- this is the reason why hundreds of millions were murdered by
other humans in the 20th century alone. The warfare between nations and the equally murderous
governments that murdered their own people-- in Germany, in China, in Russia, in Cambodia;
the genocides of millions of people murdered by their own governments because certain groups
of people were pronounced as evil. They were made into enemies-- had a terrible dysfunction in
the collective human mind. But it's the same dysfunction as in the past. And it's just magnified.
So all that is self-created suffering. There's more suffering-- if you look at the 20th
century-- more suffering created by humans through unconsciousness than natural disasters or
even illnesses. So there's a vast amount of self-created suffering in the life of an individual and in
the life of the collective. And you can see that, ultimately, it's insane. It is a form of insanity.

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 The ego has grown to such a degree that it has now reached the end of its lifespan. And if
we don't transition now to an awakened state of consciousness, the ego will become more and
more self-destructive. So that's where we are at right now.

And now what remains is, of course, there are certain difficult situations that humans are
faced with-- let's go back to an individual-- where suffering seems inevitable or justified, where
you'd say, "Well, obviously, that must lead to suffering." Let's say a loved one dies. If it's an old
person, that's suffering enough. But some parents have to experience the death of their child or
children.
A serious physical disability-- some people are born with it. Or it may happen at a later
stage in your life. Or the doctor tells you you only have six months to go now before you die.
Or a life that was carefully arranged, and everything was working well, and suddenly
several things erupt into your life and throw the whole thing into disarray. Your company-- you
had a great job. Your company gets swallowed up by another, bigger company and suddenly say,
"OK, we don't need you anymore." After 20 years-- "Sorry, don't need you anymore. We'll have
to let you go. Goodbye." Finally, they let you go. You've been longing to go for so long. Now
they let you go.
And then your wife-- or your husband-- leaves you suddenly. And then your financial
situation collapses. You invested with the wrong company. Or the whole stock market collapses.
And before you know it, your house is gone. Your social status is gone. Your relationship is
gone. And everything seems to collapse around you. People sometimes are faced with situations
like that.
And you would say, "Well, wouldn't you suffer then?" Obviously, this person is justified
in suffering. And of course, there will be some suffering when these things happen. The question
is, though-- yes. Even without a narrative in your mind, there will be some suffering in these
extreme situations.
But the question is: Are you totally devastated in the experience of this suffering? Or are
you able to suffer consciously? Are you completely in the grip of the suffering and experiencing
despair and devastation? Or are you able to suffer consciously and allow the suffering to be
there?

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 In which case, there is a deeper dimension in you. And this is why spiritual awakening is
so important, if possible, before the big suffering comes to you. Awaken, so that when you are
faced with big suffering, you already have the connectedness with being. You already have the
connectedness-- you have that inner spaciousness. You have that stillness. You know how to
connect with it.
And then, if you are able to do that, then you can allow yourself to suffer consciously
without being totally devastated. And that's an interesting phenomenon. You suffer here. But
deeper down, there's a core of peace. And anybody who is awakened spiritually can verify that.
Let's say somebody close to you-- when my parents died, they died within a few months
of each other, although they lived separately in different countries. So they died in the same year
within a few months of each other. And so I experienced tears in both cases. And I also
experienced a deep peace at the same time.
And so you could call that conscious suffering. I did not say, "Oh, I must get rid of this
suffering." I could see the suffering was a natural thing. It was not created by a story. It was just
created of this human being that was part of my life since birth-- suddenly no longer here. And
that creates such-- you weep. It's an emotion. It's an emotional form of suffering.
It did not become-- talk about myself, but this really means anybody who is awakened or
awakening. It did not become a story in my head that said-- some people get angry when
somebody dies. Or some people get very depressed. Then the emotion that they experience
becomes a story. And then the ego comes back in. And that prolongs the suffering.
You can then suffer for several years because somebody in your life died. And you suffer
for years to come, because the natural way is eventually suffering which will subside, and peace
would reemerge more fully again. And that's the natural. But if you prolong suffering by
unconsciously allowing the emotion to rise up into your mind and creating a story of your
unhappy self-- even though the story might say, this poor person is dead now. I can assure you
this poor person is fine now.
But you are creating a story-- either self-pity or, again, some kind of victimhood, because
this person has been taken away from you, has been taken away from me. Something has been
done to me. The story will then create-- you can have a story that prolongs the suffering that
would naturally come, for example, when somebody close to you dies. The story can prolong it
and keep the suffering unnaturally alive for months and years to come.

