From 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle, pg 186 to 189:
WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE
Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as your
needs and what matters to you in life - and whatever matters to you
will have the power to upset and disturb you. You can use this as a
criterion to find out how deeply you know yourself. What matters to
you is not necessarily what you say or believe, but what your
action and reactions reveal as important and serious to you. So you
may want to ask yourself the question: What are the things that
upset and disturb me? If small things have the power to disturb
you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small. That will
be your unconscious belief. What are the small things? Ultimately
all things are small because all things are transient.
You might say, "I know I am an immortal spirit," or "I am tired of
this mad world, and peace is all I want" - until the phone rings.
Bad news: The stock market has collapsed; the deal may fall
through; the car has been stolen; your mother-in-law has arrived; (
) the trip is cancelled, the contract has been
broken; your partner has left you; they demand more money; they say
it's your fault. Suddenly there is a surge of anger, of anxiety. A
harshness comes into your voice; "I can't take any more of this."
You accuse and blame, attack, defend, or justify yourself, and it's
all happening on autopilot. Something is obviously much more
important to you now than the inner peace that a moment ago you
said was all you wanted, and you're not an immortal spirit anymore
either. The deal, the money, the contract, the loss or threat of
loss are more important. To whom? To the immortal spirit that you
said you are? No, to me. The small me that seeks security or
fulfilment in things that are transient or angry because it fails
to find it. Well, at least now you know who you really think you
are.
If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If
peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew
yourself to be spirit rather than a little me, you would remain
nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging
people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation
and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself form it.
Then out of your alertness would come a response. What you are
(consciousness), not who you think you are (a small me), would be
responding. It would be powerful and effective and would make no
person or situation into an enemy.
The world always makes sure that you cannot fool yourself for long
about who you really think you are by showing you what truly
matters to you. How you react to people and situations, especially
when challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know
yourself.
The more limited, the more narrowly egoic the view of yourself, the
more you will see, focus on, and react to the egoic limitations,
the unconsciousness in others. Their "faults" or what you perceive
as their faults become to your their identity. This means you will
see only the ego in them and thus strengthen the ego in yourself.
Their "faults" or what you perceive as their faults become to you
their identity. This means you will only see the ego in them and
thus strengthen the ego in yourself. Instead of looking through
the ego in others, you are looking at the ego. Who is looking at
the ego? The ego in you.
Very unconscious people experience their own ego through its
reflection in others. When you realize that what you react to in
others is also in you (and sometimes only in you), you begin to
become aware of your own ego. At that stage, you may also realize
that you were doing to others what you thought others were doing to
you. You cease seeing yourself as a victim.
You are not the ego, so when you become aware of the ego in you, it
does not mean you know who you are it means you know who you are
not. But it is through
knowing who you are not that the greatest obstacle to truly knowing
yourself is removed.
Nobody can tell you who you are. It would just be another concept,
so it would not change you. Who
you are requires no belief. In fact, every belief is an
obstacle. It does not even require your realization, since you are
already who you are. But without realization, who you are does not
shine forth into this world. It remains in the unmanifested which
is, of course, your true home. You are then like an apparently poor
person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in
it and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential.
