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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
 Posted - 01/07/2013 : 14:47:50
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This thread will offer some of the best quotes from the work of Ekhart Tolle. See also: http://tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8097
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From Ekhart Tolle's "A New Earth: Awakening to your Life's Purpose." -- Pages 135 - 137
EMOTIONS AND THE EGO
The ego is not only the unobserved mind, the voice in the head which pretends to be you, but also the unobserved emotions that are the body's reaction to what the voice in the head is saying.
We have already seen what kind of thinking the egoic voice engages in most of the time and the dysfunction inherent in the structure of its thought processes, regardless of content. This dysfunctional thinking is what the body reacts to with negative emotion.
The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to. Those reactions are the emotions. The emotions, in turn, feed energy back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place. This is the vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional storymaking.
The emotional component of ego differs from person to person. In some egos, it is greater than in others. Thoughts that trigger emotional responses in the body may sometimes come so fast that before the mind has had time to voice them, the body has already responded with an emotion, and the emotion has turned into a reaction. Those thoughts exist at a pre verbal stage and could be called unspoken, unconscious assumptions. They have their origin in a person's past conditioning, usually from early
childhood. “People cannot be trusted” would be an example of such an unconscious assumption in a person whose primordial relationships, that is to say, with parents roe siblings, were not supportive and did not inspire trust. Here are a few more common unconscious assumptions: “Nobody respects and appreciates me. I need to fight to survive. There is never enough money. Life always lets you down. I don't deserve abundance. I don't deserve love.” Unconscious assumptions create emotions in the body which in turn generate mind activity and/or instant reactions. In this way, they create your personal reality.
The voice of the ego continuously disrupts the body's natural state of wellbeing. Almost every human body is under a great deal of strain and stress, not because it is threatened by some external factor but from within the mind. The body has an ego attached to it, and it cannot but respond to all the dysfunctional thought patterns that make up the ego. Thus, a stream of negative emotion accompanies the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking.
What is a negative emotion? An emotion that is toxic to the body and interferes with its balance and harmonious functioning. Fear, anxiety, anger, bearing a grudge, sadness, hatred or intense dislike, jealousy, envy – all disrupt the energy flow through the body, affect the heart, the immune system, digestion, production of hormones, and so on. Even mainstream medicine, although it knows very little about how the ego operates yet is
beginning to recognize the connection between negative emotional states and physical disease. An emotion that does harm to the body also infects the people you come into contact with and indirectly, though a process of chain reaction, countless others you never meet. There is a generic term for all negative emotions: unhappiness.
Do positive emotions then have the opposite effect on the physical
body? Do they strengthen the immune system, invigorate and heal the body? They do, indeed, but we need to differentiate between positive emotions that are egogenerated and deeper emotions that emanate from your natural state of connectedness with Being.
Positive emotions generated by the ego already contain within themselves their opposite into which they can quickly turn. Here are some examples. What the ego calls love is possessiveness and addictive clinging that can turn into hate within a second. Anticipation about an upcoming event, which is the ego's overvaluation of future, easily turns into its opposite – letdown or disappointment – when the event is over or doesn't fulfill the ego's expectations. Praise and recognition make you feel alive and happy one
day; being criticized or ignored make you dejected and unhappy the next. The pleasure of a wild party turns into bleakness and a hangover the next morning. There is no good without bad, no high without low.
Egogenerated emotions are derived from the mind's identification with external factors which are of course, all unstable and liable to change at any moment. The deeper emotions are not really emotions at all but states of Being. Emotions exist within the realm of opposites. States of Being can be obscured, but they have no opposite. They emanate from within you as the love, joy, and peace that are aspects of your true nature. |
Edited by - shawnsmith on 03/10/2013 06:04:02 |
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Sylvia
199 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 15:40:31
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Oy!
Nothing quite like the words from Eckhart Tolle, a modern day Profit.
Cha-Ching!
I shoulda resisted but I didn't.
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 15:49:42
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| Sylvia, I think his words are very relevant to what you need to do to help yourself independent of how much money he is making. His teaching are simple and maybe some of what he says maybe a little far fetched. To be honest however other than the affirmations (which he does not talk about and were instrumental for me), his teaching is the closest instruction to what I found helped me and others that I have helped guide |
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Ace1
USA
1040 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 17:19:23
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| Thanks again Shawn your the master at finding out these PDFs. |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2013 : 19:35:31
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| You know, Ekhart Tolle is so incredible, so right on. I have read his words over and over again, knowing the truth and hoping that they would SINK IN. But sadly, they just can't seem to get through the layers and layers of Ego with it's defense mechanisms. I think of my TMS energetically as what Ekhart calls a "pain body", a big ball of negativity that feeds on my body. |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2013 : 09:14:38
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Here is what Tolle says on pages 35-38 of the same book:
IDENTIFICATION WITH THINGS
The people in the advertising industry know very well that in order to sell things that people don’t really need, they must convince them that those things will add something to how they see themselves or are seen by others; in other words, add something to their sense of self. They do this, for example, by telling you that you will stand out from the crowd by using this product and so by implication be more fully yourself. Or they may create an association in your mind between the product and a famous person, or a youthful, attractive, or happylooking person. Even pictures of old or deceased celebrities in their prime work well for that purpose. The unspoken assumption is that by buying this product, through some magical act of appropriation, you become like them, or rather the surface image of them.
