Surrender to the "Is-ness" of this moment

Are you worried, stressed, having a bad day?  No matter what is going on in your life right now, know that it is because your mind is creating thoughts, making it into a story, such as,  "This shouldn't be happening", or "This is horrible", or "I won't stand for this!"  Nothing is happening outside of your thoughts.  No one, no thing is making you miserable that is "out there" beyond your thoughts.

That's all it is. Thoughts are just thoughts. Shine your light of awareness on the thoughts. If you take away concepts, beliefs, stories, etc., that you've attached to those thoughts, you are left with a quiet Awareness.

Be Awareness and watch the thoughts float by like clouds . As they float by, notice they have no meaning, no labels, no emotions......only thoughts.

You can let go and surrender all false ideas of who you think you are. Experience bliss right now.  The only thing keeping you from it is resistance, which appears in the form of more thoughts!  Go into the Stillness.  You won't find it in time.....tomorrow or the day after.  Awareness is always now, will always be now, and it's all there is. No need to complicate it.

"Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is — no matter what form it takes — you are still, you are at peace."

     ~Eckhart Tolle

The Source.......Yourself

 Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word or mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you......

   ~Eckhart Tolle

Be Still.....Be Now.....Be Present

Now is all there is. There is no other time. The past and future are concepts that can be thought about now but they can never be experienced now.

We believe in the illusion of a separate self. Self is only a concept. Eckhart Tolle, (Stillness Speaks, 2003) explains, "The mind is incessantly looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continuously re-creates itself."


Trees, water, sky, hills--why do we divide life up and name the parts we have created?

The ego, manufactured by the mind, tells you who you are. The ego tells you that you are a body and its thoughts. Since you are a body, you can die. Since you can die, you are always in danger. Now must be broken up into pleasurable things, that are to be moved toward, and painful things that are to be avoided. Life is divided in two-- living and dying. The ego tells you that pleasure and life are the same and that pain and death are the same. This perpetuates the ego's practice of constantly resisting now--telling you that your life has problems that must be avoided and solutions that must be found. Suffering is born out of the stories we tell ourselves about pain. "Inner alignment with now is the end of suffering." (Stillness Speaks, 2003)

There is a tension that constantly moves us away from now. It says, "Go do something." It says, "Accomplish this." When a goal is accomplished, it is quickly replaced by another goal, and the moving away from now continues. It constantly seeks some time other than now. Instead of experiencing now as it is without labels, judgments, and descriptions, this mind-made self causes your true self to become lost in thought. To keep denying the reality of now, just as it is, it perceives and then describes life to you. You begin to have a relationship with life.The fact that you are life becomes obscured.

The ego chatters incessantly. It tells you that there are things outside you and things inside you. Things that are inside you are admitted into consciousness. Things outside you are denied and become subconscious or are projected "out there" so that they can be judged and related to as if they are separate objects. The ego divides up the whole of reality into parts that it names and counts. "The landscape is made up of separate things. This is a tree, that is the ground, there is the sky." This abstracting denies the fact that there is no real dividing line between the tree, the ground, and the sky--or between anything and anything else. Everything is connected.

By moving away from now and into an imaginary future, or into a remembered past, the ego seeks to establish its existence and keep the mind from discovering the truth by accepting what is now. In the future, it tells you, you can add this or that or something else to yourself and become bigger. Tomorrow you will have accomplished more. Next year you will make more money. Further denying now, the ego ruminates about the past and all its horror. Still continuing its denial of now, the ego sometimes tells you about the "good ole days" of the past.

By breaking up life and moving away from now, the ego is addicted to dualistic knowledge. This is good. That is bad. It never allows reality to be experienced and known directly as a whole just as it is. The ego can only continue its existence by thinking about life. The ego cannot exist in the only time there ever is: Now.

How do you stay in the now? You feel life as it is. You experience instead of describing experience. You observe thought instead of believing it and becoming lost in it. You accept what is instead of resisting it. Even if something is happening that you would rather not be happening, you can feel and accept that you don't like what is happening now. Consistent with the Serenity Prayer, learn to change what should be changed and accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed. Just be and accept that there is nothing you need to do and nowhere you need to go. Things are the only way they can be. Stop resisting now.

