Eckhart's inner journey. In this podcast, Eckhart shares the story of his own personal journey,

beginning with his childhood in Europe. His years at university and ultimately the anxiety and

depression that pushed him to the brink of despair. Out of that pain, Eckart says he experienced

a profound spiritual transformation that forever changed his

life. Eckhart went on to share his dofound wisdom with others, which set him on the path to

become a best-selling author and a groundbreaking spiritual teacher. I grew up in Northwest Germany Germany up to the age of 13.

My father was a journalist, my mother, a housewife.

Then my parents got divorced when I was 12, and my father dropped out of conventional life and

society. He was an early dropout before the term dropout even existed.

My father left to live in Spain and I was very unhappy at school, so at 13 I refused to go to school any longer.

That was my only act of rebellion as a child. I was on the whole a very meek, obedient child,

but something within me prevented me from going to school. I just couldn't do it anymore.

So I stopped. My mother didn't know what to do with me. So finally it was decided that I should join my father in Spain, who had remarried,

and lived a very unconventional life.

He lived on his savings for a few years, and then he started working there.

So I spent my teenage years from 13 to 19 in Spain,

so the Spanish language became my second language.

And I was taken out of the culture that had surrounded me

for the first 13 years of my life,

and then placed in a completely different environment and culture.

And that probably was a good thing because if one spends one's whole life in one particular cultural environment,

one tends to become conditioned by that particular culture without knowing it.

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