How Eckhart Tolle helped me through Hell

I was in a very bad place during my 20s. My marriage caused me a lot of suffering. Neither I or my ex-husband were ready for a committed relationship. I suffered a lot because we were arguing all the time, shouting at each other, I was under a huge emotional strain for the whole 5 years of our marriage.

I cried almost every single day, I was just sorry for myself and couldn't get out of that mindset. I could go on for ages about how horrible I felt, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I forgave my ex long ago for everything, and I sincerely hope he’s happy with his new wife and kids. The point I wanted to make here is that I was really unhappy with my life back then, but everything that happens to us happens for a reason, just like my ex-marriage.

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You might ask the logical question: Why did I wait for 5 years to divorce him if things were so bad? Because it was a situation I saw no way out of at the time. My ex and I had a business together, and I had to keep it going because we had bills to pay. He lived in our place of business and I couldn’t just kick him out.

I realized I had to find other ways to change how I felt, and I said to myself: 'If I can't change things on the outside, I need to look on the inside.'

I started reading about meditation and I stumbled upon Eckhart Tolle and The Power of Now. I downloaded the audio version of his book and devoured it in a bit more than a day.

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Eckhart Tolle showed me the journey to enlightenment and its natural enemy, the mind. He talked about having a pain-free identity by living fully in the present moment. I suddenly knew that I was amplifying my negative feelings and making myself depressed by constantly thinking about how horrible things were for me. I was just making a bad situation much worse. When I realized this, I was finally able to become fully present. I started applying his teachings in my everyday life, and I finally had a proper look at what was going on around me. I saw trees, flowers, the sun. I realized there were beautiful things and people around me.

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I started enjoying the few good things left in my life. I liked my job and being surrounded by people, so I concentrated on helping them as much as I could. That way I made new friends, and I was not so lonely anymore, which made me feel better almost instantly. When I was on my own I meditated and kept listening to The Power of Now, and when I knew it in and out, I listen to his next book, A New Earth: Awakening to your life’s purpose, and that taught me to ask the question from myself: ‘What’s so bad about this moment?’ every time negative thoughts crept in. ‘I am alive, breathing, there are other people around me, I can feel the sun on my skin, everything is just as it should be.’ I tried not to think about yesterday or tomorrow and I concentrated on the present moment as much as I could.

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Eckhart Tolle woke me up to the fact that by thinking about how bad my situation was, about the last fight with my ex-husband, I was just reliving all the pain inside me and again making things worse. He taught me about the pain-body, which feeds on the pain and anger until it grows to such an extent that we can't control it anymore. I knew I had to stop feeding it, so I worked to stop the negative thoughts. Every time one crept in, I concentrated on my breath, the breeze and the sun on my skin, I looked around me and became present.

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Of course, my ex-husband and I still argued, but now I was able to stay on top of my feelings and not get totally consumed by the arising negativity. I concentrated on my breath instead of getting angry, and I stayed quiet. He saw the change in me and we even got back together a few times, but we were so different there was no way for us to live together.

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My situation resolved when I learned how to apply Eckhart's teachings. I was able to open up to new experiences, so life brought new experiences in my way that helped me find a way out of the situation I was in.

Thanks to Eckhart Tolle, now I know that things in life happen for a reason. If it wasn’t for my unhappy marriage, I wouldn't have learned how to become totally present, I wouldn’t have realized that I am not my feelings and that they don’t have to rule me. I can still be OK even when negative feelings creep in and when my life situation isn't what I want it to be.

Because my life situation is NOT my life, it's just a situation I am currently in. It has little to do with my life, because that is really on the inside. I learned that even though things might not always be the way we want them to be, we can still be content in the present moment. Eckhart talked in his book about how happy he was being homeless, sleeping on a park bench for a while. That was when he realised the outside circumstances don't matter that much. The past and future only live in our minds, because we keep thinking about them and reliving them. They are the biggest obstacles to being present, as most people spend their days obsessing over the past or worrying over the future.

Through Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, I learned that there is no point obsessing over the past, because we cannot change it, it had already happened and there is nothing we can do about it. And the future? It hasn’t happened yet, it only exists in our minds, and we can’t make it better by worrying about it. We can make the next moment better by doing the right thing now. So, all we ever have is the present moment, the NOW. Of course we can still make plans for the future, but we can learn to do that while staying in the present moment and that way we’ll be more proactive in it, because we won’t get distracted by our worries about what might happen the next day.

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The pain I was feeling enabled me to go into the NOW and to realise that I am not that pain, and I don’t have to surrender to it. I let the pain be there and concentrated on the present moment. As soon as I accepted it, the pain became lighter and I was able to stop obsessing about my life situation.
The chapter "Moving Deeply Into the Now" in his book The Power of Now, taught me not to identify myself with my problems. Eckhart said we often define ourselves by our ‘problems’, and that we hang on to them because our ego needs them. If they cease to exist, our ego ceases with them.
Many people identify with their problems and defend them, because without them they’d be nothing. They feel that their problems are part of their identity. An example is when someone cannot lose weight, because they can’t change their habits. They claim that their problems are unique, and the usual weight loss methods don’t work for them. Not being able to lose weight is part of their ego, and they can’t let go of it because they’d lose part of their identity with it.
I stopped looking at things in my life as ‘problems’. I was in a certain life situation and that was it. I couldn’t do anything to change at the time, so I concentrated on accepting it.

Eckhart Tolle thought me about the ‘thinker’ in me. I found out that I was not my thoughts, and just like the pain-body, my thoughts don’t have to rule me. I became aware of them, I was able to watch them and distance myself from them. The chapter "Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There Is Peace", was probably the most useful for me at the time. I learned how to feel peace without feeling happiness, and that the source of drama in my life was my lack of acceptance of the life situation I was in.

So I am not angry with my ex-husband. Even though he caused me a lot of pain and suffering at the time, without him I’d never have found #EckhartTolle and his teachings. Since then I can always come back to Eckhart and his teachings when I am in an unwanted life situation.

Most of the time I just need to think about one of my favourite Eckhart’s quotes, like this one:

• “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.”

The other quote that has helped me a lot is even more powerful:

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If my experience made you curious about Eckhart Tolle’s books, you can find the written and audio version at the links below:
The Power of Now - here

A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose - here

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