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 And so you have to be careful that you allow the suffering but it does not become a
narrative in your mind. You feel the suffering directly. And if so, then that is conscious suffering.
Conscious suffering is to allow yourself to suffer when suffering arises, knowing that it's
not created by a story. You allow yourself to suffer. And that is a very powerful transformational
tool that deepens you very quickly. And it burns up the ego.
So there could be, let's say-- another example, you have a physical disability. Or you
have suddenly you're starting-- the body is becoming disabled. And you suffer. Things that
before you could do, you can't do anymore. Things are getting more and more difficult.
And then you're forced into just the present moment. And you experience whatever it is--
the experience, the suffering that comes in the situation-- without forming a pitiful self-concept
now in your mind; that sense of how dreadful your life has become. That's not conscious
suffering.
You can't say, "I'm going to consciously suffer. And I must surrender to the fact that my
life has become dreadful." That's not surrender at all. You can't surrender to a story. The story
remains and causes you added suffering, far more than would be necessary. You just stay with
the feeling of suffering and allow yourself to suffer consciously.
This is similar to what you do with the pain-body when you experience it, because the
pain-body is old suffering that still lives in you. Conscious suffering means you allow yourself to
suffer, which means there's a space of awareness around it, which means the suffering does not
absorb you completely. It is there in your energy field. But it does not become you. It does not
become your identity.
It does not become an unhappy story, an unhappy self, an unhappy me. That is the
unconsciousness. When suffering becomes an unhappy me with an unhappy narrative, that's
(again) the ego reasserting itself and reappearing with another conceptual identity, an unhappy
conceptual me, conceptual identity. That's not conscious suffering. That's just the ego using that
situation in order to strengthen itself again.
So just stay with the feeling. So if somebody close to you dies, you will experience--
suffering comes in waves for the first few weeks. You have a wave. And you cry. And then it
subsides. And then you're at peace, if you can accept.

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 And even when the wave comes, you're not totally consumed by it anymore. There is a
core of peace. That's one way of putting it. Or you can say there's peace around it. It's hard to put
it into visual terms, because it's an inner phenomenon.
So you have awareness. You are the awareness. You're not the suffering. You're not the
suffering entity. There is suffering in you. But you are not the suffering entity. You do not
become a suffering person, an unhappy person, a devastated person. That's the difference.

That is the process of not allowing totally unnecessary suffering to arise in you. And
that's already-- a huge chunk of suffering falls away. And then the more extreme events or
situations that you experience in your life-- there, suffer consciously. And that brings about a
very quick transmutation and the end of the ego.
There are some people that I have met who had no spiritual instruction, have not come
into contact with spiritual teaching. And nevertheless, they experienced spiritual awakening only
through their suffering, through extreme forms of suffering-- in some cases, being in prison, even
life imprisonment or 20 years imprisonment. Certainly, one would say you are justified in
suffering if you know you are not going to get out for the rest of your life, or to be imprisoned in
an increasingly dysfunctional body-- extreme situations like that. And the suffering that they
experienced in those situations burned up their ego.
And that's a very interesting process. And then after the ego was burned up, what was left
of them was just the unconditioned consciousness. And so there they were just, "OK, this is what
is." There was nobody there. There was no entity left in their mind that was a victim of the
situation; no entity left. There's just consciousness left, unconditioned consciousness.
So there are people who go through the awakening just having the teacher called
suffering. But that would have to be fairly extreme suffering. And then there's a good chance that
that can happen.
Although there's no guarantee that it will happen. Many people will be confronted with
such extreme suffering and will not become free of their ego. In fact, they experience a
hardening of the egoic shell and become more and more bitter and resentful. That is one way to
go. Or then there's potentially the other way-- of spiritual awakening.
So suffering could be compared to transmutation. It's an alchemy. As you know, in
alchemy they attempted to transform base metal into gold. And that's on the material level. On

