March 2006
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March 1st 2006
From Consciousness -- The Cause of All Suffering
Usually, we search for understanding because we believe that it will lead to true experience. We try to understand every experience that is brought to us, and then we have our little mental niches where we put the experience.
This is one example of how the great power of the mind leads our lives. But when it comes to the recognition of truth, the mind is not equipped to lead. It is exquisitely equipped to discover or to follow, but not to lead.
The mind is not the enemy; there is nothing wrong with it. The tragedy is that we believe the conclusions of the mind to be reality.
This is a huge tragedy, responsible for both mundane suffering and the most profound suffering, individually and collectively.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket
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March 2nd 2006
From Consciousness -- Just Stop
You are conditioned to try to keep mental understanding in an exalted place, but that is not true understanding. That is in the realm of understanding how to tie your shoes, practice good manners, learn a new language, or decipher advanced mathematical formulas. The power of understanding, which is a beautiful power of the mind, is useless in the discovery of your true self.
Whatever you are searching for in this moment, however worldly or spiritual it may be, just stop. A huge fear may arise, the fear that if you stop, you will die, you will never make it to where you are headed.
This fear is understandable, but all the magnificent beings who have preceded you encourage you to know that the mind's true stopping is absolutely good news.
Deep inside, you already know this. You just can't quite believe it is true because you don't understand it. And you want to understand it so that you will then have some control over it; it will have a place and be definable as something religious, spiritual, or existential.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket
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March 3rd 2006
From Consciousness -- Start With Yourself
To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means now.
Ask yourself, "Is there negativity in me at this moment?" Then, become alert, attentive to your thoughts as well as your emotions.
Watch out for the low-level unhappiness in whatever form such as discontent, nervousness, being "fed up," and so on. Watch out for thoughts that appear to justify or explain this unhappiness but in reality cause it.
The moment you become aware of a negative state within yourself, it does not mean you have failed. It means that you have succeeded.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 4th 2006
From Consciousness -- A Shift of Consciousness:
Until 'awareness' happens, there is identification with inner states, and such identification is ego. With awareness comes disidentification from thoughts, emotions, and reactions.
This is not to be confused with denial. The thoughts, emotions, or reactions are recognized, and in the moment of recognizing, disidentification happens automatically. Your sense of self, of who you are, then undergoes a shift:
Before you were the thoughts, emotions, and reactions; now you are the awareness, the conscious Presence that witnesses those states.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 5th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Light of Presence
Be aware of your thoughts and emotions -- as they happen. This is not really a "doing," but an alert "seeing." In that sense, it is true that there is nothing you can do to become free of the ego. When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life.
Emotions and even thoughts become depersonalized through awareness. Their impersonal nature is recognized. There is no longer a self in them. They are just human emotions, human thoughts.
Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, becomes of secondary importance and no longer occupies the forefront of your consciousness. It no longer forms the basis for your sense of identity.
You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 6th 2006
From Consciousness -- Identification With Your Mind
What is an argument? Two or more people express their opinions and those opinions differ. Each person is so identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into mental positions which are invested with a sense of self. In other words: Identity and thought merge.
When I defend my opinions (thoughts), I feel and act as if I were defending my very self. Unconsciously, I feel and act as if I were fighting for survival and so my emotions will reflect this unconscious belief. They become turbulent. I am upset, angry, defensive, or aggressive. I need to win at all cost lest I become annihilated. That's the illusion.
The ego doesn't know that mind and mental positions have nothing to do with who you are because the ego is the unobserved mind itself.
In Zen they say: "Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions." What does that mean? Let go of identification with your mind. Who you are beyond the mind then emerges by itself.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 7th 2006
From Consciousness -- Attracting Success
People unknowingly sabotage their own work when they withhold help or information from others or try to undermine them lest they become more successful or get more credit than "me." Cooperation is alien to the ego, except when there is a secondary motive. The ego doesn't know that the more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the more easily things come to you.
When you give little or no help to others or put obstacles in their path, the universe -- in the form of people and circumstances -- gives little or no help to you because you have cut yourself off from the whole.
The ego's unconscious core feeling of "not enough" causes it to react to someone else's success as if that success had taken something away from "me." It doesn't know that your resentment of another person's success curtails your own chances of success.
In order to attract success, you need to welcome it wherever you see it.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 8th 2006
From Consciousness -- Enlightened Collectives As the new consciousness emerges, some people will feel called upon to form groups that reflect the enlightened consciousness. These groups will not be collective egos. The individuals who make up these groups will have no need to define their identity through them. They no longer look to any form to define who they are....
Dissolving the human ego by bringing it into the light of awareness -- this will be one of the main purposes of these groups, whether they be enlightened businesses, charitable organizations, schools, or communities of people living together.