And so in many cases you are not buying a product but an “identity enhancer.” Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy into. They are expensive and therefore “exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.
What kind of things you identify with will vary from person to person according to age, gender, income, social class, fashion, the surrounding culture, and so on. What you identify with is all to do with content; whereas, the unconscious compulsion to identify is structural. It is one of the most basic ways in which the egoic mind operates.
Paradoxically, what keeps the so called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work: The ego satisfaction is shortlived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming.
Of course, in this physical dimension that our surface selves inhabit, things are a necessary and inescapable part of our lives. We need housing, clothes, furniture, tools, transportation. There may also be things in our lives that we value because of their beauty or inherent quality. We need to honor the world of things, not despise it. Each thing has Beingness, is a temporary form that has its origin within the formless one Life, the source of all things, all bodies, all forms. In most ancient cultures, people believed that everything, even socalled inanimate objects, had an indwelling spirit, and in this respect they were closer to the truth than we are today. When you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore. Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one.
But we cannot really honor things if we use them as a means to selfenhancement, that is to say, if we try to find ourselves through them. This is exactly what the ego does. Ego identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more.
The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so attached to the notion of growth that they can’t let go of that word, so they refer to recession as a time of “negative growth.”
A large part of many people’s lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things. This is why one of the ills of our times is object proliferation. When you can no feel the life that you are, you are likely to fill up your life with things. As a spiritual practice, I suggest that you investigate your relationship with the world of things through self observation, and in particular, things that are designated with the word “my.” You need to be alert and honest to find out, for example, whether your sense of self worth is bound up with things you possess. Do certain things induce a subtle feeling of importance or superiority? Does the lack of them make you feel inferior to others who have more than you? Do you casually mention things you own or show them off to increase your sense of worth in someone else’s eyes and through them in your own? Do you feel resentful or angry and somehow diminished in your sense of self when someon e else has more than you or when you lose a prized possession?
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Edited by - shawnsmith on 01/08/2013 12:42:00 |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2013 : 12:43:51
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And again, on pages 66, 67
BEING RIGHT, MAKING WRONG
Complaining as well as faultfinding and reactivity strengthen the ego's sense of boundary and separateness on which its survival depends. But they also strengthen the ego in another way by giving it a feeling of superiority on which it thrives. It may not be immediately apparent how complaining, say, about a traffic jam, about politicians, about the “greedy wealthy” or the “lazy unemployed,” or your colleagues or exspouse , men or women, can give you a sense of superiority. Here is why. When you complain, by implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against is wrong.
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position – a perspective, an opinion, a judgment, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, and so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. In other words: you need to make others wrong in order to get a stronger sense of who you are. Not only a person, but also a situation can be made wrong through complaining and reactivity, which always implies that “this should not be happening.” Being right places you in a position of imagined moral superiority in relation to the person or situation that is being judged and found wanting. It is that sense of superiority the ego craves and through which it enhances itself.
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Edited by - shawnsmith on 01/09/2013 09:31:26 |
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altherunner
Canada
511 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2013 : 19:16:43
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| Nice quotes, he changed my thinking, making it more of a light background noise, rather than a dull roar. |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/09/2013 : 06:44:47
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Pages 109-112
THE PATHOLOGICAL EGO
In a wider sense of the word, the ego itself is pathological, no matter what form it takes. When we look at the ancient Greek root of the word pathological, we discover just how appropriate that term is when applied to the ego. Although the word is normally used to describe a condition of disease, it is derived from pathos, which means suffering. This is, of course, exactly what the Buddha already discovered 2,600 years ago as a characteristic of the human condition.
A person in the grip of ego, however, does not recognize suffering as suffering, but will look upon it as the only appropriate response in any given situation. The ego in is blindness is incapable of seeing the suffering it inflicts on itself and on others. Unhappiness is an egocreated mental emotional disease that has reached epidemic proportions. It is the inner equivalent of the environmental pollution of our planet. Negative states, such as anger, anxiety, hatred, resentment, discontent, envy, jealousy, and so on, are not recognized as negative but as totally justified and are further misperceived not as selfcreated but as caused by someone else or some external factor. “I am holding you responsible for my pain.” This is what by implication the ego is saying.
The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation of and reaction to that situation. You might say, “What a dreadful day,” without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by That resistance. In Shakespeare's words, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” What is more, suffering or negativity is often misperceived by the ego as pleasure because up t the point the ego strengthens itself through it.
For example, anger or resentment strengthen the ego enormously by increasing the sense of separateness, emphasizing the otherness of others and creating a seemingly unassailable fortresslike mental position of “rightness.” If you were able to observe the physiological changes that take place inside your body when possessed by such negative states, how they adversely affect the functioning of the heart, the digestive and immune systems, and countless other bodily functions, it would become abundantly clear that such states are indeed pathological, are forms of suffering and not pleasure.
Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that wants the negativity, that perceives it as pleasurable, or that believes it will get you what you want. Otherwise, who would want to hang on to negativity, make themselves and others miserable, and create disease in the body? So, whenever there is negativity n you, if you can be aware at that moment that there is something in you that takes pleasure in it or believes it has a useful purpose you are becoming aware of the ego directly. The moment this happens, your identity has shifted from ego to awareness. This means the ego is shrinking and awareness is growing.
If in the midst of negativity you are able to realize “At this moment I am creating suffering form myself” it will be enough to raise you above the limitations of conditioned egoic states and reactions. It will open up infinite possibilities which come to you when there is awareness other vastly more intelligent ways of dealing with any situation. You will be free to let go of your unhappiness the moment you recognize it as unintelligent. Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected. Cleverness is motivated by selfinterest, and it is extremely shortsighted. Most politicians and businesspeople are clever. Very few are intelligent. Whatever is attained through cleverness is shortlived and always turns out to be eventually self defeating. Cleverness divides; intelligence unites.
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tmsjptc
USA
124 Posts |
Posted - 01/09/2013 : 11:39:42
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| Shawn, thanks for all the posts. After going thru two Dr. Sarno books, I read the Power of Now and then A New Earth. I ended up re-reading each of them three times. Truly phenomenal stuff and I believe they helped me get to a greater level of understanding and healing from TMS. Thanks again for the reminder of why I enjoyed them so much. |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2013 : 13:20:21
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Pages 199- 204....
IS THAT SO?
The Zen Master Hakuin lived in a town in Japan. He was held in high regard and many people came to him for spiritual teaching. Then it happened that the teenage daughter of his next door neighbor became pregnant. When being questioned by her angry and scolding parents as to the identity of the father, she finally told them that he was Hakuin, the Zen Master. In great anger the parents rushed over to Hakuin and told him with much shouting and accusing that their daughter had confessed that he was the father. All he replied was, “Is that so?”
News of the scandal spread throughout the town and beyond. The Master lost his reputation. This did not trouble him. Nobody came to see him anymore. He remained unmoved. When the child was born, the parents brought the baby to Hakuin. “You are the father, so you look after him.” The Master took loving care of the child. A year later, the mother remorsefully confessed to her parents that the real father of the child was the young man who worked at the butcher shop. In great distress they went to see Hakuin to
apologize and ask for forgiveness. “We are really sorry. We have come to take the baby back. Our daughter confessed that you are not the father.”
“Is that so?” is all he would may as he handed the baby over to them.
The Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, in exactly the same way: “Is that so?” He allows the form of the moment, good or bad, to be as it is and so does not become a participant in human drama. To him there is only this moment, and this moment is as it is. Events are not personalized. He is nobody's victim. He is so completely at one with what happens that what happens has no power over him anymore. Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.
The baby is looked after with loving care. Bad turns into good through the power of nonresistance. Always responding to what the present moment requires, he lets go of the baby when it is time to do so. Imagine briefly how the ego would have reacted during the various stages of the unfolding of these events.
THE EGO AND THE PRESENT MOMENT
The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now takes, that is to say, what is or what happens. If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment.
Once you have reached a certain level of consciousness, (and if you are reading this, you almost certainly have), you are able to decide what kind of a relationship you want to have with the present moment. Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you want to have with life. Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend, it is up to you to make the first move: become friendly toward it, welcome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative. One decision changes your entire reality.But that one decision you have to make again and again and again – until it becomes natural to live in such a way.
The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of the ego. The ego can never be in alignment with the present moment, which is to say, aligned with life, since its very nature compels it to ignore, resist, or devalue the Now. Time is what the ego lives on. The stronger the ego, the more time takes over your life. Almost every thought you think is then concerned with past or future, and you sense of self depends on the past for your identity and on the future for its fulfillment. Fear, anxiety, expectation, regret, guilt, anger are the dysfunctions of the timebound state of consciousness.
There are three ways in which the ego will treat the present moment: as a means to and end, as an obstacle, or as an enemy. Let us look at them in turn, so that when this pattern operates in you, you can recognize it and – decide again.
To the ego, the present moment is, at best, only useful as a means to an end. It gets you to some future moment that is considered more important, even though the future never comes except as the present moment and is therefore never more than a thought in your head. In other words, you aren't ever fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere. When this pattern becomes more pronounced, and this is very common, the present moment is regarded and treated as if it were an obstacle to be overcome. This is where impatience, frustration, and stress arise, and in our culture, it is many people's everyday reality, their normal state. Life, which is now, is seen as a “problem,” and you come to inhabit a world of problems that all need to be solved before you can be happy, fulfilled, or really start living – or so you think. The problem is: For every problem that is solved, another one pops up. As long as the present moment is seen as an obstacle, there can be no end to problems. “I'll be whatever you want me to be,” says Life or the Now. “I'll treat you the way you treat me. If you see me as a problem, I will be a problem to you. If you treat me as an obstacle, I will be an obstacle.”
