September 2006
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September 1st 2006
From Consciousness -- What's Wrong With Old?
In our civilization, which is totally identified with the outer and ignorant of the inner dimension of spirit, the word 'old' has mainly negative connotations.
It equals useless and so we regard it as almost an insult to refer to someone as old. To avoid the word, we use euphemisms such as elderly and senior.
The First Nation "grandmother" is a figure of great dignity. Today’s "granny" is at best cute.
Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Finding Your Inner Purpose
The disruption of the outward movement at a time when it is "not meant to be happening" can also potentially bring forth an early spiritual awakening in a person.
Ultimately, nothing happens that is not meant to happen which is to say, nothing happens that is not part of the greater whole and its purpose.
Thus, destruction or disruption of outer purpose can lead to finding your inner purpose and subsequently the arising of a deeper outer purpose that is aligned with the inner.
Children who have suffered greatly often grow into young adults who are mature beyond their years.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- The Instability of All Forms
What is lost on the level of form is gained on the level of essence.
In the traditional figure of the "blind seer" or the "wounded healer" of ancient cultures and legend, some great loss or disability on the level of form has become an opening into spirit.
When you have had a direct experience of the unstable nature of all forms, you will likely never overvalue form again and thus lose yourself by blindly pursuing it or attaching yourself to it.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- An Opportunity Not to be Missed
The opportunity that the dissolution of form, and in particular, old age, represents is only just beginning to be recognized in our contemporary culture.
In the majority of people, that opportunity is still tragically missed, because the ego identifies with the return movement just as it identified with the outward movement.
This results in a hardening of the egoic shell, a contraction rather than an opening.
The diminished ego then spends the rest of its days whining or complaining, trapped in fear or anger, self- pity, guilt, blame, or other negative mental-emotional states or avoidance strategies, such as attachment to memories and thinking and talking about the past.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- An Opening into the Realm of Spirit.
When the ego is no longer identified with the return movement in a person's life, old age or approaching death becomes what it is meant to be: an opening into the realm of spirit.
I have met old people who were living embodiments of this process. They had become radiant. Their weakening forms had become transparent to the light of consciousness. On the new earth, old age will be universally recognized and highly valued as a time for the flowering of consciousness.
For those who are still lost in the outer circumstances of their lives, it will be a time of a late homecoming, when they awaken to their inner purpose.
For many others, it will represent an intensification and a culmination of the awakening process.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- A Pure Pearl
Keep in mind that while your awakening may be sudden, the ramifications of it, or what I like to call "the deliverance," are not so sudden. In fact, I would venture to say that the deliverance will most likely continue for many, many years to come.
That is why the title (for my book) 'From Onions to Pearls' was chosen. What we all are is a pure Pearl of Consciousness, God-essence, if you like, without anything possible to be added on for self-realization.
But by Divine design, this Pearl, from the moment of birth onward, has been surrounded by layer after layer of conditioning.
So what "awakening" consists of is the realization that you are indeed this perfect Pearl of Consciousness; and then the "deliverance" takes over by removing each subtle layer of conditioning until only the Pearl again remains.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
From Consciousness -- The Process of Awakening
While the process of awakening itself feels very sudden and dramatic, the events leading up to it actually occur gradually.
Sometimes tragic events such as life-threatening illnesses, loss of mobility, a career, a loved one, or financial setbacks, and so on, help to soften up the tough exterior of all our layers of identity so that the inner wisdom of who we really are can emerge.
In reading about the awakening experience of others who have described their process, I have found some common denominators:
There is a deathlike experience involving loss of ego or personal identity. There is a letting go of trying to understand the whole process or anything else relating to God or spiritual matters. Finally, there is a letting go of all intentional effort toward awakening. This is followed by waves of bliss that later simmer down to a feeling of deep peace.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
From Consciousness -- The Surrender
Just as I was leaving that county jail to be transferred to a federal prison at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, the first shock waves of intuitive knowing hit me. They centered around a practice of self-inquiry I had been doing very intensively: "Who am I?"
It dawned on me that I couldn't know anything about God or the spiritual path with this limited mind, so I just gave it up. With this surrender came the first tidal wave of relief and bliss.
A few weeks later I was on Terminal Island adjusting to seeing the sun, moon, stars, ocean, sea gulls, pelicans, seals, flowers, trees, and grass for the first time in two years when I was hit by the second phase of this surrender process. Not only didn't I know anything about enlightenment, I couldn't do anything about it either!
Once again this was followed by tsunami-sized waves of bliss and relief. The awakening itself was now complete. What followed were the ramifications of this intuitive knowing in my daily life. This process I have come to call "the deliverance."