Enlightened collectives will fulfill an important function in the arising of the new consciousness.
Just as egoic collectives pull you into unconsciousness and suffering, the enlightened collective can be a vortex for consciousness that will accelerate the planetary shift.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 9th 2006
From Consciousness -- Good Environments
Many years ago one of my two teachers, Kwong Roshi, knew I was going to go out into the mountains backpacking for a few months, so he taught me how to find the right place to stay at night. It's not that he gave me information on how to do it. He just talked about it for a while, and then all of a sudden I realized that I would be able to directly sense the environment that was right for me.
Just as we can feel our environments, we can feel when there is a harmonization of spirit and matter in our environments. Those are good environments to hang out in, and they quite naturally harmonize us.
The more harmonization there is, the more there is an intensification of the Truth, or radiance, within us. Of course the radiance is everywhere. We can't get away from it. But for a period of time, it's helpful to have some intensification in our environment. It's useful to have support because we can lose the sense that there is radiance everywhere all the time.
As we go deeper, we will experience the radiance everywhere, even if it doesn't appear in a concentrated, potent, or powerful way. We come to that by being willing to expose ourselves to experiences and places that make it more potent.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
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March 10th 2006
From Consciousness -- Hang Around Awakened Beings
If you want to wake up, you need to hang around awakened beings. It can be awakened human beings, awakened trees, awakened mountains, awakened rivers -- it can be any environment. If we are sensitive, we can feel when environments are awakened. Human beings can be more or less awakened. So can trees or a mountain, canyon, hilltop, or a particular street corner in our neighborhood. When we are sensitive, we can feel these things.
When we expose ourselves to that awakeness, to that environment where spirit and matter are harmonized, it helps us awaken. Ultimately, that's what satsang is. That's also what meditation really is. We are exposing ourselves, and then, quite naturally, spirit and matter harmonize. All of a sudden it just clicks, without you doing anything. The less you do the better.
When we relax and allow this natural harmonization, there is a deep awakening to the beauty of our environment, just as it is, and to the beauty of our own selves. That's the Middle Way, but it's not really in the middle, it's all encompassing.
This subtle influence can be very strong. It's sneaky, like mist seeping into the cracks and the crevices of our lives. It doesn't like to announce itself with fanfare.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
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March 11th 2006
From Consciousness -- That Subtle Stream of Presence
It happened on one of those days when I wasn't listening quite as much to the words (of my teacher). I wasn't away in a fantasy, but I wasn't listening carefully. All of a sudden it was like smoke, that subtle stream of presence was sensed. I knew, "That's what he is doing. It's not about all this talk, talk, talk." I realized that's not what was going on -- or it was just a little bit of what was going on.
I remember sitting there with a smile thinking how sneaky he was because, for some reason, through no choice of his own or of any of us present, there was a magnification happening of something very subtle but very pervasive.
This way is sneaky because we think nothing is happening. Therefore we are not chasing anything. So I had missed it until that day and that one talk, when I experienced that subtle source, and it was just shining. I saw it and sensed it, and then it was shining inside me, too. It was the same thing inside.
I started to see, this is what I am! This gives life to everything. I felt a perfect, beautiful harmonization of body and mind, spirit and matter. It happened just through exposure. I wouldn't call this true awakening, but it was a foretaste of awakening. Realizing the sacred presence.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
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March 12th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Presence That Really Is
Charisma can be very beautiful. But if a teacher is too charismatic, students tend to grasp. They tend to look only at the body and think, "What a wonderful person!"
He or she might be a wonderful person, but it's not about a wonderful person. I see it as the greatest gift for me that neither one of my teachers were charismatic personalities.
As soon as we move into the worship of the charisma or anything else, we start to unconsciously look past the presence that really is, the presence that can function through strong personalities and also through meek and mild personalities.
It can function through great charisma and through almost no charisma. None of us has any choice about that part of it. It can function through the grandmother just as much as it can function through the Divine Mother guru.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
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March 13th 2006
From Consciousness -- Hang Out With Awakened Beings
In the past, when there was conflict in some Chinese community, a Taoist priest would be called in and he would sit there in a nearby hut and just open himself to the chi, or the energy of the environment. He would feel it, experience it, and then open the chi to the light of his own consciousness.
It could take a day, a week, sometimes a month, but he'd just expose the chi to the light of his own consciousness and the energy would begin to rectify itself. Then people in the village would start to feel better and get along for awhile.
That's why scriptures have advised us to hang out with awakened beings. The awakened one could be a human being, a tree being or a street corner being. Associate with these beings, but don't become dependent on them. Don't worship them and put them on a pedestal.
When we are regularly exposed to them, this rectification happens; this harmonization happens because of their state of consciousness. You wake yourself up.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
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March 14th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Light of Consciousness
The light of consciousness has no mind to change or alter anything. There is no sense that anything needs to change, but it does change.
