Freedom from reactivity. In this podcast, Eckhart talks further about freeing ourselves from the ego.

He says, while it served a powerful purpose for our spiritual growth, it's now time to let it go.

Eckhart explains one of the pitfalls of the ego is our emotional reactivity. He says challenges have the potential to pull us into anger and fear.

He believes when we react, we're at the mercy of situations and other people.

They affect us internally.

However, they don't have to because Eckhart says it's an enormous discovery to

finally realize difficulties don't have to derail us.

He says things can still go wrong, but we don't have to react.

Instead, he believes when we practice presence, we suddenly find we're more conscious,

and as we grow in awareness, our emotional reactivity recedes.

We cannot return to a pre-egoic state of consciousness,

although many humans try to do it because they can't stand living with themselves.

So they try to return to this pre-egoic state by perhaps desensitizing themselves

with certain substances and so on.

And it slows down your mind

and you become more like,

some people become happy temporarily

when they take sufficient amount of alcohol and they become happy temporarily when they take a sufficient amount of alcohol,

then they become happy.

Life is suddenly fine, but you're going to the pre-thinking stage.

You're moving towards unconsciousness.

We can't go back.

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