That doesn't mean to stop living your life and having accomplishments. It means to be present while you are living life and having accomplishments. Feel your life. Accept and be with the feeling without labeling it or describing it or resisting it. Every success in recognizing the ego and its motivations can be built upon. Along the way, learn to observe the ego's criticizing of your progress in staying present. Eventually, it will lose its motivation to continue its chatter. When it collapses, along with its mindless emotional thinking, you will know yourself and find "the peace that surpasseth all understanding." All that is left is the timeless now.

SOURCES:

Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks (Novato: New World Library, 2003 and Vancouver: Namaste Publishing, 2003), p. 27, p. 118.
Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Bantam Books, 1980).
Ken Wilber, The Spectrum of Consciousness, 20th Anniversary Edition (The Theosophical Publishing House, 1993).
A Course in Miracles (Foundation for Inner Peace, 1985).
Tony Parsons, As It Is (Inner Directions Publishing, 2002).

"The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle

I've learned to be a pretty joyful person, and the magnificent ideas, or pointers, from Eckhart Tolle's books have led me to experience for myself his concepts of how to live in the present moment. When I began living in the present, I've experienced heaven, and it's here for me (or you!) every moment we let go of thoughts of the past and of the future.

The Center for Contemplation (we meet in Abilene, TX - see the link to the right)is doing a review of "The Power of Now". Many of us have read it and are eager to discuss our personal experiences of how we've implemented the ideas from the book into our own personal lives. For many of us, it has been life changing and liberating, freeing us to be whole and at one with the great "I AM".

Here are some excerpts from this spirit inspired book:

"Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed to the Now as the key to the spiritual dimension. Despite this, it seems to have remained a secret. It is certainly not taught in churches and temples. If you go to a church, you may hear readings from the Gospels, such as, "Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for things of itself" or "Nobody who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of heaven". Or you may hear the passage about the beautiful flowers who are not anxious about tomorrow, but live with ease in the timeless now and are provided for abundantly by God. The true nature of these teachings is not recognized. No one seems to realize that they were meant to be lived and thereby bring about profound inner transformation."


"Having access to that formless realm is truly liberating. It frees you from bondage to form and identification with form. It is life in its undifferentiated state prior to its fragmentation into multiplicity. We may call it the Unmanifested, the invisible Source of all things, the Being within all beings. It is a realm of deep stillness and peace, but also of joy and intense aliveness. Whenever you are present, you become "transparent" to some extent to the light, the pure consciousness that emanates from this Source. You also realize that the light is not separate from who you are but constitutes your very essence."

"Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness."

"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."

Namaste'

A True Seeker

* The date shown above is incorrect. The correct date of this posting is June 7, 2009


Before I ever traveled the daring road less traveled, or in other words, before I "knew" I was on a spiritual path, I had to let go of of my beliefs about the world as I perceived it and who I thought I was. I believed I was a a separate self (a psuedo self) who had many labels and identities attached to it. Some of those labels I used in the past were: my name - Diane; my gender - female; my early religious upbringing - Baptist; birthplace - Louisiana; marital status - married; siblings - one; mother of three grown children; parents - deceased.........and so on and so on. Later in life, I added the label of agnostic to describe myself, and finally I attached the label atheist to myself. I also subscribed to the philosophy, "I think, therefore I am", and I was quite proud of myself for that which I perceived as being an individual entity, unconnected to the "others" who were different than myself.

The labels, thoughts, and beliefs of who I thought I was were all suspended one day when my very spirit, or soul, was called out of its deep sleep. A certain passage I read in a book blew me away, as if it were tailor-made for me. The words I read were from the book, "A New Earth", by Eckhart Tolle. There I was, standing in a store, reading from that book, and something within me transcended from the ordinary reality to the non-ordinary reality. My consciousness was forever altered on that seemingly very ordinary day. The non-ordinary reality I entered into was one in which something within me interacted with, saw it, touched it, heard it, felt it, and smelled it. The essence of my real self was responding in a way it had never done before. The "I Am" , or me, was awakening.

Although you may not perceive these following words as anything meaningful to you, I'll present them for you to ponder. The passage which transformed my life and is so sacred to me still to this day is as follows:

"Since time immemorial, flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds have held special significance for the human spirit. Like all life-forms, they are, of course, temporary manifestations of the underlying one Life, one Consciousness. Their special significance and the reason why humans feel such fascination for the affinity with them can be attributed to their ethereal quality."