So the Taoist priest (mentioned yesterday) could just sit, and all would rectify. Everybody would just feel much better. Of course, not for very long because, if they haven't seen the sun inside themselves, once the awakened consciousness leaves the environment, everyone goes crazy again.
But the priest is cool about that. The sun doesn't argue about where it's shining or why it was asked to shine.
People awaken and transform only when they truly want to. Until that time all change is temporary. No one can force permanent awakening upon you.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing
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March 15th 2006
From Consciousness -- I And Life Are One
If there is such a thing as "my life," it follows that I and life are two separate things, and so I can also lose my life, my imaginary treasured possession. Death becomes a seeming reality and a threat.
Words and concepts split life into separate segments that have no reality in themselves. We could even say that the notion "my life" is the original delusion of separateness, the source of ego. If I and life are two, if I am separate from life, then I am separate from all things, all beings, all people.
But how could I be separate from life? What "I" could there be apart from life, apart from Being? It is utterly impossible. So there is no such thing as "my life," and I don't 'have' a life. I 'am' life. I and life are one. It cannot be otherwise.
So how could I lose my life? How can I lose something that I don't have in the first place? How can I lose something that I Am? It is impossible.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 16th 2006
From Consciousness -- Taken Over By Thinking
For thousands of years, humanity has been increasingly mind-possessed, failing to recognize the possessing entity as "not self."
Through complete identification with the mind, a false sense of self -- the ego -- came into existence.
The density of the ego depends on the degree to which you -- the consciousness -- are identified with your mind, with thinking.
Thinking is no more than a tiny aspect of the totality of consciousness, the totality of who you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 17th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Human Predicament
Alienation means you don't feel at ease in any situation, any place, or with any person, not even with yourself. You are always trying to get "home" but never feel at home.
Some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, such as Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce, recognized alienation as the universal dilemma of human existence, probably felt it deeply within themselves and so were able to express it brilliantly in their works.
They don't offer a solution. Their contribution is to show us a reflection of the human predicament so that we can see it more clearly.
To see one's predicament clearly is a first step toward going beyond it.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 18th 2006
From Consciousness -- States of Being
Ego-generated 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.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 19th 2006
From Consciousness -- Still Carrying That Burden?
Two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side.
The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn't restrain himself any longer. "Why did you carry that girl across the road?" he asked. "We monks are not supposed to do things like that."
"I put the girl down hours ago," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"
Now imagine what life would be like for someone who lived like Ekido all the time, unable or unwilling to let go internally of situations, accumulating more and more "stuff" inside, and you get a sense of what life is like for the majority of people on our planet. What a heavy burden of past they carry around with them in their minds.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 20th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Illusion of the "Little Me"
The past lives in you as memories, but memories in themselves are not a problem. In fact, it is through memory that we learn from the past and from past mistakes.
It is only when memories, that is to say, thoughts about the past, take you over completely that they turn into a burden, turn problematic, and become part of your sense of self.
Your personality, which is conditioned by the past, then becomes your prison. Your memories are invested with a sense of self, and your story becomes who you perceive yourself to be.
This "little me" is an illusion that obscures your true identity as timeless and formless Presence.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 21st 2006
From Consciousness -- Appearance
When we join the human club we become eccentric by about a meter and we lose touvch with our Source; we lose the meaning of our lives. We are in deep deep trouble.
It can all be summed up in a few words: 'I am what I look like'.
Well, I'm not. I'm the opposite of what I look like.
You've got what I look like, it's your problem and you're welcome to it. I'm looking after where it's coming from, which is this Awake Mystery, Space, Capacity, Stillness, Immensity. visibly in receipt of the world.
From Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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March 22nd 2006
From Consciousness -- Vacancy for a Universe
I am at large in the world, I can discover no watcher here, and over there something watched, no peep-hole out into the world, no windowpane, no frontier. I do not detect a universe:it lies wide open to me.
Spiritual things are truly physical, and truly physical things are spiritual. There is no division.
When I overlook the Space I accord them here, I miss-see them. But when I look "only" at this Space, I get them thrown in for a bonus because the Space is always and absolutely united with its contents. Looking out, I get barely half the story; looking in, I get it all.
Whether I advertise it or not, this organization that I am has a vacancy for a universe.
From Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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March 23rd 2006
From Consciousness -- The Whole Fire
God is indivisible.
This is so marvelous because it means the whole of God is where you are -- not your little bit of God, but the whole of God.
If we resist this, it's because we are resisting our splendor, our greatness. The wonderful proposition of all the mystics that I know and would care to call real mystics is that the heart of you, the reality of your life, the reality of your being, your real self is the whole of God -- not a little bit of that fire, but the 'whole' fire.