At worst, and this is also very common, the present moment is treated as if it were an enemy. When you hate what you are doing, complain about your surroundings, curse things that are happening or have happened, or when your internal dialogue consists of shoulds and shouldn'ts, of blaming and accusing, when you are arguing with what is, arguing with that which is always already the case. you are making Life into an enemy and Life says, “War is what you want, and war is what you get.” External reality, which always reflects back to you your inner state, is then experienced as hostile. A vital question to ask yourself frequently is: What is my relationship with the present moment? Then become alert to find out the answer. Am I treating the Now as no more than a means to an end? Do I see it as an obstacle? Am I making it into an enemy? Since the present moment is all you ever have, since Life is inseparable from the Now, what the question really means is: What is my relationship with Life? This question is an excellent way of unmasking the ego in you and bringing you into the state of Presence. Although the question doesn't embody the absolute truth (Ultimately, I and the present moment are one), it is a useful pointer in the right direction. Ask yourself it often until you don't need it anymore. How do you go beyond a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment? The most important thing is to see it in yourself, in your thoughts and actions. In the moment of seeing, of noticing that your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, you are present. The seeing is the arising Presence. The moment you see the dysfunction, it begins to dissolve. Some people laugh out loud when they see this. With the seeing comes the power of choice – the choice of saying yes to the Now, of making it into your friend.
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2013 : 13:29:11
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Pages 230-233
TELEVISION
Watching television is the favorite leisure activity or rather non activity for millions of people around the world. The average American, by the time he is sixty years old, will have spent fifteen years staring at the TV screen. In many other countries the figures are similar.
Many people find watching TV “relaxing.” Observe yourself closely and you will find that the longer the screen remains the focus of your attention, the more your thought activity becomes suspended, and for long periods you are watching the talk show, game show, sitcom, or even commercials with almost no thought being generated by your mind. Not only do you not remember your problems anymore, but you become temporarily free of yourself – and what could be more relaxing than that?
So dos TV watching create inner space? Does it cause you to be present? Unfortunately, it does not. Although for long periods your mind may not be generating any thoughts, it has linked into the thought activity of the television show. It has linked up with the TV version of the collective mind, and is thinking its thoughts. Your mind is inactive only in the sense that it is not producing thoughts. It is, however, continuously absorbing thoughts and images that come through the TV screen. This induces a trance like passive state of heightened susceptibility, not unlike hypnosis. That is why it lends itself to manipulation of “public opinion,” as politicians and special interest groups as well as advertisers know and will pay millions of dollars to catch you in that state of receptive unawareness. They want their thoughts to become your thoughts, and usually they succeed.
So when watching television, the tendency is for you to fall below thought, not rise above it. Television has this in common with alcohol and certain other drugs. While it provides some relief from your mind, you again pay a high price: loss of consciousness. Like those drugs, it too has a strong addictive quality. You reach for the remote control to switch off and instead find yourself going through all the channels. Half an hour or an hour later, you are still watching, still going through the channels. The off button is the only one your finger seems unable to press. You are still watching, usually not because anything of interest has caught your attention, but precisely because there is nothing of interest to watch. Once you are hooked, the more trivial, the more meaningless, it is, the more addictive it becomes. If it were interesting, thought provoking, it would stimulate your mind into thinking for itself again, which is more conscious and therefore preferable to a TV induced trance. Your attention would, therefore, no longer be totally held captive by the images on the screen.
The content of the program, if there is a certain quality to it, can to some extent counteract and sometimes even undo the hypnotic, mind numbing effect of the medium of TV. There are some programs that have been extremely helpful to many people; have changed their lives for the better, opened their heart, made them more conscious. Even some comedy shows, although they may be about nothing in particular, can be unintentionally spiritual by showing a caricature version of human folly and the ego. They teach us not to take anything too seriously, to approach life in a lighthearted way, and above all, they teach by making us laugh. Laughter is extraordinarily liberating as well as healing. Most of television, however, is as yet controlled by people who are totally controlled by the ego, and so the TV's hidden agenda becomes control of you by putting you to sleep, that is to say, making you unconscious. Yet there is enormous and still largely unexplored potential in the medium of television.
Avoid watching programs and commercials that assault you with a rapid succession of images that change every two or three seconds or less. Excessive TV watching and those programs in particular are largely responsible for attention deficit disorder, a mental dysfunction now affecting millions of children worldwide. A short attention span makes all your perceptions and relationships shallow and unsatisfying. Whatever you do, whatever action you perform in that state, lacks quality, because quality requires attention.
Frequent and prolonged TV watching not only makes you unconscious, it also induces passivity and drains you of energy. Therefore, rather than watching at random, choose the programs you want to see.
Whenever you remember to do so, feel the aliveness inside your body as you watch. Alternatively, be aware of your breathing from time to time. Look away from the screen at regular intervals so that it does not completely take possession of your visual sense. Don't turn up the volume any higher than necessary so that the TV doesn't overwhelm you on the auditory level. Use the mute button during commercials. Make sure you don't go to sleep immediately after switching off the set or, even worse, fall asleep with the set
still on.
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2013 : 17:04:05
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From "The Power of Now" -- pages 25, 26
http://www.mindwell.be/ebooks/thepowerofnow.pdf
EMOTION: THE BODY'S REACTION TO YOUR MIND
What about emotions? I get caught up in my emotions more than I do in my mind.
Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind - or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create a build-up of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight. The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into awareness.
The more you are identified with your thinking, your likes and dislikes, judgments and interpretations, which is to say the less present you are as the watching consciousness, the stronger the emotional energy charge will be, whether you are aware of it or not. If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom. A great deal has been written about this in recent years, so we don't need to go into it here. A strong unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just happen to you. For example, I have observed that people who carry a lot of anger inside without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked, verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that triggers their own latent anger.
If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with your emotions. We will explore this in more detail later. |
Edited by - shawnsmith on 01/16/2013 17:05:59 |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/21/2013 : 14:06:02
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Chapter 4 of "The Power of Now" is incredible, but I want to highlight the following passage:
The Inner Purpose Of Your Life's Journey
I can see the truth of what you are saying, but I still think that we must have purpose on our life's journey, otherwise we just drift, and purpose means future, doesn't it? How do we reconcile that with living in the present?
When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going or at least the general direction in which you are moving, but don't forget: the only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That's all there ever is.
Your life's journey has an outer purpose and an inner purpose. The outer purpose is to arrive at your goal or destination, to accomplish what you set out to do, to achieve this or that, which, of course, implies future. But if your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey's inner purpose, which has nothing to do with where you are going or what you are doing, but everything to do with how. It has nothing to do with future but everything to do with the quality of your consciousness at this moment. The outer purpose belongs to the horizontal dimension of space and time; the inner purpose concerns a deepening of your Being in the vertical dimension of the timeless Now.
Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now. As you become more deeply aware of this one step, you realize that it already contains within itself all the other steps as well as the destination. This one step then becomes transformed into an expression of perfection, an act of great beauty and quality. It will have taken you into Being, and the light of Being will shine through it. This is both the purpose and the fulfillment of your inner journey, the journey into yourself.
Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we succeed or fail in the world?
It will matter to you as long as you haven't realized your inner purpose. After that, the outer purpose is just a game that you may continue to play simply because you enjoy it. It is also possible to fail completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other way around, which is actually more common: outer riches and inner poverty, or to "gain the world and lose your soul," as Jesus puts it. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to "fail" sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose.
The Past Cannot Survive In Your Presence
You mentioned that thinking or talking about the past unnecessarily is one of the ways in which we avoid the present. But apart from the past that we remember and perhaps identify with, isn't there another level of past within us that is much more deep-seated? I am talking about the unconscious past that conditions our lives, especially through early childhood experiences, perhaps even past-life experiences.
And then there is our cultural conditioning, which has to do with where we live geographically and the historical time period in which we live. All these things determine how we see the world, how we react, what we think, what kind of relationships we have, how we live our lives. How could we ever become conscious of all that or get rid of it? How long would that take? And even if we did, what would there be left?
What is left when illusion ends?
There is no need to investigate the unconscious past in you except as it manifests at this moment as a thought, an emotion, a desire, a reaction, or an external event that happens to you. Whatever you need to know about the unconscious past in you, the challenges of the present will bring it out. If you delve into the past, it will become a bottomless pit: There is always more. You may think that you need more time to understand the past or become free of it, in other words, that the future will eventually free you of the past. This is a delusion. Only the present can free you of the past. More time cannot free you of time. Access the power of Now. That is the key.
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Edited by - shawnsmith on 01/21/2013 14:18:39 |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2013 : 07:33:11
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Tolle also write in The Power of Now:
The Buddha taught that even your happiness is dukkha -a Pali word meaning "suffering" or "unsatisfactoriness." It is inseparable from its opposite. This means that your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one. Only the illusion of time separates them.
This is not being negative. It is simply recognizing the nature of things, so that you don't pursue an illusion for the rest of your life.
Nor is it saying that you should no longer appreciate pleasant or beautiful things or conditions. But to seek something through them that they cannot give - an identity, a sense of permanency and fulfillment - is a recipe for frustration and suffering. The whole advertising industry and consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things. The more you seek happiness in this way, the more it will elude you. Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disillusionrnents before you realize that truth. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they will also give you pain. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy. Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or struggle to attain.
Many people never realize that there can be no "salvation'' in anything they do, possess, or attain. Those who do realize it often become world-weary and depressed: if nothing can give you true fulfillment, what is there left to strive for, what is the point in anything? The Old Testament prophet must have arrived at such a realization when he wrote "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind." When you reach this point, you are one step away from despair - and one step away from enlightenment.
A Buddhist monk once told me: 'All I have learned in the twenty years that I have been a monk I can sum up in one sentence: All that arises passes away. This I know." What he meant, of course, was this: I have learned to offer no resistance to what is; I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions. Thus have I found peace.
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance. Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace.
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2013 : 08:28:06
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Tolle also writes:
Do you know the story of Banzan? Before he became a great Zen master, he spent many years in the pursuit of enlightenment, but it eluded him. Then one day, as he was walking in the marketplace, he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer. "Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer. And the butcher replied, "Every piece of meat I have is the best. There is no piece of meat here that is not the best." Upon hearing this, Banzan became enlightened.
I can see you are waiting for some explanation. When you accept what is, every piece of meat - every moment - is the best. That is enlightenment.