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another level, alchemy is an inner transformation. And the inner transformation is the
transformation of the base metal of suffering into consciousness.
And so I sometimes say that all human beings on the planet have a spiritual teacher. And
for most of them, their spiritual teacher is their suffering, no matter whether that suffering is self-
produced by their mind or whether their suffering is actually the direct result of a very difficult
situation they find themselves in, such as hunger, illness, destitution, whatever it may be. Poverty
or just plain unhappiness in whatever form, intense unhappiness, depression-- these are all forms
of suffering.
And potentially, suffering can burn up the ego and can be transmuted into consciousness.
In many, many cases, it's only a possibility. People are not aware of the possibility of it. But on a
larger scale, collectively, the evolution of human consciousness-- if you take human
consciousness as a whole, which is just one aspect of universal consciousness, you have human
consciousness. And within the totality of human collective consciousness, you have so-called
individual consciousness, which is an aspect of the totality of human consciousness, because
ultimately, there's only one consciousness. So this consciousness is evolving.
Human consciousness-- this aspect of universal consciousness-- is undergoing an
evolution. There is no doubt an evolution of human consciousness has been going on for a long
time. Sometimes it's not really visible, because traditionally it has been very, very slow. But you
just have to go back 500,000 years. Of course, we don't know exactly what happened 500,000.
But we can be fairly certain that since then, we have come a long way-- even 100,000 years.
And now the evolution is actually accelerating because now for the first time, the
possibility has arisen for us to consciously participate in our own evolution. And that's an
amazing, amazing change. So the totality of the evolution of consciousness-- in its totality, the
role of suffering is the alchemical process of the transformation of suffering into consciousness.
Now, you might say-- you look at the life of an individual. And you say, it seems so
purposeless. Why does this individual suffer and then die? Even a child, even a baby suffers
briefly and then dies. And it seems they haven't evolved through it. They just suffered and then
they died.
That's true when you look at the individual, in many cases, although the possibility for
awakening is there in every individual through suffering. But in many cases, the individual does
not necessarily awaken. But the individual is only a brief, temporary expression of the totality of

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human consciousness, which is one. It's a manifestation. You and I and everybody, we are a
temporary manifestation of this totality of consciousness, the totality of consciousness evolving
through suffering until suffering is not needed anymore. And that's where suffering is no longer
the main thing that drives evolution.
There is a growing number of humans-- still a minority, of course, a small minority
relatively speaking-- who are reaching this line. There's a line. On one side of this line, suffering
is needed for the evolution of consciousness. A lot of it's self-inflicted-- warfare, seemingly
senseless suffering.
But on the other line, suffering is no longer the main thing that drives human evolution.
And that happens the moment you constantly participate in the evolution of your so-called
consciousness-- although it's not your consciousness and my consciousness. But this is how it's
experienced. Through the evolution of your consciousness, and you become a participant, you
consciously embrace presence. You consciously step out of mind.
And that means you have crossed the line between unconscious evolution through the
alchemical fire of suffering, the unconscious evolution to conscious evolution. That's the next
step for humanity. And this is an acceleration. Once this happens, evolution goes much faster--
conscious evolution as opposed to unconscious evolution, as they're taught. It's almost like the
entire history of humanity up to very recently-- although there have been a few voices here and
there of some of the great teachers. But the entire history of humanity has been really very slow
evolution through suffering, with a few voices here and there of the great teachers-- such as the
Buddha-- pointing to the possibility of transcending that.
So the role of suffering, then, has been a necessary one. And for many humans it's still
necessary. And it is necessary until it is no longer necessary. Or, as I sometimes put it, you need
suffering until you realize that you don't need it anymore.
I sometimes say you need time to awaken, which means suffering until you realize that
you don't need time anymore to awaken spiritually. You don't need time to awaken spiritually,
which means you don't need suffering to awaken spiritually. Awakening is inseparable from
present-moment awareness.
So you don't need time. Time is not what will give you spiritual awakening. Time is the
obstacle, one of the obstacles-- or the main obstacle, one could almost say, to a spiritual

