Dealing With Anger, Resistance And Pessimism from Eckhart Tolle

I often feel overwhelmed by anger. And that anger makes me throw my spiritual practice really out of the window. It's like a big impotence that I feel and pessimism. So, it's not going to work anyway. So, just hell with it. That's one thing. And the other thing is, I also feel very often that something is wrong. So, I need to take some action to correct something that probably is just imaginary. So, it's unreal. So, there is no action needed most probably, but I have to do something about it. And I get carried away by that. For example, right now I feel my heart beat very strongly. And I guess there's no reason for that. Well, you're doing public speaking right now, so maybe that's why. That's fine. You acknowledge that your heart is beating and you let that be. And the feeling that something is wrong, that's not a personal problem of yours. It's a universal human condition to carry that feeling inside that something is wrong. And then the mind looks for, what can I do about this? Or where is the thing that's wrong? And then it misinterprets situations. So, anger. When anger comes, of course, the energy field of it immediately flows into your mind. And the thoughts that you then think are reflections of the anger. The anger makes you think certain thoughts. And as you put it, it says, all that spiritual stuff obviously doesn't work. These are thoughts that come out of the anger, the energy field. Yes, or whatever I do, it's going to be always the same. No point of it, because it's not going to work. That's the kind of thoughts that it generates. Yes. But next time it happens, see if you are able to, in addition to thinking those thoughts, well, at the same time, you can be aware that these are thoughts that have arisen out of the energy field of anger. In other words, see if you can have an awareness. It's not easy with anger, because it comes so suddenly. Whether you can have an awareness, not only that there's the energy of anger flowing through you, but also perhaps that the energy of anger, which may be old anger that has lived in you for a long time, pain body, I call it, which can easily then rise into your mind and control your thoughts. Are you able to stay aware while it happens and recognize anger as an expression of the pain body? And if you are thinking angry thoughts, to realize that these are the thoughts of anger. Anger is thinking these thoughts. They are not true. So they are simply thoughts that reflect the energy field of anger. So the experiment then is whether you can stay aware as the observer or the witness of those thoughts and of the energy field of anger. You may not. I'm just suggesting it as an experiment. Whether or not you are able to stay present depends on how much presence there is already in you, how much presence power there is already in you. Perhaps after having spent some time here with us, there may be more presence power in you, because this energy field is helpful for drawing that out of you. Once you are there as the witness, then changes begin to happen. You don't even have to do anything. Do you know what I mean by witness? It's simply to witness, to be aware of the energy so that you don't become completely identified with it. So the witnessing consciousness is in the same way that you now witness perhaps a certain nervousness. Your heart is beating. There may be a certain nervousness as you stand there. And you witness. There's the nervousness and there's the heart beating. The witness allows everything to be as it is. But there's a deeper dimension in you from where you can say, my heart is beating. I feel nervous energy inside me. These are still verbalizations. But beyond the verbalization, there's the ability to simply see it, so to speak. And that will change all the old patterns. And the more awareness comes in, the more the old patterns will change. So you don't have to change yourself because that's complicated. Many people try to do that. I have to change myself. The most powerful, the real change comes with becoming aware of whatever is happening inside you so that the anger is no longer you. The anger is anger. And you are the awareness. You know it. You see it. You feel it. There it is. And that's the decisive shift from being the anger to having the anger in your energy field and observing it. That's a wonderful shift. So use anger as your spiritual practice. If you fail, of course, anger will immediately say, you see, you failed again. You can't do it. That's the anger speaking. There is something wrong with you. Yes. Particularly that there's something wrong with me. Now, I don't know if you may be surprised to know that there are millions, billions of people on the planet who have that same thought pattern, there's something wrong with me. It's part of the human ego. So you bring in the awareness. And that will change everything. That's the only true key. If you fail, next time the anger arises, what happens? You will become aware immediately after the anger has subsided. And then, oh, there it was and I wasn't present. And then the moment will come when you are there in the first, if you can catch the anger the first moment it comes, or if you might even see that it could be the result of a thought that creates the anger. And if you can be there in the first moment before it becomes the fully blown anger, then you can stay there and it might not even become fully blown anger if you catch it the first moment. You can feel the first stirrings of anger. You may only have three seconds. It may come very quickly. Anger is like an explosive energy. You may only have two, three, four, five seconds to stay there with your awareness and feel it. Oh, it's coming. There it is. That's the pain body, the angry pain body coming. And if you catch it in the early stage, don't suppress it. By catch it, I mean feel it, be there as a witness. Then you can stay even as it grows, the witness grows with it. It may not even grow. We'll have to see whether it still grows into full blown anger or not. That doesn't matter. And so you be thankful for your anger because the anger can become a very important spiritual practice for you because through it, awareness can grow. So it's sometimes strange for people to see you can be thankful for things that you think are the most difficult obstacles in your life, but they can become your greatest opportunity for spiritual awakening. Use it as part of your practice. I think the most difficult thing to deal with is impotence. When you feel it's not going to work. Yes, you feel powerlessness. Yes, like a deep pessimism. It's not going to work. You're about to fail. You have to recognize that these are thought forms. They are thoughts that arise in your mind. And when you're aware, you don't need to believe in every thought that arises. You don't no longer, and that's an enormous freedom. You recognize it as a thought that comes from anger, not the truth. It's a thought, a thought form that comes from anger, the pain body. If a thought comes from anger, it's not the truth. It's a distortion. Recognize it and you say, oh, there's another thought form that says something negative, that there's nothing you can do. You might as well give up. Whatever thoughts come, recognize that it's a thought form. Do you see how important that is? Well, perhaps we will meet again in a year's time. And it's always interesting to see how things have evolved as you practice now. What happened to you as you bring awareness into the anger. See what happens to it a year later. Thank you. We need to finish now. Thank you. Wonderful. It's just wonderful to see consciousness evolving, awakening in the different human forms, in different ways, and that we can be thankful for everything, especially the difficult parts of our life. Because without that, there would be no awakening. It's that which creates the challenges, creates the necessary energy for the flowering of consciousness. So it's not only in the movies where things need to go wrong. In every movie, if nothing goes wrong, there's no movie. The character doesn't develop. Everybody remains the same. In a bad movie, that which goes wrong is resolved on some external level. But in a good movie, as the character faces his or her problems, he or she grows, changes, develops abilities that he or she didn't have before. And in very good movies, there's some kind of spiritual realization. But only because something went wrong.