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2013 : 14:23:46
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WANTING: THE NEED FOR MORE (From "A New Earth")
The ego identifies with having, but its satisfaction in having is a
relatively shallow and shortlived one. Concealed within it remains a deep
seated sense of dissatisfaction, of incompleteness, of “not enough.” “I don't
have enough yet,” by which the ego really means, “I am not enough yet.”
As we have seen, having – the concept of ownership – is a fiction
created by the ego to give itself solidity and permanency and make itself
stand out, make itself special. Since you cannot find yourself through having,
however, there is another more powerful drive underneath it that pertains to
the structure of the ego: the need for more, which we could also call
“wanting.” No ego can last for long without the need for more.
Therefore,
wanting keeps the ego alive much more than having. The ego wants to want
more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is
always replaced by more wanting. This is the psychological need for more,
that is to say, more things to identify with. It is an addictive need, not an
authentic one.
In some cases, the psychological need for more or the feeling of not
enough that is so characteristic of the ego becomes transferred to the
physical level and so turns into insatiable hunger. The sufferers of bulimia
will often make themselves vomit so they can continue eating. Their mind ishungry, not their body. This eating disorder would become healed if the
sufferers, instead of being identified with their mind, could get in touch with
their body and so feel the true needs of the body rather than the pseudo
needs of the egoic mind.
Some egos know what they want and pursue their aim with grim and
ruthless determination – Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, to give just a few
largerthanlife examples. The energy behind their wanting, however, creates
an opposing energy of equal intensity that in the end leads to their downfall.
in the meantime, they make themselves and many others unhappy, or, in the
largerthanlife examples, create hell on earth. Most egos have conflicting
wants. They want different things at different times or may not even know
what they want except that they don't want what is: the present moment.
Unease, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, dissatisfaction , are the result of
unfulfilled wanting. Wanting is structural, so no amount of content can
provide lasting fulfillment as long as that mental structure remains in place.
Intense wanting that has no specific object can often be found in the still
developing ego of teenagers, some of whom are in a permanent state of
negativity and dissatisfaction.
The physical needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, and basic
comforts could be easily met for all humans on the planet, were it not for the
imbalance of resources created by the insane and rapacious need for more,
the greed of the ego. It finds collective expression in the economic structures
of this world, such as the huge corporations, which are egoic entities that
compete with each other for more. Their only blind aim is profit. They
pursue that aim with absolute ruthlessness. Nature, animals, people, even
their own employees, are no more than digits on a balance sheet, lifeless
objects to be used, then discarded.
The thought forms of “me” and “mine,” of “more than,” of “I want,”
“I need,” “I must have,” and of “not enough” pertain not to content but to the
structure of the ego. The content is interchangeable. As long as you don't
recognize those thought forms within yourself, as long as they remain
unconscious, you will believe in what they say; you will be condemned to
acting out those unconscious thoughts, condemned to seeking and not
finding – because when those thought forms operate, no possession, place,
person, or condition will ever satisfy you. No content will satisfy you, as
long as the egoic structure remains in place. No matter what you have or get,you won't be happy. You will always be looking for something else that
promises greater fulfillment, that promises to make your incomplete sense of
self complete and fill that sense of lack you feel within.
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"The urge to just be done with what we are doing and to go on to the next task is the number one cause of tms and everything is compounded on top of this. It is so ingrained that most will not see it even when they are told that it is there. It took me a long time to see this and figure this out through deductive reasoning. It also explains why our society has a lot of back pain but it is non-existent in the tribal community." --- Ace |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2013 : 14:36:17
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IDENTIFICATION WITH THE BODY (from "A New Earth')
Apart from objects, another basic form of identification is with “my”
body. Firstly, the body is male or female, and so the sense of being a man or
woman takes up a significant part of most people's sense of self. Gender
becomes identity. Identification with gender is encouraged at an early age,
and it forces you into a role, into conditioned patterns of behavior that affect
all aspects of your life, not just sexuality. It is a role many people become
completely trapped in, even more so in some of the traditional societies than
in Western culture where identification with gender is beginning to lessen
somewhat. In some traditional cultures, the worst fate a woman can have is
to be unwed or barren, and for a man to lack sexual potency and not be able
to produce children. Life's fulfillment is perceived to be fulfillment of one's
gender identity.
In the West, it is the physical appearance of the body that contributes
greatly to the sense of who you think you are: its strength or weakness, its
perceived beauty or ugliness relative to others. For many people, their sense
of selfworth is intimately bound up with their physical strength, good looks,
fitness, and external appearance. many feel a diminished sense of selfworth
because they perceive their body as ugly or imperfect.
