The Seer

Make sure your vision or goal is not an inflated image of yourself and therefore a concealed form of ego, such as wanting to become a movie star, a famous writer, or a wealthy entrepreneur. Also make sure your goal is not focused on having this or that, such as a mansion by the sea, your own company, or ten million dollars in the bank.

An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself having this or that are all static goals and therefore don’t empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole.

Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor or writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all.

From: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

What we want in life is peace, love, and the sense that everything is okay, isn’t it? Find out for yourself. Because if that’s what you want, it’s already here. It’s free. There are no requirements. No requirements at all. You don’t have to make any money. You don’t have to have any relationships. You don’t have to have a career. You need nothing! Absolutely nothing. It’s free! It’s absolutely free. It’s what you are — awareness.

Just notice, I am aware. Notice the awareness that you are — not the concept of awareness. If you can hear anything, see anything, feel anything — it’s the awareness that’s hearing, seeing, and feeling. Awareness is timelessly present. It’s not yesterday, it’s not tomorrow. It’s always now. You don’t have to wait five minutes, nor can you go back in time five minutes. It’s this point of timeless, spaceless awareness that’s always seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling.

The experience that arises in awareness is absolutely irrelevant — it does not touch the peace. Whether I lose every penny I have, or I win the lottery — I am untouched as awareness. Because I am here watching, feeling, sensing.

This awareness is absolutely free. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to invest time manipulating your relationships, your career, or your finances. You don’t have to do anything! It’s free. This is the resolution to all psychological suffering. This awareness is what I am. So, knowing what I am, what we are — we are the peace, the love, the sense that everything is okay — this is what I am. This is what we are.

by Stephen Wingate

by Stephen WIngate

“Do dead men feel pain?” asked the doctor.

“No, of course not,” answered the patient.

“All right,” said the doctor, “now let us try an experiment.”

He took a sharp needle and pricked the man’s hand. The patient jumped up with a yell.

“There! What do you say now?” asked the psychiatrist.

“Well, isn’t that amazing!” answered the patient. “Dead people do feel pain.”

For a time one seems bound to the belief that his misery is “out there,” even while his agony is the “awful feeling of fear and foreboding within.” One may believe an errant member of a family is the cause the agony, but it’s the agony of that belief which is felt within as a disturbance of one’s equanimity.

To eliminate the agony, for the past ten thousand years we have been doing everything possible to change the suspected cause of it ”out there” with the husband, daughter, business or something else.

We have believed that if we could see an external situation change, automatically we would feel the restoration of some degree of equanimity; and we did, perhaps, for short time, until something else “out there” failed to gee-haw.

Now listen: This procedure puts us and leaves us at the mercy of “thing”! This makes the ‘feeling within” tributary to appearances without. This is self-imposed slavery.

The presence (or absence) of something we see is good or bad only as we are of the opinion that it is good or bad. The image has no value of its own. We have given it value (hence power) based on its desirability — “I like it; or don’t like it.” Yet, all enlightened instruction speaks of the joy to be experienced when desire is overcome. Can one conceive of a more immediate way to overcome the desire for things than to recognize their valuelessness and then to perceive the impossibility of being one who desires

We have been told that Heaven, Tranquillity, is within. Heaven is opinionless, desireless Awareness. As long as we look to people, things, or conditions for happiness, we are making “heaven” tributary to the object of perception. One who stands identified as tranquil Awareness itself finds people, things and conditions tributary to his harmonious Identity.

Tranquility is our Identity. We are not another identity attempting to experience the absence of desire. If we believe we find happiness and harmony, then we must believe we can lose them. In addition, we must believe they are absent (or can be) at the moment. We can no more be absent from Identity than light can be absent from light.

From: A Guide To Awareness And Tranquillity pp 188, by William Samuel

Eckhart: Everybody could probably feel the presence, but not everybody is interested. Many people are still in the grip of the ego and completely identified with their thoughts.

One way of becoming present is to feel the inner energy-field of your body. Feel the aliveness in your hands, arms, feet, legs, and then in the entire body. I call that awareness of the inner body. It takes your attention away from thinking and anchors you in the present moment.

Another way is to become conscious of your breathing. This is one of the most ancient meditation methods. Follow your breath with your attention, all the way into the body and out again. When you are aware of the inner body or follow the breath with your attention, you are highly alert, but not thinking.

Question: Once I have felt what being present is like, do I carry that knowledge inside all the time, like something learned once and forever, or do I have to practice constantly in order to become more conscious?

Eckhart: In most cases, it requires constant practice. Practice means you lose Presence, then realize that you lost it, then choose to return to it again and again, until Presence becomes your normal or predominant state.

Question: If everyone could connect with that state of awareness, would there be a change in global consciousness at a planetary level? How would that new world be like? How do you imagine that new era, as a new human evolution?

Eckhart: It would transform the world. It is the next step in human evolution, or one can even say the coming into existence of a new species. I don’t imagine what the new earth would look like, but I’m sure it would seem to us almost like a different planet.

Even science and technology may no longer exist, replaced by a simpler, more direct way of manifesting material forms through the mind. Of course, we would not need as many things as we do now

Eckhart Tolle