“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

There’s something direct and practical about the idea Eckhart Tolle expresses here. If you consider yourself as a lifelong learner, what more can you learn from than your own experiences? If experiences aren’t your teacher, what is? Books and meditation? Good answer! But those are your experiences as well. Whether or not your experience is necessary or meaningful or whether this is “best of all possible worlds” (which Voltaire ruthlessly satirizes in Candide), isn’t the point. It’s about the evolution — or persistent gradual growth — of your consciousness.

The idea also connects with Nietzche’s quote about loving everything: “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less conceal it...but love it.”

This podcast is intended -- with a focus on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. The book Who Do You Think You Are is also available at all major e-retailers, and you can find it at bigselfschool.com/store.