I have no way of knowing if those words are stirring your soul to awaken as they did mine. I do know that not many people want to come out of their sleep, not many want to give up their false self. When and if you are ready, you could become awakened anywhere or at any time. Your awakening moment will be tailor-made for YOU, and like me, you will be suspended like a bridge between this world and the next.

After an awakening experience, if you do not go to sleep again (and please don't go to sleep, as you may never pass this way again) the labels and identifying words you've used previously to describe your-self, meaning your false egoic self, will no longer be needed. You will no longer need to justify your existence when someone asks you, "...and what do you do?" You won't allow any person, including yourself, to put you into a box of society's making. You won't play the game of "let's measure, judge, and decide if you are part of the club", no matter how politely the question "what do you do?" is asked of you. It will no longer matter to you what another person "does" or how they spend their time. But, what you will want to know about someone whom you meet is who they think they are. "Who are you, really?" or "Do you know who you are?" or "Why are you here?" will be the questions you'll want answers of from others.

Once awakened, I began searching for others who were also awakened, or who are on the razor's edge of becoming awakened. I keep my radar out for the ones who have laid down their egos at the door, the ones who have no use for their "weapons of defense", the ones who have no need to live in their story, their drama, their right doing, their wrong doing and excuses. I watch and wait for the ones who KNOW who they are, or who they are awakening to - Spirit.

We find each other, we who are coming out of our sleep, we who are an intense, alert presence. We are the ones who have dropped our swords and shields at the door.

The following quote describes what a true seeker is:

Beyond the Boundaries of Already Knowing

To become a true seeker requires the heroic willingness to suspend, at a fundamental level, our most cherished beliefs. I'm not speaking about suspending our good judgment, discerning intellect, or common sense, but I am saying that we have to be willing to let go, even if only temporarily, of whatever our deepest convictions are about the nature of life, love, purpose, and the meaning—or meaninglessness—of existence.

Perennial enlightenment teachings tell us that we have to make room for the unknown. And to make this more specific, I always say that to seek in earnest means that we have to ceaselessly make the effort to peer beyond what we already know. It is only beyond the boundaries of already knowing that we come upon that miraculous domain of unmanifest creative potential and higher knowledge that always liberates and is ever new. And in an evolving world, this will always be the case, because there will always be infinitely more development at every level, more knowledge, and ever-deepening enlightenment to unfold within us.
- by Andrew Cohen

Becoming Fully Conscious

Wouldn't it be lovely to be totally at peace with yourself or with any other human you encounter in your life? Imagine being a person who never begins an argument or who is not drawn into one when someone else tries pull you into conflict? A Course of Miracles states, "No one who is at one with himself can even conceive of conflict." Ahhh........what a refreshing thought, to not even conceive of conflict.

It's sometimes perplexing to observe humans who appear to be in love with conflict or drama in their lives. Whether they admit to it or not, the drama is self-created. The strategies used are defense, attack, resistance, control, power, and greed. Even someone living alone can create their own drama. Whether its feeling sorry for oneself, feeling guilty, or feeling anxious - these are all forms of conflict within oneself. I can imagine hearing someone right now saying, "My feelings are uncontrollable, and they are perfectly justified!"

And in a way, you'd be right. You're entitled to feel whatever you feel. You are entitled to defend your position when you perceive you're being unfairly attacked, and you're absolutely entitled to create any drama you choose when you perceive it's justified. One can hardly be happy, though, by engaging in these behaviours or dramas. I know I wasn't when I indulged in dramas of my own in the past. So, why continue doing it when there is a way out of the misery?

Many of us didn't know how to find the escape door from conflict to peace. Some, even when they're shown the path to peace, won't take it because their whole sense of self is wrapped up in their particular life drama. The little self, or the egoic self, wants to thrive and grow. In order for it to continue living, it must feed on something, and that something is conflict. The little "me" says, "I am a victim of such and such. I am mistreated, misunderstood, and life is unfair to me." Or when the little "me" has worn out the victim role for a while, he or she reverses the strategy and inflicts suffering on others by lashing out verbally, emotionally, or physically, and usually believes or pretends to believe it's all justified. The ego has to thrive, remember, at all costs. Ego thinks it is "you" and feels threatened and literally is scared to death. The ego, or you, will die if it ceases to grow or to feed off of conflict. Many people will never give up ego, because it is their personality, (although, a false personality) and it's what makes them who they are, or so they believe. They will not become fully conscious, or awakened, unless the decision is made to drop the ego.