To lack divinity is to lack being.
From Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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March 24th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Mystery.
The wisdom of humanity, of our species, is at your very center, nearer to you than all else. Where you come from, what you look out of, is not a product of the world but the Origin of the world, the Mystery.
Call it what you like: Atman-Brahman, Buddha-Nature, Allah, God, Indwelling Christ -- it has many names.
This is more "me," more central to me, than how I am perceived.
What I operate from, what I live out of, what I live from, is Being itself. Being!
From Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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March 25th 2006
From Consciousness -- No Either Or
I find it makes no sense to write off one of these two -- either the Center or the Periphery -- as 'real' and the other as 'unreal', or else as somewhat less real and fundamental, less truly ME, than the other.
I find it makes little sense, either, to say that one of them 'depends' on the other. That my nonphysical consciousness here has that physical world for its basis.
Or, vice versa, that that world is an accident -- a causal and unnecessary sport or projection -- of this Consciousness that lies here at the heart of it. They are of a piece, presented together, and not served up separately. I don't so much understand or believe this as see it.
For instance, I SEE, right now, that this Emptiness here is -- rather than contains -- these shapes and these colors, this page and these hands.
From Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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March 26th 2006
From Consciousness -- Absolute Unity
As Zen insists, form is void and void is form; 'Nirvana' is none other than 'Samsara'; the Lotus of Enlightenment is one with the Swamp of Delusion that is its habitat.
Whenever I exalt one of the pair at the expense of the other, I'm in trouble, and my enemy Death has got hold of me. But when I perceive -- when I consciously live -- their absolute unity, I embrace Death as my friend.
God is as null without his world as it is null without him.
Even for God -- especially for God -- there is, as the saying goes, always something.
From Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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March 27th 2006
From Consciousness -- Fuel For Consciousness
It is your conscious Presence that breaks the identification with the pain-body. When you don't identify with it, the pain-body can no longer control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore by feeding on your thoughts.
The pain-body in most cases does not dissolve immediately, but once you have severed the link between it and your thinking, the pain-body begins to lose energy. Your thinking ceases to be clouded by emotion; your present perceptions are no longer distorted by the past.
The energy that was trapped in the pain-body then changes its vibrational frequency and is transmuted into Presence. In this way, the pain-body becomes fuel for consciousness.
This is why many of the wisest, most enlightened men and women on our planet once had a heavy pain-body.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 28th 2006
From Consciousness -- Who's Responsible?
To my knowledge so far, no defense lawyer has said to the judge -- although the day may not be far off -- "This is a case of diminished responsibility. My client's pain-body was activated, and he did not know what he was doing. In fact, 'he' didn't do it. His pain-body did."
Does this mean that people are not responsible for what they do when possessed by the pain-body?
My answer is: How can they be? How can you be responsible when you are unconscious, when you don't know what you are doing?
However, in the greater scheme of things, human beings are meant to evolve into conscious beings, and those who don't will suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness. They are out of alignment with the evolutionary impulse of the universe.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 29th 2006
From Consciousness -- Relating at a Deeper Level
In Zen, a glimpse of what was already within us is called 'satori'. Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the body as emotion. It is the arising of inner spaciousness where before there was the clutter of thought and the turmoil of emotion.
The thinking mind cannot understand Presence and so will often misinterpret it. It will say that your non-reactivity is uncaring, that you are distant, have no compassion, are not relating.
The truth is, you are relating but at a level deeper than thought and emotion. In fact, at that level there is a true coming together, a true joining that goes far beyond relating. In the stillness of Presence, you can sense the formless essence in yourself and in the other as one.
Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 30th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Rising of the Pain-Body
Every time you are present when the pain-body arises, some of the pain-body's negative emotional energy will burn up, as it were, and become transmuted into Presence.
The rest of the pain-body will quickly withdraw and wait for a better opportunity to arise again, that is to say, when you are less conscious.
A better opportunity for the pain- body to arise may come whenever you lose Presence, perhaps after you have had a few drinks or while watching a violent film. The tiniest negative emotion, such as being irritated or anxious, can also serve as a doorway through which the pain-body can return.
The pain-body needs your unconsciousness. It cannot tolerate the light of Presence.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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March 31st 2006
From Consciousness -- Choosing to Step Out
Due to the unprecedented influx of consciousness we are witnessing on the planet now, many people no longer need to go through the depth of acute suffering to be able to disidentify from the pain-body.
Whenever they notice they have slipped back into a dysfunctional state, they are able to 'choose' to step out of identification with thinking and emotion and enter the state of Presence.
They relinquish resistance, become still and alert, one with what is, within and without.
The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the history of our planet, it can be a conscious choice. Who is making that choice? You are. And who are you? Consciousness that has become conscious of itself.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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