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awakening. Time is a mental concept, because that's all that it is. So there's the alchemy-- the
divine alchemy of consciousness gradually arising out of suffering.
One more thing here-- the traditional argument against the existence of God is as follows.
There's dreadful suffering on our planet. And there has been since time immemorial-- dreadful,
seemingly senseless suffering. And if there were a God, He would not allow this suffering,
because a God, of course, must be omnipotent and omniscient. That would be the characteristic
of the traditional God image.
"If there were a God, would he allow this suffering? This cannot be, because if there is an
omnipotent god and He allows--" usually they say He-- "and He allows the suffering, then I am
morally superior to this God because I wouldn't allow humans to suffer in this way. This God
must be a criminal if He allows humans--" and therefore, they say, there is no God. There cannot
be a God, because He would not allow humans to suffer senselessly in that way.
This is the usual argument that many atheists have. And it sounds convincing on the
surface. So they take the fact of suffering to show to you that God cannot exist. They don't
realize, though, that what they took as a starting point-- which is their mental image of what God
is-- might already have been a mistake.
Their image of God as an entity, a controlling and all-powerful entity, might be a total
misperception. It might be a childish way of looking at that which is beyond anything that could
be named or understood through the human mind. So to ascribe to it a characteristic of a
powerful patriarch who is not doing what He should be doing-- and therefore, of course, doesn't
exist-- that may be a total misperception of the meaning of God. And so when this argument is
put forward, they don't realize that their starting point was already an error, which is your image
of God. And when your starting point is an error, the rest of your argument is, of course, a
fallacy also.
So a more evolved view of what God means is that God is the underlying intelligence
behind the manifestation of the physical universe, the organizing principle behind manifestation,
something that from a transcendent dimension, for some reason, gradually enters into this
dimension, and gradually but not yet fully manifests as the consciousness in every life form. The
consciousness comes from the transcendent dimension. It is the transcendent.
So the analogy I use is: if you look at God as the sun and the consciousness the sunlight,
your consciousness is like the light of the sun. The sun is God. But God does not have an

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existence in space or time. God is the transcendent dimension, and from there shines into this
dimension, increasingly, the light of consciousness. Your consciousness is the light of God. And
it's still connected with that transcendent.
And it's gradually coming in, and this gradual process of coming into this universe and
forming this universe that gives the impression-- from a higher perspective-- that there is
suffering. From a higher perspective, the suffering is a kind of dream, a dream that the universe
has dreamed prior to its awakening. It's a dream that the universe will eventually awaken from.
So from a higher perspective, that suffering is relatively immaterial. But while you're in
it, it is perceived as absolute reality. So the consciousness is evolving. You have the unconscious
evolution, where consciousness identifies with the form as which it appears.
You can see it in yourself. Until you awakened spiritually, you saw yourself-- you
perceived yourself to be this autonomous entity. You didn't realize that in your essence, you are
an emanation of the one. So you identified completely with the thought forms in your mind and
the emotions.
So consciousness appeared as form and lost itself in that appearance. Consciousness is
disguised as this, this, and this. And anybody who's not awakened yet spiritually, or not
awakening, is completely identified with their mind-- every thought. That means consciousness
is lost in form. It is dreaming the dream of form. It doesn't know itself. It doesn't know its origin.
And this is how it was meant to be. So the universe exists in a kind of dreamlike state.
There's an ancient saying that says consciousness is asleep in the mineral, which means in a
stone. Consciousness is asleep in a stone. Consciousness is dreaming in the plant, in the tree--
any plant. Consciousness is awakening in the animal and in the human, with the added
dimension that in the human there is the potential that consciousness can awaken to itself, its
own, to realize itself. So the humans are manifestations of consciousness that have potential for
awakening of the universe from the dream of form.
If you look at an unconscious person-- or even you look at yourself when you were
completely unconscious, identified with the mind-- an unconscious person goes through life in a
kind of hypnotic trance, mistaking the conditioning of their mind for reality. So they're thinking
and thinking and thinking, and interpreting everything through the veil of their thinking. So
you're trapped in your own dream.

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 And sometimes, through suffering, humans begin to awaken. And then they come into
contact with the spirit of teaching. Then they can perhaps awaken even faster. And when you
waken, you see all these things that were so extremely problematic in your life are ultimately not
that real and not that important. They were the dream.