For those on the path to enlightenment, or to being fully conscious, only one escape route exists and it is this: know that when you are in conflict with something or someone, you are creating a time problem, or psychological time, as the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, says. You have stepped out of the present moment, and have created either the past or the future. It's that simple. Become present, honor the present moment by allowing it to be and no drama or conflict is possible.

Tolle says, "When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life. Nobody can even have an argument with you, no matter how hard he or she tries. You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person."

"Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates" - The Kabalion

Many people want to resist the idea that the universe is illusionary. We see, hear, smell, touch, and taste what we believe is real all around us, don't we? The universe is viewed through these five human senses simply because we are human.

When you pick up a heavy stone, notice it has a weight to it, it feels solid and dense, smooth perhaps, or it might even feel cool or warm to the touch, depending upon where it had been lying around, such as in the cool shade or out in the hot sunlight. Your brain perceives the stone as a very real object, a form of matter. But, think of your hands that hold the form. They're just another form of matter, just as your human brain is.

The scientific truth is that all matter is vibrating, even the stone you were holding. All matter not only vibrates, it is ever-changing, and it is transitory, including your human body. The body you are inhabiting seems real, and yet it is a mirage.

Why do we call it a mirage? Why is it an illusion? The truth is that every atom in your body, and every atom in everything is composed of more than 99.999% empty space, or quantum space. That sounds scary, empty and cold, but it's not. This wonderful, miraculous space that is within every atom is full of Intelligence, or Spirit. This Intelligence connects everything in the universe like an invisible web.

The physicist Sir James Jeans once said, "When an electron vibrates, the universe shakes." It takes only one teeny tiny flicker of any activity in any of your cells to go across the entire quantum field. One little brain cell vibrates and moves across everything that exists!

Humans perceive that our material earth plane is real, and as far as we are concerned, we must live and act as if all matter is real. There is nothing to fear, though, when we accept the fact that what seems to be real is always changing, always transitory. As Eckhart Tolle has said, "even the sun will die". When you know that who you are is Spirit manifesting itself in a seemingly physical body, you will know that Spirit, or the great Infinite Mind, holds us firmly. Own this knowledge, and nothing will feel threatening to you ever.

Why must everything be an illusion? Will this illusionary universe we live in ever seem not real to us? The Kybalion (translated by Doreen Virtue, Ph.D.)has an answer to these questions: "Only when The All finally withdraws us into itself will the illusion actually vanish.

The Joyful Now

You've probably heard people say things like the following statements, and maybe you've said them or thought them in your mind, also:

"I don't know who I am anymore."

"I need to get a life."

"I don't have a life."

"My life is awful."

or

"I LOVE my job, therefore, I love my life!"

or

"I am just me, a person, no one special."

These statements, when you think about it, don't make any sense. You can't have a life or get a life when you are Life itself. Also, how can an I be me?

We like to argue and say, "I can tell you who I am. I am a woman (or man) who is ____ years old. I have a job and I do _______ ." Or, "I have a degree and my profession is____." Someone else may say, "I am a nobody. I have no job. I'm poor and no one cares about me." Others like to say, "I'm a good person. After all. I tithe, do volunteer work, love my family, and am compassionate towards others." Many people need to build up their sense of self, or diminish it in order to feel and believe they are a separate self.

Thoughts first form in the mind and are translated as being true and real. Soon a story is created by the mind and an identity is born. You tell yourself this is who you are. Young children, even babies, are taught to learn their names, their age, their sex, the color of their eyes, hair, etc. The baby or young child had once just enjoyed being a part of Oneness. Then the external world began telling him he must believe in what his five senses are experiencing. His parents, teachers, older siblings want him to "see" the world as they believe they see it. The pressure is on for the child to see himself as separate....separate from everything. The message from the world tells him that in order to survive and fit in, he has to believe this illusion is real (although most humans don't realize it's an illusion).