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
From Consciousness -- The Death Before Rebirth
To prepare this individual bag of skin for awakening, Spirit had no qualms about ruthlessly crushing any notion of a personal identity or "ego," the "me" part which it had so carefully prepared and nurtured up to this point.
Not only was I jerked out of a comfortable life of fun and loving support and then stuck into that "black hole of Calcutta," but I suffered a psychic death that was every bit as real as the final curtain call.
From the day of my arrest and for at least two months thereafter, I felt like a walking, talking dead person with no idea of who I was, only that there was no longer any connection to that which I had formerly considered "me."
But somehow I knew that however terrifying this death experience was, it was connected to a rebirth soon to come. What I liked even better was the idea that I would be reborn into a 50-something-year-old body instead of having suffer the indignities of infancy again.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
From Consciousness -- Consciousness Is All There Is
It was one Ramesh Balsekar, a student disciple of Nasargadatta, whose book I again coincidentally found a year later after reading the other advaita guys, that really did me in.
Now he's not saying anything different from his buddies, but he said it, delivered with Grace, in just one sentence that hit me right in the intuitive heart.
His masters had given me some advaita tidbits that took a year to percolate down to my heart, along with many mantras such as the "Who am I?" kind of inquiries, and voila! Lightning struck home.
All he said in his opening chapter was, "Consciousness (Source -- All That Is -- God) is all there is." WOW! He said it, and I could actually see it, know it, feel on fire with it, and begin to live it.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
From Consciousness -- You Are Not The Doer
In the advaita school, God is the Source and the Subject of all Consciousness. Everything else is the appearance or object of the Subject as phenomena. But in this case, Subject and object are one and the same energy.
The role of a "doer" can only pertain to the subject once we conceptually separate these two words of subject and object in the world of duality or appearance. The role of the one "done," or puppet, if you like, can only be the object of the subject, and not the subject of further objects.
The bottom line, folks: You have no free will. You don't make the choices. You are not the doer. Neither is anyone else out there the doer. There is only Consciousness acting through the individual mind/body organism that we call this bag of skin and bones.
Once you get this, and I mean really get it, say, like St. Paul got it when he was struck down by some kind of Divine Lightning and in a flash clearly saw the ignorance of his former thinking, then I would say you have received your wake-up call. The very thought that Consciousness is all there is, and I am not the doer, kept me in a blissful swoon for months.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
From Consciousness -- You Don't Have to Wait
As your awareness increases and the ego is no longer running your life, you don't have to wait for your world to shrink or collapse through old age or personal tragedy in order for you to awaken to your inner purpose.
As the new consciousness is beginning to emerge on the planet, an increasing number of people no longer need to be shaken to have an awakening.
They embrace the awakening process voluntarily even while still engaged in the outward cycle of growth and expansion.
When that cycle is no longer usurped by the ego, the spiritual dimension will come into this world through the outward movement -- thought, speech, action, creation -- as powerfully as through the return movement -- stillness, Being, and dissolution of form.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- The Impulse to Create
Without the impairment of egoic dysfunction, our intelligence comes into full alignment with the outgoing cycle of universal intelligence and its impulse to create.
We become conscious participants in the creation of form. It is not we who create, but universal intelligence that creates through us.
We don't identify with what we create and so don't lose ourselves in what we do. We are learning that the act of creation may involve energy of the highest intensity, but that is not "hard work" or stressful.
We need to understand the difference between stress and intensity, as we shall see. Struggle or stress is a sign that the ego has returned, as are negative reactions when we encounter obstacles.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Actions That Unite
The force behind the ego's wanting creates "enemies,” that is to say, reaction in the form of an opposing force equal in intensity. The stronger the ego, the stronger the sense of separateness between people.
The only actions that do not cause opposing reactions are those that are aimed the good of all. They are inclusive, not exclusive. They join; they don't separate.
They are not for "my" country:. but for all of humanity, not for "my" religion but the emergence of consciousness in all human beings, not for "my" species but for all sentient beings and all of nature.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Consciousness and Creation
We are also learning that action, although necessary, is only a secondary factor in manifesting our external reality.
The primary factor in creation is consciousness.
No matter how active we are, how much effort we make, our state of consciousness creates our world, and if there is no change on that inner level, no amount of action will make any difference.
We would only re-create modified versions of the same world again and again, a world that is an external reflection of the ego.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Beyond Comprehension
Consciousness is already conscious. It is the unmanifested, the eternal. The universe, however, is only gradually becoming conscious.
Consciousness itself is timeless and therefore does not evolve. It was never born and does not die.
When consciousness becomes the manifested universe, it appears to be subject to time and to undergo an evolutionary process.
No human mind is capable of comprehending fully the reason for this process. But we can glimpse it within ourselves and become a conscious participant in it.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Form and Formlessness Interpenetrate
Consciousness is the intelligence, the organizing principle behind the arising of form. Consciousness has been preparing forms for millions of years so that it can express itself through them in the manifested.