In some cases, the mental image or concept of “my body” is a
complete distortion of reality. A young woman may think of herself as
overweight and therefore starve herself when in fact she is quite thin. She
cannot see her body anymore. All she “sees” is the mental concept of her
body, which says “I am fat” or “I will become fat.” At the root of this
condition lies identification with the mind. As people have become more and
more mindidentified, which is the intensification of egoic dysfunction, there
has also been a dramatic increase in the incidence of anorexia in recent
decades. If the sufferer could look at her body without the interfering
judgments of her mind or even recognize those judgments for what they are
instead of believing in them – or better still, if she could feel her body from
within – this would initiate her healing.Those who are identified with their good looks, physical strength, or
abilities experience suffering when those attributes begin to fade and
disappear, as of course they will. Their very identity that was based on them
is then threatened with collapse. In either case, ugly or beautiful, people
derive a significant part of their identity, be it negative or positive, from their
body. To be more precise, they derive their identity from the Ithought that
they erroneously attach to the mental image or concept of their body, which
after all is no more than a physical form that shares the destiny of all forms
impermanence and ultimately decay.
Equating the physical sense perceived body that is destined to grow
old, wither, and die with “I” always leads to suffering sooner or later. To
refrain from identifying with the body doesn't mean that you neglect,
despise, or no longer care for it. If it is strong, beautiful, or vigorous, you can
enjoy and appreciate those attributes – while they last. You can also improve
the body's condition through right nutrition and exercise. If you don't' equate
the body with who you are, when beauty fades, vigor diminishes, or the body
becomes incapacitated, this will not affect your sense of worth or identity in
any way. In fact, as the body begins to weaken, the formless dimension, the
light of consciousness, can shine more easily through the fading form.
It is not just people with good or near perfect bodies who are likely to
equate it with who they are. You can just as easily identify with a
“problematic” body and make the body's imperfection, illness, or disability
in to your identity. You may then think and speak of yourself as a “sufferer”
of this or that chronic illness or disability. You receive a great deal of
attention from doctors and others who constantly confirm to you your
conceptual identity as a sufferer or a patient. You then unconsciously cling to
the illness because it has become the most important part of who you
perceive yourself to be. It has become another thought form with which the
ego can identify. Once the ego has found an identity, it does not want to let
go. Amazingly but not infrequently, the ego in search of a stronger identity
and can and does create illnesses in order to strengthen itself through them.
*************************
"The urge to just be done with what we are doing and to go on to the next task is the number one cause of tms and everything is compounded on top of this. It is so ingrained that most will not see it even when they are told that it is there. It took me a long time to see this and figure this out through deductive reasoning. It also explains why our society has a lot of back pain but it is non-existent in the tribal community." --- Ace |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2013 : 04:58:34
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REACTIVITY AND GRIEVANCES
Whereas resentment is often the emotion that goes with complaining, it may also be accompanied by a stronger emotion such as anger or some other form of upset. In this way, it becomes more highly charged energetically.
Complaining then turns into reactivity, another of the ego's ways of
strengthening itself. There are many people who are always waiting for the next thing to react against, to feel annoyed or disturbed about – and it never takes long before they find it. “This is an outrage,” they say. “How dare you...” “ I resent this.” They are addicted to upset and anger as others are to a drug. Through reacting against this or that they assert and strengthen their feeling of self.
A longstanding resentment is called a grievance. To carry a grievance
is to be in a permanent state of “against,” and that is why grievances
constitute a significant part of many people's ego. Collective grievances can survive for centuries in the psyche of a nation or tribe and fuel a never ending cycle of violence.
A grievance is a strong negative emotion connected to an event in the
sometimes distant past that is being kept alive by compulsive thinking, by
retelling the story in the head or out loud of “what someone did to me” or “
what someone did to us.” A grievance will also contaminate other areas of
your life. For example, while you think about and feel your grievance, its
negative emotional energy can distort your perception of an event that is
happening in the present or influence the way in which you speak or behaveto ward someone in the present. One strong grievance is enough to
contaminate large areas of your life and keep you in the grip of the ego.
It requires honesty to see whether you still harbor grievances, whether
there is someone in your life you have not completely forgiven, an “enemy.”
If you do, become aware of the grievance both on the level of thought as well
as emotion, that is to say, be ware of the thoughts that keep it alive, and feel
the emotion that is the body's response to those thoughts. Don't try to let go
of the grievance. Trying to let go, to forgive, does not work. Forgiveness
happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to
strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the ego in place. The seeing is
freeing. Jesus' teaching to “Forgive your enemies” is essentially about the
undoing of one of the main egoic structures in the human mind.
The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your
grievance about the past can do that. And what is a grievance? The baggage
of old thought and emotion.
BEING RIGHT, MAKING WRONG
Complaining as well as faultfinding and reactivity strengthen the ego's
sense of boundary and separateness on which its survival depends. But they
also strengthen the ego in another way by giving it a feeling of superiority on
which it thrives. It may not be immediately apparent how complaining, say,
about a traffic jam, about politicians, about the “greedy wealthy” or the
“lazy unemployed,” or your colleagues or ex spouse , men or women, can
give you a sense of superiority. Here is why. When you complain, by
implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or
react against is wrong.
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being
right is identification with a mental position – a perspective, an opinion, a
judgment, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to
be wrong, and so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. In other
words: you need to make others wrong in order to get a stronger sense of
who you are. Not only a person, but also a situation can be made wrong
through complaining and reactivity, which always implies that “this should
not be happening.” Being right places you in a position of imagined moral
superiority in relation to the person or situation that is being judged and
found wanting. It is that sense of superiority the ego craves and through
which it enhances itself.
