May 2006
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May 1st 2006
From Consciousness -- Problems -- No Longer Central
At the center of my life is this Awareness whose very nature I find is freedom -- freedom not only from thinghood, but from thoughts and feelings of all kinds.
Certainly free from problems of all kinds. As the source of those things, the origin of those difficult things, its business must be to leave them alone, free to be what they are.
Who I really am doesn't in itself change what I like to call my human nature. What it does is to place it. This difficult and sometimes heartrending stuff is not denied. In fact, it is far more honestly reckoned with and cheerfully taken on board, from the state of freedom at the center, than ever it was from the illusory person.
It's not a case of being free from these things in the sense that one abolishes them, but of being free from them in the sense that one locates them. They are no longer central.
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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May 2nd 2006
From Consciousness -- This Seeing Is Believing
Altogether unmystical (in the popular sense), 'seeing' is a precise, total, all-or-nothing experience admitting of no degrees. Relief is instant and complete -- so long as it lasts.
But now the really exacting part of the work begins: You have to go on seeing your Absence/Presence whenever and wherever you can, until the seeing becomes quite natural (repeat 'natural') and unbroken.
This is neither to lose yourself in your Emptiness nor in what fills it, but 'simultaneously' to view the thing you are looking at and the No-thing you are looking out of.
There will be found no times when this two-way attention is out of place.
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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May 3rd 2006
From Consciousness -- The Inner Yes
Whenever a habitual no to life turns into a yes, whenever you allow this moment to be as it is, you dissolve time as well as ego.
For the ego to survive, it must make time -- past and future -- more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment, except briefly just after it got what it wanted....
Whatever is or happens is the form that the Now takes. As long as you resist it internally, form, that is to say, the world, is an impenetrable barrier that separates you from who you are beyond form, separates you from the formless one Life that you are.
When you bring an inner yes to the form the Now takes, that very form becomes a doorway into the formless. The separation between the world and God dissolves.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 4th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Basis for Effective Action
When you are present, when your attention is fully in the Now, that Presence will flow into and transform what you do.
There will be quality and power in it.
You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.
And, of course, you cannot be present unless you become friendly with the present moment. That is the basis for effective action, uncontaminated by negativity.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 5th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Dimension of Depth.
Everyone will encounter limitations sooner or later. Those limitations either keep you trapped in egoic reaction, which means intense unhappiness, or you rise above them internally by uncompromising surrender to what is. That is what they are here to teach.
The surrendered state of consciousness opens up the vertical dimension in your life, the dimension of depth.
Something will then come forth from that dimension into this world, something of infinite value that otherwise would have remained unmanifested.
Some people who surrendered to severe limitation become healers or spiritual teachers. Others work selflessly to lessen human suffering or bring some creative gift into this world.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 6th 2006
From Consciousness -- One With Who You Are
Don't miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that is always already here, that lies beyond what is happening or not happening, beyond form.
Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.
The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event -- through anything that happens.
That joy cannot come to you -- ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 7th 2006
From Consciousness -- Recognizing Your Own Depth
When, as you look up at the sky, the eye finds nothing to see, that no-thingness is perceived as space. When the ear finds nothing to hear, that no-thingness is perceived as stillness.
When the senses, which are designed to perceive form, meet an absence of form, the formless consciousness that lies behind perception and makes all perception, all experience, possible, is no longer obscured by form.
When you contemplate the unfathomable depth of space or listen to the silence in the early hours just before sunrise, something within you resonates with it as if in recognition.
You then sense the vast depth of space as your own depth, and you know that precious stillness that has no form to be more deeply who you are than any of the things that make up the content of your life.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 8th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Vital Formless Dimension
Just as space enables all things to exist and just as without silence there could be no sound, you would not exist without the vital formless dimension that is the essence of who you are.
We could say "God" if the word had not been so misused.
I prefer to call it Being. Being is prior to existence. Existence is form, content, "what happens."
Existence is the foreground of life; Being is the background, as it were.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 9th 2006
From Consciousness -- Behind The Veil
Who you think you are does not have the capacity to realize the truth of who you are. Truth is too big.
Who you think you are appears and disappears in the truth of who you are. Who you truly are can recognize this.
You have the right to recognize this. It is nothing that anyone can give you or take away from you. It can be veiled by the powers of mind, but a veil does not really cover anything.