And as you awaken more fully, the way in which you experience things, and the world
around you and events, it's like-- I don't know if you've experienced lucid dreaming. Lucid
dreaming means at night, you're having a dream. But you know that you're dreaming. That's
called lucid dreaming. It happens sometimes. Many people have experienced it.
And when you waken, your consciousness awakens here, it's very similar to that. You
then experience what happens in your life as a kind of lucid dream, which means you do your
best to make it a pleasant dream to the full extent of your abilities. And nevertheless, nothing that
happens there or doesn't happen is any longer of absolute importance. It would only be of
absolute importance if you were still totally trapped in the dream.
But if you're in a lucid dream, it doesn't matter so much anymore what happens in the
dream. But the strange thing is in a lucid dream the dream tends to be actually improved. And
you can consciously improve it. If you are in a lucid dream, you might as well have a pleasant
dream. I mean, I wouldn't choose to be in a nightmare if I know that I'm dreaming. OK, let's
create something pleasant.
Now, I'm using that as an analogy-- lucid dreaming at nighttime when you're asleep-- to
lucid living as you awaken spiritually. Lucid living means to experience your life-- your so-
called life-- unfolding and doing your best. And yet it loses this absolute seriousness and
heaviness that it had before when you didn't realize that it was a kind of dream.
You were not lucid yet-- when you're completely still unconscious and every little thing
is just so important, and you're so reactive to it. And just everything matters so much. And then
gradually, as you awaken, you realize things matter still. And you still have preferences. But they
don't matter absolutely.
As I put it, there's things in your life that are relatively important, undoubtedly. Whether
I'm healthy or sick is relatively important. Whether I'm very poor and destitute or have
abundance is relatively important. Where I live-- in pleasant surroundings or unpleasant
surroundings-- is relatively important.

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 But none of this is absolutely important, because there's only one thing that's absolutely
important. And that is knowing who you are, knowing yourself as consciousness. And when you
know that, then you experience your life and the events of your life as a kind of dream. But you
can actually enjoy it. And you still honor the dream and the events in your dream. You do your
best.
But you're not totally in it. There's this freedom. And for the first time, then, can you
really enjoy sensory experience and things and people in your life because before, you needed
many of these things. You were attached to many of these things because you needed them to
enhance your sense of identity, give you a sense of security, whatever. Those are there.
But now you don't need these anymore for your inner peace and fulfillment because
knowing yourself as consciousness is the fulfillment, is the inner peace. And knowing yourself as
consciousness has nothing to do with thinking. It's prior to thought. Or it's above thought, might
be a better way of putting it.
So there is a dimension in you that is above thought, transcendent through thought. And
that is right here now. That dimension that's transcendent to thought is here now, within and
without. And from that dimension that is transcendent to thought-- whatever you want to call it--
you experience the stuff that's in your life unfolding. And you even participate. And you create
things, knowing that it is a kind of dream.
And you appreciate things. But they are not absolutely important anymore-- whether they
are there or not. You can give love and appreciation-- in fact, more than before-- when you no
longer need. That neediness is gone-- of needing this, this, and even needing certain people. The
neediness is gone then. You can truly appreciate the things in your life.
You can appreciate objects. It doesn't mean when you awaken spiritually that you say,
"Oh, I don't want to have anything anymore." If you can have something, a beautiful object can
be appreciated. It could be something very simple. Or it might be something expensive. It makes
no difference-- perhaps something very simple. You appreciate it. You give it attention. It's
lovely.
But you're not attached anymore because you don't need anything to fulfill your fictitious
sense of self. You don't need to identify with anything. So when it leaves you-- either you lose it
or somebody takes it-- that's fine. There's great freedom in that.