Although the unmanifested realm of pure consciousness could be considered another dimension, it is not separate from this dimension of form.
Form and formlessness interpenetrate. The unmanifested flows into this dimension as awareness, inner space, Presence.
How does it do that? Through the human form that becomes conscious and thus fulfills its destiny. The human form was created for this higher purpose, and millions of other forms prepared the ground for it.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Throttling Back.
Stop thinking of silence as a lack of noise -- mental noise, emotional noise, or the external noise around you. As long as you see silence as something objective, something that is not you but might come to you like an emotional experience, you are chasing your own projected idea.
Looking for silence is like being on a motorboat racing around the lake looking for a smooth spot where everything is silent, and there you are -- vroom! vroom! -- racing around with increasing anxiety that you are never going to get there.
No matter how long you raced around that lake you would never find this silence. Actually, all you have to do is throttle back and turn the key off, and then there you are. Then it is very quiet, very still.
When you start to be receptive and allowing, you start to return to your natural state, which is very quiet. Being receptive is just like throttling back. It is a natural state of quiet.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
From Consciousness -- Becoming Totally Open
Many years ago I was very lucky to make this wonderful discovery, not because I was intelligent, but out of utter failure.
Zen students do a lot of meditating and following the breath. It seems very concentrated, but what often happens is that you think you are following your breath, and then you realize that you are following your mind into some story. It's like trying to discipline a dog that refuses to be trained.
Some people seem to be good at that kind of practice. They hold their focus and stay with it and become quiet. I, on the other hand, never had the capacity to hold my mind like that, so I wasn't very good at it. After complete failure time and time again, I heard my teacher say, "You have to find your own way."
Instead of closing in on a narrow focus, I found my own way was just to be present, which was to become totally open. This is more like listening than focusing.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
From Consciousness -- Natural and Effortless
Through inner listening, I discovered a very natural state, a state that is actually the only state that isn't contrived. From that state that is like listening, I started to see that every effort to contrive created another state. As soon as I made an effort, a state would be manufactured out of thin air.
I could manufacture beautiful states, terrible states, concentrated states, and all sorts of states; but there was only one state that was totally natural and absolutely effortless. In that state, I found access to the deepest Self, which is freedom.
By its very nature, this state has to be something that is effortless. It has to be something that does not require maintenance.
A quiet mind that is arrived at by concentration ends up being a dull mind, not a free mind. It may feel quiet and it may feel good because it's quiet, but it's not a free mind, and in your being you don't feel free either.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
From Consciousness -- The True Quiet
Half of the practice of spiritual inquiry is to take you to silence instantly. When you inquire "Who am I?" if you are honest, you'll notice that it takes you right back to silence instantly.
The brain doesn't have the answer, so all of a sudden there is silence. The question is meant to take you to that state of silence that is not manufactured, where thinking or searching for the right emotional experience fails.
The kind of quiet that is natural and spontaneous and not controlled is actually a heartful quiet; it's rich and vast. Controlled quiet is numb and narrow.
When quiet is not controlled, you feel very open, you become receptive, and the mind is not imposing itself. There is a natural return to your true nature. Your true nature isn't quiet; it's quietness. It could also be called no-bodyness or no-thingness. When you come to the true quiet, you have transcended quietness.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
From Consciousness -- Beyond Dualistic Ideas
As long as you think quiet is in opposition to noise, that's not the true quiet. When you are in the true quiet, you realize that when you hear a jackhammer, that's the quietness -- it's just taken some form.
True quiet is absolutely inclusive. It goes beyond all dualistic ideas of what quiet is.
When we come into stillness, we find that stillness is not separate from motion or movement. After you meditate, if you get up and start to go about your day thinking, "Why can't I keep this amazing stillness?" it's because you've experienced the controlled stillness, not the natural and uncontrolled stillness.
As you relax back into true stillness, when your body gets up to move, the stillness itself is moving.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
From Consciousness -- A Palpable Presence
When you allow yourself to return to your true nature, you're not wanting any particular thing to happen in the stillness. Many times when people are quiet, they're waiting for something to happen, which itself keeps them on the periphery, treading water, instead of just letting go.
When you aren’t waiting for anything to happen, there is a natural sinking and deepening into the source of your own being. It's very quiet, and then and only then do you start to sense presence. There is a very palpable presence in this quiet.
That is why I said this is not a dead quiet. You can sense an aliveness. It's a presence that's inside your body and outside your body. It permeates everywhere. When you are looking for it, you are looking for a gross presence, a heavy presence to hit you over the head. This isn't going to happen.
The true quiet is a brightness. You feel bright. There is an awakeness, a deep sense of being alive.