When you see a veil, you sense or intuit something behind the veil. What lies behind the veil is the truth of your essential self. The veil is simply your latest self-definition.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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May 10th 2006
From Consciousness -- It Is Always Here
Are you willing to recognize that thoughts are simply thoughts, beautiful and horrible in their scope and power, yet inadequate in their description of who you are? Are you willing to investigate this?
If so, I invite you to stop thinking, just for a moment. Not as an act of repression, but as a refusal to continue feeding whatever thought arises, to stop building thought upon thought. Whether it is a thought of grandeur or a thought of worthlessness, stop feeding it and recognize it as just a thought.
What can a thought do? It can define experience. It can classify and relegate experience. It can generate experience. But it cannot be experience. A thought has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The absolute truth has no beginning, no middle, and no end. It does not appear and then disappear; it is always here.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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May 11th 2006
From Consciousness -- You Are The Source
I am not against thought. What would be the point of that? Thought is here. Thoughts can be a glorious expression of creativity and understanding -- to recognize thought for what it is, is to be neither for nor against it.
But when you are free of the bondage of believing that thoughts are reality, you are free to enter into the direct experience of who you are.
Who you are cannot be captured through thought. The mind cannot capture its source because the mind is only an aspect of the source, not the whole.
You are the source, and since you are the source, you can discover yourself as that.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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May 12th 2006
From Consciousness -- Changeless And Uncontainable
To avoid any confusion, I would like to re-clarify what I mean when I use certain words, because I may not mean what you think I mean.
When I use the word "God," I am not talking about anything that can ever be separate from anything else. The same goes for "truth." I am not speaking of a truth that is subject to change, or personal opinion, or a vote. Truth is changeless.
When I use the word "self" or "you," I am speaking to the truth which you are, which cannot be thought, cannot be contained, and cannot be separated into higher or lower, good or bad, because it is not a thing.
You cannot be contained by any thought, good or bad, superior or inferior, just as God and truth cannot be contained.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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May 13th 2006
From Consciousness -- Resorting To Yelling
At some point in a blessed life there arises the desire for truth. Not just "my" truth, but real truth, final truth, eternal truth.... But, when we see that all our sophisticated techniques are useless in fulfilling true spiritual desire, we tend to regress to simple yelling.
We may even yell a prayer: "Help me, take me, show me." This prayer is close, but even this doesn't usually work, because we are so absorbed in our yelling that we neglect to see that what we are yelling for is already here.
The yelling doesn't work, so we try something else. This is called the cycle of reincarnation. It is a daily cycle, a monthly cycle, a yearly cycle, a whole lifetime of cycling in and out, in and out, and failing, failing, failing.
Yes, there are beautiful glimpses of truth along the way, moments of joy, union, understanding, and wisdom. But the moment these experiences end, we begin yelling again, or searching again, or trying again.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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May 14th 2006
From Consciousness -- Stop Relying On The Mind
Many people misunderstand what it means to call off the search. It does not mean to give up the desire for truth. It means to stop searching for truth, and to stop relying on the mind to orchestrate how truth will be revealed.
It means to give up the arrogant belief that you will somehow locate truth and bring it to yourself.
This belief is based on the lie that you are separate from truth.
When this lie is believed very strongly, it creates further experiences of the lie, until finally you recognize that all the yelling, all the searching, all the figuring out, the gathering of more and more experiences, just leave you with attention on the search rather than on what is and has always been here.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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May 15th 2006
From Consciousness -- Engrossed and Hypnotized
The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms.
They are so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence, that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought.
They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny.
Eternity is the living reality of who you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 16th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Two Dimensions
Some years ago when visiting China, I came upon a stupa on a mountaintop near Guilin. It had writing embossed in gold on it, and I asked my Chinese host what it meant.
"It means 'Buddha,' " he said. "Why are there two characters rather than one?" I asked. "One;' he explained, means 'man.' The other means 'no.' And the two together means 'Buddha.'"
I stood there in awe. The character for Buddha already contained the whole teaching of the Buddha, and for those who have eyes to see, the secret of life.
Here are the two dimensions that make up reality, thing-ness and no-thingness, form and the denial of form, which is the recognition that form is not who you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 17th 2006
From Consciousness -- This Too Will Pass
When you are detached, you gain a higher vantage point from which to view the events in your life instead of being trapped inside them.
You become like an astronaut who sees the planet Earth surrounded by the vastness of space and realizes a paradoxical truth: The earth is precious and at the same time insignificant.
The recognition that 'this, too, will pass' brings detachment and with detachment another dimension comes into your life -- inner space.