The egoic self can build itself up to become a huge, puffed up ego, or the ego can go to the other extreme, believing the self is unimportant, or mistreated by society. This is just another clever way the ego makes an identity for itself, a "less than" identity. This becomes his victim role that his mind believes is who he really is, and he must continue playing it. As strange as it sounds, a person who has made this thought into his reality will usually not let anyone talk him out of his victim role. He clings to it because he senses his ficticuous self will die.........and then where would he be without it? Or rather, who would he be? Nothing? Such a terrifying thought!

We've all done this----created an idea of who we think we really are in our minds. Surely, it's real, we think. But,these thoughts change constantly, just like the world you believe you see around you, including the body form you're in. Animals and humans are born, grow old, then die. Trees, plants, clouds in the sky, mountains, oceans.........everything we perceive as real, even mind thoughts, come and go, constantly changing. How can we ever know who we really are, the actual core reality, when even our thoughts change so frequently? How can we ever stop the insanity of chasing after our own selves?

Try this:
Watch your mind for a moment. Be still, take a breath, relax, and now focus on your mind. Do you know what your next thought will be? Do you have any control of what the next thought will be? Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher and author of many books, suggests to try pretending you are a cat, silently gazing upon a mouse hole, waiting for a mouse (a thought) to appear. This is an excellent way to calm the mind and just be the awareness of any thoughts.

By doing this little practice, you've just experienced the Now, or the Consciousness, where there is deep stillness. You will soon come to know that the thoughts swirling like a whirlpool in your mind are not who you really are. You are so very much more than that.

There has always been one thing that is ultimately real, one thing that always is, always has been. The present moment. Even though it is perceived to be a moment in time, as if this moment will be followed by many more moments, the now, or the present is all there is.


When you begin to understand this by experiencing the now for yourself, there is an even deeper knowing of who you are in this moment of Now, all that there is. Observe that you are the awareness of awareness. That is you experiencing, or knowing, the Now. Awareness is also called Consciousness, or the Now, or the Divine within. Another way of putting it is awareness is the space where the witnessing occurs. Awareness witnesses the objects and forms that move and change in the moment of now. Even mind movements are simply foms,coming and going, not who you are.

Why wouldn't everyone want this peace, this joy that is found in the now? Many egos say they want peace, but they can't tolerate it for very long. Remember the ego wants to stay alive at any price, any cost. It will create conflict, sometimes physical, or emotional conflict in order to survive. When thoughts (or simply call it brain chatter, or obsessive thinking) keep replaying the awful past or imagining a fearful, anxiety ridden future, we miss the peaceful beauty of the Now. Yet, when we are aligned with Oneness, we can experience the peace and beauty of being one with all that is. When you understand and can say, "I Am That", you are awakened.

----diane

The Joy of Now

Eckhart Tolle

About Mr. Tolle:

Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany, where he spent the first thirteen years of his life. After graduating from the University of London, he was a research scholar and supervisor at Cambridge University. When he was twenty-nine, a profound spiritual transformation virtually dissolved his old identity and radically changed the course of his life. The next few years were devoted to understanding, integrating and deepening that transformation, which marked the beginning of an intense inward journey. Eckhart Tolle is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. In his teaching, he conveys a simple yet profound message with the timeless and uncomplicated clarity of the ancient spiritual masters: there is a way out of suffering and into peace.

The following is from "The Power of Now"

* * *
On the surface it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments. Each day of your life appears to consists of thousands of moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply, is there not only one moment, ever? Is life ever not “this moment?”
This one moment — Now — the only thing you can never escape from, the one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens, no matter how much your life changes, one thing is certain: it's always Now.

Since there is no escape from the Now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it?
* * *

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Pointing the Way

As I travel my spiritual path, the teacher who is guiding me the most by pointing the way to inner peace is Eckhart Tolle.

http://www.eckharttolle.com/

The instant I began reading his book "A New Earth", I felt him leading and pointing the way to the truth in a clear voice like none I had ever heard. "The Power of Now" and "Stillness Speaks" are equally powerful and inspirational.

Not everyone who reads his books will be ready to receive his message. For those who are already beginning to awaken even just a little, you will find his teachings from his books/audios, videos to be a treasure.