*************************
"The urge to just be done with what we are doing and to go on to the next task is the number one cause of tms and everything is compounded on top of this. It is so ingrained that most will not see it even when they are told that it is there. It took me a long time to see this and figure this out through deductive reasoning. It also explains why our society has a lot of back pain but it is non-existent in the tribal community." --- Ace |
Edited by - shawnsmith on 02/27/2013 05:00:22 |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2013 : 08:01:56
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VILLAIN, VICTIM, LOVER (from "A New Earth")
Some egos, if they cannot get praise or admiration, will settle for other
forms of attention and play roles to elicit them. If they cannot get positive
attention, they may seek negative attention instead, for example, by
provoking a negative reaction in someone else. Some children already do
that too. They misbehave to get attention. The playing of negative roles
becomes particularly pronounced whenever the ego is magnified by an active
painbody, that is to say, emotional pain from the past that wants to renew
itself through experiencing more pain. Some egos perpetrate crimes in their
search for fame. They seek attention through notoriety and other people's
condemnation. “Please tell me that I exist, that I am not insignificant,” they
seem to say. Such pathological forms of ego are only more extreme versions
of normal egos.
A very common role is the one of victim, and the form of attention it
seeks is sympathy or pity or others' interest in my problems, “me and my
story.” Seeing oneself as a victim is an element in many egoic patterns, such
as complaining, being offended, outraged, and so on. Of course, once I am
identified with a story in which I assigned myself the role of victim, I don't
want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an
end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will
listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and
feel sorry for myself, sand so have an identity as someone who is being
treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my
self image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.
In the early stages of many socalled romantic relationships, role
playing is quite common in order to attract and keep whoever is perceived by
the ego as the one who is going to “make me happy, make me feel special,
and fulfill all my needs.” “I'll play who you want me to be, and you'll play
who I want you to be.” That's the unspoken and unconscious agreement.
However, role playing is hard work, and so those roles cannot be sustained
indefinitely, especially once you start living together. When those roles slip,
what do you see? Unfortunately, in most cases, not yet the true essence of
that being, but that which overs up the true essence: the raw ego divested of
its roles, with its painbody, and its thwarted wanting which now turns into
anger, most likely directed at the spouse or partner for having failed to
remove the underlying fear and sense of lack that is an intrinsic part of the
egoic sense of self.
What is commonly called “falling in love” is in most cases and
intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to
another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do
with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever. The Spanish language
is the most honest in regard to conventional notions of love: Te quiero means
“I want you” as well as “I love you.” The other expression for “I love you,” te
amo, which does not have this ambiguity, is rarely used – perhaps because
true love is just as rare.
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"The urge to just be done with what we are doing and to go on to the next task is the number one cause of tms and everything is compounded on top of this. It is so ingrained that most will not see it even when they are told that it is there. It took me a long time to see this and figure this out through deductive reasoning. It also explains why our society has a lot of back pain but it is non-existent in the tribal community." --- Ace |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2013 : 12:38:09
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HAPPINESS AS A ROLE VS. TRUE HAPPINESS (From "A New Earth")
“How are you?” “Just great. Couldn't be better.” True or false?
In many cases, happiness is a role people play, and behind the smiling
facade, there is a great deal of pain. Depression, breakdowns, and
overreactions are common when unhappiness is covered up behind a smiling
exterior and brilliant white teeth, when there is denial, sometimes even to
one's self, that there is much unhappiness.
“Just fine” is a role the ego plays more commonly in America than in
certain other countries where being and looking miserable is almost the
norm and therefore more socially acceptable. It is probably an exaggeration,
but I am told that in the capital of one Nordic country you run the risk of
being arrested for drunken behavior if you smile at strangers in the street.
If there is unhappiness in you, first you need to acknowledge that it is
there. But don't say, “I'm unhappy.” Unhappiness has nothing to do with who
you are. Say: “There is unhappiness in me.” Then investigate it. A situation
you find yourself in may have something to do with it. Action may be
required to change the situation or remove yourself from it. If there is
nothing you can do, face what is and say, “Well, right now, this is how it is. I
can either accept it, or make myself miserable.” The primary cause of
unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the
thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always
neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or the fact, and here
are my thoughts about it. Instead of making up stories, stay with the facts.
For example, “I am ruined” is a story. It limits you and prevents you from
taking effective action. “I have fifty cents left in my bank account” is a fact.
Facing facts is always empowering. Be aware that what you think, to a large
extent, creates the emotions that you feel. See the link between your thinking
and your emotions. Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the
awareness behind them.
Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeing
is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from
unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up
stories about it. Unhappiness covers up your natural state of wellbeing and
inner peace, the source of true happiness.
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"The urge to just be done with what we are doing and to go on to the next task is the number one cause of tms and everything is compounded on top of this. It is so ingrained that most will not see it even when they are told that it is there. It took me a long time to see this and figure this out through deductive reasoning. It also explains why our society has a lot of back pain but it is non-existent in the tribal community." --- Ace |
Edited by - shawnsmith on 02/27/2013 12:39:00 |
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Best of Ekhart Tolle (continually updated)
