our kneejerk reactivity

 

 

 

 

 

The next time you are offended, consider it a “teachable moment.”

Ask yourself what part of you is actually upset. It’s normally the false or smaller self.

 If we can move back to the big picture of who we are in God, our True Self,

 we’ll find that what upset us usually doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in objective reality!

 But we can waste a whole day (or longer) feeding that hurt until it seems to have a life

 of its own and, in fact, “possesses” us. At that point, it becomes what Eckhart Tolle

 rightly calls our “pain-body.”

Tolle defines this “accumulated pain” as “a negative energy field that occupies

 your body and mind.”  In this space, we seem to have a kneejerk, self-protective

 reaction to everything—and everyone—around us. I emphasize the word reaction

 here because there’s no clear, conscious decision to think or act in this way.

 It just happens and we are seemingly powerless to stop it. By doing healing work

 and by practicing meditation, we learn to stop identifying with the pain

 and instead calmly relate to it in a compassionate way.

For example, in centering prayer, we observe the hurt as it arises 

in our stream of consciousness, but we don’t jump on the boat and give it energy. 

Instead, we name it (“resentment toward my spouse”), then we let go of it,

 and let the boat float down the river. We have the power to say, “That’s not me.

 I don’t need that today. I have no need to feed this resentment. 

I know who I am without it.” This is the beginning of emotional sobriety.

 

If we’ve been eating a regular meal of resentment toward our spouse, our boss,

 our parents, or “the world,” the boat’s going to come back around

 in the next minute because it’s accustomed to us filling our plate.

 But we must be able to ask and to discover, “Who was I before I resented my spouse?

 And even before that?” This is the primary way we learn to live in our True Self,

 where we are led by a foundational “yes,” not by the petty push backs of “no.”

 

 

 

 

~ Richard Rohr 

from Emotional Sobriety:

 Rewiring Our Programs for ‘Happiness’

 

~ Eckhart Tolle 

from The Power of Now:

 A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

 

 

 

surrender

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to 
rather than opposing the flow of life.  The only place where you can
 experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender
 is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation.  

It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.  
Inner resistance is to say "no" to what is,
 through mental judgment and emotional negativity.

 It becomes particularly pronounced when things "go wrong,"
 which means that there is a gap between the demands 
or rigid expectations of your mind and what is.  That is the pain gap. 

 If you have lived long enough, you will know that things
 "go wrong" quite often.  It is precisely at those times that surrender 
needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life.   

Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification 
and thus reconnects you with Being.  Resistance is the mind.

~ Eckhart Tolle

from The Power of Now

photo by Eliot Porter

 

 

 

not your true identity

 

 

 

 

 

The essence of all spirituality is presence,
a state of consciousness that transcends thinking.
There is a space behind and in between your thoughts and emotions.
When you become aware of that space,
you are present,
and you realize that your personal history,
which consists of thought,

is not your true identity and is not the essence of who you are.
What is that space, that inner spaciousness?
It is pure consciousness,
the transcendent "I AM" that becomes aware of itself.
The Buddha calls it sunyata,
emptiness.
It is the "kingdom of heaven" that Jesus pointed to,
which is within you
here and now.

~  Eckhart Tolle

 with thanks to louie, louie

 

 

 

now

.

By making peace with the present moment....That present moment
 is the field on which the game of life happens. 
It cannot happen anywhere else. 

 Once you have made peace with the present moment, see what happens, 
what you can do or choose to do, or rather what life does through you. 

There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living,
 the secret of all success and happiness: 
One With Life.
 Being one with life is being one with now. 
You then realize that you don't live your life,
 but life lives you. Life is the dancer,
 and you are the dance.

~ Eckhart Tolle
from A New Earth

my secret

J. Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, 

spoke and traveled almost continually all over the world

 for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words

…that which is beyond words. 

At one of his talks in the later part of his life, he surprised his audience by asking,

 “Do you want to know my secret?”

Everyone became very alert. 

