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Post by Reefs on Apr 29, 2019 21:30:03 GMT -5
The guy I'm talking about is "Webwanderer" over on the tolle forum. My guess is you might find a dialog with him to be interesting. Thanks! Just read some of his recent posts. You're right. You think I should sign up there as EOS (Extension Of Source)?  |
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Post by Reefs on Apr 29, 2019 21:35:37 GMT -5
Being
ET: Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.
Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points. The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence, the realization I am that is prior to I am this or I am that. So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 1
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Post by Reefs on Apr 29, 2019 21:41:39 GMT -5
Descartes
ET: The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking.
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity - the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 1
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Post by Reefs on Apr 29, 2019 21:45:57 GMT -5
Definitions
ET: The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.
No-mind is consciousness without thought.
Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns.
Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind - or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 1
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Post by Reefs on Apr 29, 2019 22:05:45 GMT -5
Love, Joy and Peace
ET: Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought. For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in moments when the mind is rendered "speechless," sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.
Usually, such moments are short-lived, as the mind quickly resumes its noise-making activity that we call thinking. Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They lie beyond the emotions, on a much deeper level.
Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being. As such, they have no opposite. This is because they arise from beyond the mind. Emotions, on the other hand, being part of the dualistic mind, are subject to the law of opposites. This simply means that you cannot have good without bad.
As I said, even before you are enlightened - before you have freed yourself from your mind - you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These are aspects of your true nature, which is usually obscured by the mind.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 1
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Post by Reefs on Apr 30, 2019 6:17:20 GMT -5
The Pain-body
ET: As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth. Its the emotional pain-body.
The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, "become you," and live through you. It needs to get its "food" through you. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness.
The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification.
Some spiritual teachings state that all pain is ultimately an illusion, and this is true. The question is: Is it true for you? A mere belief doesn't make it true. Do you want to experience pain for the rest of your life and keep saying that it is an illusion? Does that free you from the pain? What we are concerned with here is how you can realize this truth - that is, make it real in your own experience.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 2
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Post by Reefs on Apr 30, 2019 6:23:27 GMT -5
Mental positions
ET: If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.
Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there.
You can state clearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no aggressiveness or defensiveness about it. Your sense of self is then derived from a deeper and truer place within yourself, not from the mind. Watch out for any kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in your mind, a fictitious entity.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 2
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Post by Reefs on Apr 30, 2019 23:34:49 GMT -5
Nothing exists outside of the Now
ET: When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace - and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.
The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood by the mind. The moment you grasp it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence. Suddenly, everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates Being.
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.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 3
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Post by Reefs on Apr 30, 2019 23:40:10 GMT -5
Moving deeply into the Now
ET: The mind cannot know the tree. It can only know facts or information about the tree. My mind cannot know you, only labels, judgments, facts, and opinions about you. Being alone knows directly.
Use your senses fully. Be where you are. Look around. Just look, don't interpret. See the light, shapes, colors, textures. Be aware of the silent presence of each thing. Be aware of the space that allows everything to be. Listen to the sounds; don't judge them. Listen to the silence underneath the sounds. Touch something - anything - and feel and acknowledge its Being. Observe the rhythm of your breathing; feel the air flowing in and out, feel the life energy inside your body. Allow everything to be, within and without. Allow the "isness" of all things. Move deeply into the Now.
You are leaving behind the deadening world of mental abstraction, of time. You are getting out of the insane mind that is draining you of life energy, just as it is slowly poisoning and destroying the Earth. You are awakening out of the dream of time into the present.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 3
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Post by Reefs on Apr 30, 2019 23:45:29 GMT -5
Satori
ET: [The state of presence] is not what you think it is! You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present.
Zen masters use the word satori to describe a flash of insight, a moment of no-mind and total presence. Although satori is not a lasting transformation, be grateful when it comes, for it gives you a taste of enlightenment. You may, indeed, have experienced it many times without knowing what it is and realizing its importance. Presence is needed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature.
Have you ever gazed up into the infinity of space on a clear night, awestruck by the absolute stillness and inconceivable vastness of it? Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in the forest? Or to the song of a blackbird at dusk on a quiet summer evening? To become aware of such things, the mind needs to be still. You have to put down for a moment your personal baggage of problems, of past and future, as well as all your knowledge; otherwise, you will see but not see, hear but not hear. Your total presence is required.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 5
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Post by Reefs on Apr 30, 2019 23:51:55 GMT -5
Everything is alive
ET: Everything that exists has Being, has God-essence, has some degree of consciousness. Even a stone has rudimentary consciousness; otherwise, it would not be, and its atoms and molecules would disperse. Everything is alive. The sun, the earth, plants, animals, humans - all are expressions of consciousness in varying degrees, consciousness manifesting as form.
