Spiritual Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

The question that came to Eckhart Tolle on that night when his life changed irrevocably was, “Are there two of me?

He was responding to the thought that was reverberating in his head, “I cannot live with myself any longer.”

There are, of course, two of us, “I” and “myself”—until like Eckharat we wake up to the fact that one of the two isn’t real but just a construct in our head.

Spiritual Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

Earlier today I was asked the question, “What is loss to you? How do you see it?”

I responded that I really have no concept of loss.

Perhaps you wonder how I can say this. Don’t we all experience a sense of loss when someone or something important to us vanishes from our everyday experience?

Spiritual Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

The 2003 movie Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, and Lucy Davenport, relates the true story of the marriage between the English poet Ted Hughes and the American poet Sylvia Plath.

It’s a rather vampire-like relationship—an example of what can happen between two people when they don’t take the time to really get to know each other and end up either dependently or reactively sucking the life out of each other instead of simply being themselves alongside each other.

Spiritual Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

Do you realize that to be you, a unique individual who no one else will ever be able to experience in the way you experience yourself, means you are going to be one of a kind and therefore alone in your uniqueness forever?

What may not be obvious is that this isn’t a problem to be solved, but a magnificent thing.

Spiritual Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

The businessman the Little Prince has met tells us again and again that he’s a serious person.

To him, this is his identity.

He admits that all the counting he has been doing nonstop for years is difficult work. “But,” he says, “I am a serious person.”

Life has a way of shaping itself to accommodate how we see ourselves and feel about ourselves.