Many people in the audience had been coming to listen to him for twenty or thirty years and still failed to grasp the essence of his teaching. Finally, after all these years, the master would give them the key to understanding.

“This is my secret,” he said.

 “I don’t mind what happens.”

~ from Eckhart Tolle's
A New Earth – Awakening to your Life’s Purpose

observe

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. 

It is there to be used for a specific task, 

and when the task is completed, you lay it down. 

As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent 

of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, 

but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, 

much of it is also harmful.

Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. 

It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

~ Eckhart Tolle

art by van gogh

a very sacred thing

The natural way of being after death of a loved one is suffering at first,
 then there is a deepening. In that deepening, you go to a place
 where there is no death. And the fact that you felt that means you went deep enough,
 to the place where there is no death. Conditioned as your mind is by society, 
the contemporary world that you live in, which knows nothing about that dimension
 – your mind then tells you that there is something wrong with this. 
Your mind says “I should not be feeling peace, 
that is not what one feels in a situation like this.”
But that’s a conditioned thought by the culture that you live in. 
So instead we can recognize when this happens, when that thought comes 
– recognize it as a conditioned thought that is not true.

It doesn't mean that the waves of sadness don’t come back from time to time. 
But in between the waves of sadness, you sense there is peace. 
As you sense that peace, you sense the essence of your children as well 
– the timeless essence. So death is a very sacred thing 
– not just a dreadful thing. When you react to the loss of form,
 that’s dreadful.

When you go deep enough to the formless, the dreadful is no longer dreadful,
 it’s sacred. Then you will experience the two levels, 
when somebody dies who is close to you. Yes it’s dreadful on the level of form.
 It’s sacred on the deeper level. Death can enable you to find that dimension in yourself.
 You’re helping countless other humans if you find that dimension in yourself 
– the sacred dimension of life. Death can help you find the sacred dimension of life 
– where life is indestructible.

Surrender can open that door for you. Complete acceptance of it. 
So honor that sacred dimension and realize that what your mind is saying, 
that it isn't right, is just a form of conditioning 
– it isn’t the truth. It is supremely right.

This is always the window into the formless. As you accept it, surrender.
 Because the form is gone, your mind becomes still when you surrender to death.
 It’s not through explanations that you accept death. You can have explanations, 
mental explanations that say, well, he or she will move on or reincarnate, 
or go to some place of rest. That can be comforting, but you can go
 to a deeper place than that, where you don’t need explanations 
– a state of immediate realization of the sacredness of death, 
because what opens up when the form dissolves is life beyond form.
 That is the only thing that is sacred. 
That is the sacred dimension.

You can get tiny glimpses of that when you lose something, 
and you completely accept that it’s gone. 
This is a tiny glimpse of death and it can give you a tiny realization
 – maybe even more than tiny, if you’re ready.

~ Eckhart Tolle

when death is denied

When death is denied, life loses its depth. 

 The possibility of knowing who we are beyond name and form, 

the dimension of the transcendent, disappears from our lives because death is the opening into that dimension. 

People tend to be uncomfortable with endings, because every ending is a little death. 

 That's why in many languages the word for “good-bye” means “see you again.” 

Whenever an experience comes to an end -

 a gathering of friends, a vacation, your children leaving home - you die a little death. 

 A “form” that appeared in your consciousness as that experience dissolves. 

 Often this leaves behind a feeling of emptiness that most people try hard not to feel, not to face. 

If you can learn to accept and even welcome the endings in your life, 

you may find that the feeling of emptiness that initially felt uncomfortable turns into a sense of inner spaciousness that is deeply peaceful.

By learning to die daily in this way, you open yourself to life….

Whenever death occurs, whenever a life form dissolves, 

God, the formless and unmanifested, shines through the opening left by the dissolving form. 

 That is why the most sacred thing in life is death. 

 That is why the peace of God can come to you through contemplation and acceptance of death.

~ Eckhart Tolle

surrender

Until you practice surrender, the spiritual dimension is something you read about,

 talk about, get excited about, write books about, think about, believe in - 

or don’t, as the case may be. It makes no difference. 

