Dissolving the Ego | Eckhart Tolle

Be yourself. In the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, of course, had the inscription, know yourself. But knowing yourself is the same as being yourself, exactly the same. At that level, there's nothing to know if you are present, but there's no further knowing about presence. There's nothing you can know about presence. You can only be present. So to know yourself at a deeper level means to be present and know yourself as presence. There's another level to knowing yourself. There are two levels. One is knowing your own ego, recognizing your ego when it happens. Observe it, then you know yourself on that level. At a deeper level, knowing yourself is being yourself. Is the universe telling me that I should stop speaking? So to know yourself on this more superficial level is self-observation. And in self-observation, the ego dissolves. And then knowing yourself at a deeper level is being the presence, that's all. And so both go together because if you're not the presence, then there is not enough presence in you to observe the ego in you. So they go together, you need the presence because only the presence needs to be there so that you can recognize your own ego. In recognizing the ego, it dissolves. All the patterns become harmless. They're no longer, you're no longer possessed by them. Let's say you look good and you like to dress nicely. There's nothing wrong with that, but do you derive your entire or large part of your sense of who you are from that, which is you're in the grip of ego, or are you simply enjoying looking good? Do it while you can, it won't last. Why not enjoy? If you look nice, enjoy it, and you can superficially even enjoy being seen by others and you, oh, okay. You can still, there can be a superficial enjoyment in that as long as you're rooted at a deeper level, you can still enjoy certain things on the level of form without being completely trapped in them so that they don't no longer constitute the foundation for your sense of self. Then you know full well, okay, I look nice now and I'll make the most of it because I know what's going to happen to the physical form, what time will do to it. Also a possession. If you have something that you enjoy, why not enjoy it? But do you derive your sense of who you are from what you have? That's a huge trap. So you can enjoy an object that is in your possession without the egoic attachment to it. There's a difference between egoic attachment and enjoyment of something. And sometimes you may not know whether you have egoic attachment or simple enjoyment until you lose it. If then there's a sense of, oh, it's gone. The car that I loved driving in, somebody must have taken it. And now you will know whether there was an egoic attachment or just enjoyment. If there was egoic attachment, you suffer. There's a lot of upset and anger and wailing. Or somebody scratched it. Somebody, when you get back to your car, you just had it washed, shiny, and you get back to it, scratch. And here's your opportunity of finding out what kind of relationship you had with your car. Because before you might have told yourself, I like this car, I love it, but there's no ego in it whatsoever. And also when there's not an egoic attachment to things, also you are not going to accumulate unnecessarily possessions that you don't need, that in the egoic state just have a function of satisfying the permanent sense of lack that is the ego. So then you have to go on shopping expeditions every other weekend. And then you come home with these shiny bags. And for a moment, the ego feels elated. And here's a new pair of shoes. But the satisfaction doesn't last very long. And then the sense of lack comes back. I need some more. And in some people, it even develops into an addiction to shopping. Amazing. And that's a clear sign. If one or two of you still occasionally experience that, it's a clear sign that, oh, that's the ego. And that there's always something lacking in this ego. Part of the egoic identity is a continuous sense of not enough on whatever level. And some people try to meet it on the shopping level. So the difference between appreciating something nice, nothing wrong with that, because that's part of our surface reality where there are objects. And some objects can be very lovely to hold. And you never, the sense of this belongs to me is less and less. And there can be an appreciation without the sense of this is my thing. So whatever you have, you look after it for a while, as the famous watch advert tells you. It's a very expensive watch. And they say, you never actually own this watch. You only look after it for the next generation. That's, so that's an ad with a slight spiritual change to it. But unfortunately you have to pay at least $20,000 to buy that watch. So I, my confession is that on the whole, I don't get attracted too much to buying things. I never know what to buy or to even clothes. It's hard to buy anything. I just, it doesn't work. And when I, you might have noticed. And that's why the, when I look into a shop window, I sometimes can look at something nice, but I never feel the compulsion to actually buy it. But as far as objects are concerned, I like mechanical watches. So that's my personal thing. Watches that tick, they go, you wind them up or they are automatic. And people have made them. They sat down and meticulously put them together. The watchmaker in the old fashioned way, giving it a lot of attention. And if an object is made with somebody giving it a lot of attention, it doesn't have to be a watch. It can be a little artifact that somebody has spent time making and giving it attention. Then once it's finished, it has that sense of quality to it. It's like the consciousness of the maker has become part of the object. And really perhaps this is what we mean by real quality. That somebody has also, you can do the same with making a meal. So then also if you, a meal that has been made by somebody, has given complete attention to the making of it, it adds an additional energy field to the meal that you can sense. It's done with care and attention.