ET

 That passage describes the turning point in the life of Eckhart Tolle, which he later recounted in his book The Power of Now. The key idea isn’t the dramatic story — it’s the insight behind the question:

“Who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with ‘myself’?”

He realized there seemed to be two layers:

• the thinking mind (the anxious, depressed “myself”)
• the awareness noticing it (the “I” observing)

Once he identified with the awareness instead of the thoughts, the thoughts lost their grip. That’s what he calls presence — attention rooted in the current moment instead of being trapped in mental narratives.

His teaching boils down to three core ideas:

• Thoughts are not you — they’re events appearing in consciousness
• Psychological suffering comes from resisting the present moment
• Peace appears when attention rests in simple awareness (no mental commentary)

The “sitting on park benches” part symbolizes this: he wasn’t chasing meaning anymore — he was just experiencing existence without interpreting it.

Some people read this as:

• spiritual awakening
• psychological dissociation from rumination
• mindfulness taken to an extreme
• or simply a recovery from severe depression through cognitive shift

Regardless of interpretation, the mechanism is familiar in modern psychology:
when you observe thoughts instead of believing them, they weaken.

It’s similar to mindfulness practices where you notice:

• “I’m having the thought that I’m worthless”
  instead of
• “I am worthless.”

That tiny separation changes everything.