Not until you surrender does it become a living reality in your life. 

When you do, the energy that you emanate and which then runs your life

 is of a much higher vibrational frequency than the mind energy that runs our world - 

the energy that created the existing social, political, and economic structures of our civilization, 

and which also continuously perpetuates itself through our educational systems and media. 

Through surrender, spiritual energy comes into this world. 

It creates no suffering for yourself, for other humans, or any other life form on the planet. 

Unlike mind energy, it does not pollute the earth, and is not subject to the law of polarities, 

which dictates that nothing can exist without its opposite, that there can be no good without bad. 

Those who run on mind energy, which is still the vast majority of the Earth’s population, 

remain unaware of the existence of spiritual energy. 

It belongs to a different order of reality and will create a different world 

when a sufficient number of humans enter the surrendered state 

and so become totally free of negativity. 

If the Earth is to survive, this will be the energy of those who inhabit it.

~ Eckhart Tolle

from The Power of Now

the sacred dimension

The natural way of being after death of a loved one is suffering at first, then there is a deepening. In that deepening, you go to a place where there is no death. And the fact that you felt that means you went deep enough, to the place where there is no death. Conditioned as your mind is by society, the contemporary world that you live in, which knows nothing about that dimension – your mind then tells you that there is something wrong with this. Your mind says “I should not be feeling peace, that is not what one feels in a situation like this”. But that’s a conditioned thought by the culture that you live in. So instead we can recognize when this happens, when that thought comes – recognize it as a conditioned thought that is not true.  

It doesn't mean that the waves of sadness don’t come back from time to time. But in between the waves of sadness, you sense there is peace. As you sense that peace, you sense the essence of your children as well – the timeless essence. So death is a very sacred thing – not just a dreadful thing. When you react to the loss of form, that’s dreadful.

When you go deep enough to the formless, the dreadful is no longer dreadful, it’s sacred. Then you will experience the two levels, when somebody dies who is close to you. Yes it’s dreadful on the level of form. It’s sacred on the deeper level. Death can enable you to find that dimension in yourself. You’re helping countless other humans if you find that dimension in yourself – the sacred dimension of life. Death can help you find the sacred dimension of life – where life is indestructible.

Surrender can open that door for you. Complete acceptance of it. So honor that sacred dimension and realize that what your mind is saying, that it isn't right, is just a form of conditioning – it isn’t the truth. It is supremely right.

This is always the window into the formless. As you accept it, surrender. Because the form is gone, your mind becomes still when you surrender to death. It’s not through explanations that you accept death. You can have explanations, mental explanations that say, well, he or she will move on or reincarnate, or go to some place of rest. That can be comforting, but you can go to a deeper place than that, where you don’t need explanations – a state of immediate realization of the sacredness of death, because what opens up when the form dissolves is life beyond form. That is the only thing that is sacred. That is the sacred dimension.

~ Eckhart Tolle

living with meaning, purpose and wisdom in the digital age

~ Eckhart Tolle with Bradley Horowitz

True freedom

.

.

True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such

a way as if you had completely chosen whatever

you feel or experience at this moment.

This inner alignment with Now is the end of suffering.

Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no.

If you had not suffered as you have, 

there would be no depth to you as a human being, 

no humility, no compassion.

You would not be reading this now. 

Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, 

and then comes a point when it has served its purpose.

Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.

.

~ Eckhart Tolle

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surrender

.

.

 

 

The human mind has grown even since the time of the Buddha, 2,500 years ago.

 The human mind is more noisy and more all-pervasive, and the egos are bigger.

 There's been an ego growth over thousands of years; it's growing to a point of madness,

 with the ultimate madness having been reached in the twentieth century.

 One only needs to read twentieth-century history to see that it has been the climax

 of human madness, if it's measured in terms of human

 violence inflicted on other humans.

So in the present time, 

we can't escape from the world anymore;

 we can't escape from the mind. 

We need to enter surrender while we are in the world. 

That seems to be the path that is effective in the world that we live in now.

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- Eckhart Tolle

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