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 Jesus puts it in those terms. He said, "Don't put your attention--" it's my translation.
"Don't put your attention on the things that are consumed by moths, and where thieves can break
in and steal, things where moths consume and thieves break in and steal. And things are
consumed by moths or rust--" I can't remember. I'm not good at quoting the Bible.
But he said, don't put your attention on the dimension where thieves can break in and
steal, where rust consumes, and where moths eat up stuff-- because the moths eat up clothes.
Rust consumes even the hardest metal-- at the time, iron. Rust consumes it.
Everything is subject to impermanence and disappearing, as the Buddha already pointed
out. So basically it's the same message as the Buddha. Don't attach yourself to things of this
world because they are not lasting. But you can only not attach yourself if you've found
something that is lasting and is beyond time.
If you've found the essence of who you are then naturally, the need to attach yourself to
things and people isn't there anymore. And the expectation that the world-- as I've said it before,
this is important-- that the world should satisfy you or make you happy-- the world meaning
everything, things you can achieve or people or whatever, places, situations-- the expectation that
the world is here to make you happy and fulfilled or to seek happiness and fulfillment through
the things of this world; that is an error because you cannot find it, not lasting happiness
[INAUDIBLE]. You can't.
And when you realize that you don't look for it anymore where you can't find it. You
don't ultimately look for yourself anymore where you can't find yourself. And so that's the
awakening to who you are. And so that's the key-- you no longer then create suffering,
unnecessarily, through your mind. And the remnant of suffering that's left-- there, you suffer
consciously. When it comes, you suffer consciously.
And when you suffer consciously, even there you experience a transformation. And then
it's not really suffering anymore. Something happens. And it's not really suffering anymore.
So I've had letters from people in prison-- some of them in for life-- who said they've
become free of suffering. Now, that's amazing. They've become free of suffering through
suffering. And then perhaps the last thing: they came into touch with the spiritual teaching. We're
sending out more and more books and other teaching materials to prisons. So that's a good thing.
So more prisoners are coming in touch with the teaching. And they're already prepared
for it because they've already been suffering for years. You could say, "Well, they were

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responsible for their suffering because they did something terrible." Yes, but it makes no
difference. They suffered. They're suffering.
And so gradually, they reach a point of readiness. And then they come into contact with
the spiritual teaching. And then it does it. And in some cases, they don't even come into contact
with any spiritual teaching. The suffering alone, in some cases, is sufficient for the awakening.
But to sum it up, really, the most important, the one thing that is ultimately important in
your life is what we could call the rootedness in being-- the rootedness in being which is
accessible to you only in the present moment, and only when you discover the inner spaciousness
or stillness here and now. And so the rootedness in being is the awakening and is the
transcendence of suffering. And when additional suffering comes-- that you don't create anymore
but it's there-- all it does is it deepens your connection with being.
It deepens you. Generally speaking, that's what suffering often does. It deepens you. And
so that gradually it brings about some degree of spiritual awakening in people. Imagine
somebody who's never suffered. It's not possible.
But there have been people who reach the age of, let's say, 25 and haven't suffered. They
grew up in a wealthy environment. Whatever they wanted, they could have immediately. And
when they become adults, they know that they never have to work if they don't want to because
there's a trust fund and plenty of money. On their seventeenth birthday, they're already given a
Ferrari by their dad.
And so they become not very pleasant human beings. The ego has grown to absurd
proportions, and then an inability to have any kind of empathy with another human. And usually
then, they do begin to suffer because no human being escapes.
So the very fact that they were free-- their circumstances protected them from suffering--
the fact that they never suffered then becomes their suffering, because they're so superficial that
every relationship collapses very quickly. And their sense of dissatisfaction grows, because
what's the next experience that I can fill myself up with? And nothing satisfies you anymore.
And then you go to drugs. And then you get addicted. And then the real suffering starts. You
can't escape. And that's a good thing.
Just a final comment. It's interesting that the Buddhist teaching-- the central teaching of
the Buddha, which can be encapsulated in the words that I just quoted; "I teach suffering and the
end of suffering--" and the wordless teaching of the Christian religion-- which is the image of the

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cross-- are identical. Buddha says, I teach suffering and the end of suffering. The image of the
cross in Christianity says, "I am the torture instrument-- the cross. And I am the end of the
suffering."
And the end of suffering-- I am also the symbol for the divine, the transcendence. The
cross is a torture instrument and points to transcendence at the same time. Suffering and the end
of suffering-- it's exactly the same message. It's hidden. It's in symbolic form in the image of the
cross. And it is made explicit in the words of the Buddha.
And that's wonderful news-- that suffering is a great thing until you don't need it
anymore. And for you, as you are awakening spiritually, you've reached that line that I
mentioned earlier where, to a large extent, suffering has fulfilled its purpose. It will no longer the
main thing that drives your evolution. It may still come in, and will. It might bring about a
deepening, too. But it's no longer the main driving force behind the evolution of your
consciousness.
That's it. Thanks.

© Eckhart Tolle, Kim Eng ℗ Eckhart Teachings Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this transcript may be used or
reproduced in any manner without written permission from Eckhart Teachings Inc.

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