Rising above life's challenges.

In this podcast, Eckhart talks with a live audience.

He asks when life's challenges strike, how do we respond?

Do we rise above worn-out patterns with new awareness?

Or do we spiral into the old unconsciousness?

He says, we shouldn't blame ourselves when we relapse.

Suffering and setbacks are necessary and vital part of the awakening.

How reactive are you still?

And don't condemn yourself whenever you discover some kind of reactivity in yourself, whenever you discover some kind of reactivity in yourself

whenever you discover, you've fallen back

into complete identification with arising thoughts.

It's a good that discovery is the decisive moment.

And it's, oh, you lost it for a few hours, you lost it for a day or two.

Challenges particularly.

And so wherever a problem arises in your life, a challenge arises in your life, there's the test.

Are you a reactive person? Does the challenge draw you back into your reactive

personality with its old conditioned patterns? Or are you able to rise above conditioned thinking and then

deal with a challenge? And you begin with little challenges.

There are more little challenges in your life than big challenges.

You have both and then you have medium challenges.

But the small challenges in your daily life probably come several times a day.

And that's already the beginning of practice.

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