Adyashanti -- Emptiness Dancing www.adyashanti.org
From Consciousness -- Lost in Form
Consciousness incarnates into the manifested dimension, that is to say, it becomes form. When it does so it enters a dreamlike state. Intelligence remains, but consciousness becomes unconscious of itself. It loses itself in form, becomes identified with forms. This could be described as the descent of the divine into matter.
At that stage in the evolution of the universe, the entire outgoing movement takes place in that dreamlike state. Glimpses of awakening come only at the moment of the dissolution of an individual form, that is to say, death. And then begins the next incarnation, the next identification with form, the next individual dream that is part of the collective dream.
When the lion tears apart the body of the zebra, the consciousness that incarnated into the zebra-form detaches itself from the dissolving form and for a brief moment awakens to its essential immortal nature as consciousness; and then immediately falls back into sleep and reincarnates into another form.
When the lion becomes old and cannot hunt anymore, as it draws its last breath, there is again the briefest of glimpses of an awakening, followed by another of form.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- The Brain and Consciousness
On our planet, the human ego represents the final stage of universal sleep, the identification of consciousness with form. It was a necessary stage in the evolution of consciousness.
The human brain is a highly differentiated form through which consciousness enters this dimension. It contains approximately one hundred billion nerve cells (called neurons), about the same number as there are stars in our galaxy, which could be seen as a macrocosmic brain.
The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.
When the brain gets damaged, it does not mean you lose consciousness. It means consciousness can no longer use that form to enter this dimension. You cannot lose consciousness because it is, in essence, who you are. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Awakened Doing
Awakened doing is the outer aspect of the next stage in the evolution of consciousness on our planet. The closer we get to the end of our present evolutionary stage, the more dysfunctional the ego becomes, in the same way that a caterpillar becomes dysfunctional just before it transforms into a butterfly. But the new consciousness is arising even as the old dissolves.
We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness, but they won't be talking about it in the news tonight. On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form.
This does not mean all forms (the world) are going to dissolve, although quite a few almost certainly will. It means consciousness can now begin to create form without losing itself in it. It can remain conscious of itself, even while it creates and experiences form.
Why should it continue to create and experience form? For the enjoyment of it. How does consciousness do that? Through awakened humans who have learned the meaning of 'awakened doing'.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Not What But How
Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose -- what you do -- with your inner purpose -- awakening and staying awake.
Through awakened doing, you become one with the outgoing purpose of the universe.
Consciousness flows through you into this world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it.
Not 'what you do', but 'how you do' what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- The Secret of Successful Action
A reversal of your priorities comes about when the main purpose for doing what you do becomes the doing itself, or rather, the current of consciousness that flows into what you do. That current of consciousness is what determines quality.
Another way of putting it: In any situation and in whatever you do, your state of consciousness is the primary factor; the situation and what you do is secondary.
"Future" success is dependent upon and inseparable from the consciousness out of which the actions emanate. That can be either the reactive force of the ego or the alert attention of awakened consciousness.
All truly successful action comes out of that field of alert attention, rather than from ego and conditioned, unconscious thinking.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- Acceptance, Enjoyment and Enthusiasm
There are three ways in which consciousness can flow into what you do and thus through you into this world, three modalities in which you can align your life with the creative power of the universe. Modality means the underlying energy-frequency that flows into what you do and connects your actions with the awakened consciousness that is emerging into this world.
What you do will be dysfunctional and of the ego unless it arises out of one of these three modalities. They may change during the course of a day, although, one of them may be dominant during a certain stage in your life. Each modality is appropriate to certain situations.
The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all -- from the most simple task to the most complex.
If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
From Consciousness -- The Prayer of Silence
Awareness of the divine essence as our innermost true self first requires absolute silence and release of all that God is not. It implies no less than turning away from the external toward what lies hidden within. It is a turn from the external, or realm of opposition, to the internal -- the all-embracing totality of divine being. It is the way of meditation beyond objectivity, the way of inner silence before God.
Remaining quiet before God is a "prayer of silence" through which we listen to that which secretly speaks to us in the "inner room of the heart." This prayer is the same as what is meant by Jesus' urging: "When you pray, go into your room to your Father who is in the secret place" (Matthhew 6:6)
What is hidden deep in our innermost being lies in silence and stillness, and in the silence of the deep springs the eternal, inexhaustible, original source of all being. Countless words trouble the soul; where words fall silent, the everlasting begins.
Keeping inwardly silent before God is the implicit precondition for perceiving the everlasting within us. If God is to speak, then all thinking, imagining, and supposing must stay quiet. All faculties must remain silent and prepare a place of inner stillness for God to speak in us.
Wolfgang Kopp -- Free Yourself of Everything, www.tao-chan.de
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