Through detachment, as well as nonjudgment and inner nonresistance, you gain access to that dimension.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 18th 2006
From Consciousness -- A Subtle Peace
When you are no longer totally identified with forms, consciousness -- who you are -- becomes freed from its imprisonment in form.
This freedom is the arising of inner space. It comes as a stillness, a subtle peace deep within you, even in the face of something seemingly bad. This, too, will pass.
Suddenly, there is space around the event. There is also space around the emotional highs and lows, even around pain. And above all, there is space between your thoughts.
And from that space emanates a peace that is not "of this world," because this world is form, and the peace is space. This is the peace of God.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 19th 2006
From Consciousness --
Now you can enjoy and honor the things of this world without giving them an importance and significance they don't have. You can participate in the dance of creation and be active without attachment to outcome and without placing unreasonable demands upon the world: Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am.
The world cannot give you those things, and when you no. longer have such expectations, all self-created suffering comes to an end.
All such suffering is due to an over valuation of form and an unawareness of the dimension of inner space.
When that dimension is present in your life, you can enjoy things, experiences, and the pleasures of the senses without losing yourself in them, without inner attachment to them, that is to say, without becoming addicted to the world.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 20th 2006
From Consciousness -- The Impermanence of All Forms
When the dimension of space is lost or rather not known, the things of the world assume an absolute importance, a seriousness and heaviness that in truth they do not have.
When the world is not viewed from the perspective of the formless, it becomes a threatening place, and ultimately a place of despair.
The Old Testament prophet must have felt this when he wrote, "All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it.''
The words "This, too, will pass" are pointers toward reality. In pointing to the impermanence of all forms, by implication, they are also pointing to the eternal. Only the eternal in you can recognize the impermanent as impermanent.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 21st 2006
From Consciousness -- Moved By The Mystery
Whether you call an experience a me or a you, a good day or a rotten day, beauty or ugliness, compassion or cruelty -- it's all still the mystery experiencing itself, extending itself into time and form. That's all that is happening.
If this understanding is held only in your head, you can know it but you are not 'being' it. The head is saying, "Oh, I know, I'm the mystery," and yet your body is acting like it didn't get the message. It's saying, "I'm still somebody, and I've got all these anxious thoughts and wants and desires."
When we are being it knowingly, the whole being receives the message. And when the whole body receives the message, it's like air going out of a balloon.
When all that contradiction, turmoil, and searching for this and that deflates, there is the experience that the body is an extension of the mystery. Then the body can easily be moved by the mystery, by pure spirit.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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May 22nd 2006
From Consciousness -- Living The Mystery
In order for that body to be fully surrendered to its true nature, it would have had to see so deeply and totally that it is the mystery, and to have had all self-image disappear.
If it had any remnants of self-image, it would start to stiffen up. As soon as it had any judgment or saw anything as other than itself, there would be stiffness, as if the joints had become rusty. If it was worried about tomorrow, it would just stiffen up. So in order for that body to totally live the mystery knowingly, its personal agenda has to be completely dissolved.
The body-mind cannot dissolve the agenda just because it thinks it's a good idea, but it can happen naturally as beingness sees more and more thoroughly that the only thing that actually exists is itself.
It's a visceral thing. Can you start to get the feel of it? There is nothing to hold on to. No viewpoints to hold. No separation.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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May 23rd 2006
From Consciousness -- Realizing With The Whole Being
Wisely, it has been said that the truth sets you free. But the 'whole being' has to realize the truth. It has to 'be' the truth, knowingly.
That's what I mean about the limitation of picking the weeds and the fruit, replacing one thought or illusionary belief with another one, a "better" one. If you put in one self-oriented thought, the mechanism is going to get contradicted. And if you're trying to move in that body, it won't move very well.
It doesn't matter which ideas you insert. Some of them may help you to maneuver a little easier, since some thoughts are les contradictory than other thoughts and some self-images are a little less contradictory than other self-images. If you rename your self-image to something more positive, the energy may shift but it doesn't get free of identifications; it doesn't get to dance.
The body becomes free only by seeing its true nature. This can be done only by going to the root instead of picking off the tops of the weeds. This means to wake up and find out what you eternally are instead of trying to manage your neuroses.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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May 24th 2006
From Consciousness -- Deframe False VIews
If you are holding an identity, an idea, opinion, judgment, blame, victimhood, guilt, etc., this will get in the way of self-liberation. You can stop holding these stories by 'de'-framing, not 're'-framing them.
It's okay to reframe, but it's taboo to deframe. This habit of framing experience by telling yourself a story about it goes very deep, as if putting experience into a better context will help you.
It may help in small ways at times, but ultimately it's only when we totally deframe and deconstruct our false views that we wake up from the dream-state of separateness.
The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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May 25th 2006
From Consciousness -- Spiritual Wintertime
In a real sense, self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of wintertime. It's not about looking for a right answer so much as stripping away and letting you see what is not necessary, what you can do without, what you are without your leaves.
In human beings, we do not call these leaves. We call them ideas, concepts, attachments, and conditioning. All of this forms your identity. Wouldn't it be terrible if the trees outside identified themselves by their leaves? These are very flimsy things to be attached to.
Inquiry is a way of inducing a spiritual winter in its most positive sense, stripping everything to its root, to its core.
When we have allowed ourselves to be stripped and really enter into the interior winter, into all the leaves or thoughts falling out of the mind, then we may find ourselves falling backward into, as we say in Zen, who we were before our parents were born. This is a falling into the most essential root of being.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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May 26th 2006
From Consciousness -- Toss Old Illusions Overboard
Wouldn't it seem strange if, in autumn/fall, you saw the trees holding all their dead leaves to themselves as if they were in an existential crisis? This is our tendency, to pick up the pieces of our pet beliefs and theories, and hold on for dear life.
Sometimes this falling away feels like a powerful storm stripping leaves from a tree. You may have a sacred identity and some wind blows through -- usually another human being -- and that identity is ripped away.
You can be thinking, "I am so enlightened, I can't stand it, it's amazing." Then some wind is going to come along and rip the thought away. Some friend or fellow worker is going to come along and say, "That doesn't look too enlightened to me," and you see it was just another unnecessary identity.
If you don't reach down to gather it up, this is a sacred opportunity. Then as it falls you will see that you don't need that identity. It's an illusion, just more dead weight to toss overboard.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
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May 27th 2006
From Consciousness -- Space Consciousness
Space consciousness means that in addition to being conscious of things -- which always comes down to sense perceptions, thoughts, and emotions -- there is an undercurrent of awareness.
Awareness implies that you are not only conscious of things (objects), but you are also conscious of being conscious.
If you can sense an alert inner stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground -- that's it!
This dimension is there in everyone, but most people are completely unaware of it. Sometimes I point to it by saying, "Can you feel your own Presence?"
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 28th 2006
From Consciousness -- Getting Upset
Whenever you are upset about an event, a person, or a situation, the real cause is not the event, person, or situation but a loss of true perspective that only space can provide.
You are trapped in object consciousness, unaware of the timeless inner space of consciousness itself.
The words "This, too, will pass" when used as a pointer can restore awareness of that dimension to you.
Another pointer to the truth in you is contained in the following statement: "I am never upset for the reason I think."
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 29th 2006
From Consciousness -- Like The Cloudless Sky
Whenever there is beauty, kindness, the recognition of the goodness of simple things in your life, look for the background to that experience within yourself.
But don't look for it as if you were looking for something. You cannot pin it down and say, "Now I have it," or grasp it mentally and define it in some way.
It is like the cloudless sky. It has no form. It is space; it is stillness, the sweetness of Being and infinitely more than these words, which are only pointers. When you are able to sense it directly within yourself, it deepens.
So when you appreciate something simple --- a sound, a sight, a touch -- when you see beauty, when you feel loving kindness toward another, sense the inner spaciousness that is the source and background to that experience.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 30th 2006
From Consciousness -- In The Midst of You
Even when you seem to be aware of yourself, you have made yourself into an object, a thought form, and so what you are aware of is a thought, not yourself.
When you hear of inner space, you may start seeking it, and, because you are seeking it as if you were looking for an object or for an experience, you cannot find it.
This the dilemma of all those who are seeking spiritual realization or enlightenment.
Hence, Jesus said, "The kingdom God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will say, 'Lo, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom God is in the midst of you.'
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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May 31st 2006
From Consciousness -- The Form of Little Things
Why is it the "least thing" that makes up "the best happiness"? Because true happiness is not caused by the thing or event, although this is how it first appears.
The thing or event is so subtle, so unobtrusive, that it takes up only a small part of your consciousness -- and the rest is inner space, consciousness itself unobstructed by form. Inner space consciousness and who you are in your essence are one and the same.
In other words, the form of little things leaves room for inner space. And it is from inner space, the unconditioned consciousness itself, that true happiness, the joy of Being, emanates.
To be aware of little, quiet things, however, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth
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