Beyond the beauty of the external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are present. Could it be that this nameless essence and your presence are one and the same? Would it be there without your presence? Go deeply into it. Find out for yourself.
Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them. They might say, "What a pretty flower," but that's just a mechanical mental labeling. Because they are not still, not present, they don't truly see the flower, don't feel its essence, its holiness - just as they don't know themselves, don't feel their own essence, their own holiness.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 5
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Post by laughter on May 1, 2019 0:17:21 GMT -5
Satori
ET: [The state of presence] is not what you think it is! You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present. Zen masters use the word satori to describe a flash of insight, a moment of no-mind and total presence. Although satori is not a lasting transformation, be grateful when it comes, for it gives you a taste of enlightenment. You may, indeed, have experienced it many times without knowing what it is and realizing its importance. Presence is needed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature. Have you ever gazed up into the infinity of space on a clear night, awestruck by the absolute stillness and inconceivable vastness of it? Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in the forest? Or to the song of a blackbird at dusk on a quiet summer evening? To become aware of such things, the mind needs to be still. You have to put down for a moment your personal baggage of problems, of past and future, as well as all your knowledge; otherwise, you will see but not see, hear but not hear. Your total presence is required.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 5 Here is where it seems to me that ET isn't using your vocabulary in the same way that I understand you to understand it. In the terms that you've expressed, I'd say ET is a kensho guy, and while I'd definitely say ET is SR, he doesn't talk directly about the nature of the person - how it's an illusion. Instead he points out how all the personal associations are mistaken for what they're not: how personality, is at the center of a sort of mass, collective insanity. Similar to Adyashanti, and unlike Jed or Niz or, in my perception Ramana or U.G. or Spira, ET doesn't talk alot about a final realization that ends the seeking. In fact, as far as I recall (unlike Adya), I don't remember ever hearing or reading ET expounding on that. He confronts ego directly but counsels the reader not to fight it, and he doesn't say anything about "ego death". He's sorta' like the Catholics that way.  |
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Post by laughter on May 1, 2019 0:20:17 GMT -5
Descartes
ET: The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity - the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken. Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 1
ET and Ramana both misunderstand Renee I think, and it seems to me a matter of terminology and cultural context. |
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Post by Reefs on May 1, 2019 0:39:53 GMT -5
I'll have to give Jane's stuff a more thorough read and get back to you. I can comment on Tolle's idea from the perspective of an unconscious seeker following Tolle's invitation into meditation. His distinction between types of time is meant for someone "watching the thinker" to get present to how the mind is constantly throwing shade over what Niz would call the "I AM" by drifting attention to the past or the future. Now, it's definitely possible to get hung-up on what Tolle means by "clock time". I noticed myself getting tempted into trying to nail it down in intellectual terms, and I've read along with many others losing themselves in the TMT of it. There's a 100% parallel between that and the times in the past folks on this forum questioned what the 2nd 'A' in "ATA" is supposed to mean. But that's self-defeating of the intent. Ultimately, he's just pointing to the false, as false: the constant tug at attention away from the present. Here, the subtle seduction of his gentleness is evident again. It's natural to pursue the question "what is that pull?", but he doesn't put that on the reader's plate directly .. or, at least, that I recall. Seth, also challenges the reader to meditate, and, unlike Tolle, does so directly. So although the meditation advice is similar, it seems to me different from Tolle, in that Seth is suggesting that the reader open their perception to something new, to trans-sensory stimuli the reader spent their entire lives oblivious to. So while Tolle is pointing to the false, as false, I don't think we can same the same of Seth, but like I said, I'll have to re-read it, and more of it. And frankly, I don't think I can really understand it unless I follow the practice suggestions that are woven into the material, to find out for myself what Jane was "channeling". An intellectual model of it might be interesting, and even helpful if not over-thought, but the "inner senses" are never going to be within the grasp of intellect. Keep in mind that to Seth the distinctions between inner self and outer self are merely for the sake of convenience, so that we can talk about it, and therefore rather arbitrary but in reality non-existent. Same applies to A-H (see streams of consciousness metaphor). So I think this is an important point people often seem to forget when they compare those teachings with let's say Advaita. So while they don't call self straight-out illusory, it is always implied somehow. People just tend to lose sight of this as people in Advaita circles tend to lose sight of the fact that the personal is an aspect of the impersonal. So in a sense, advaita and A-H/Seth are two extreme ends of one and the same stick. Yes, I agree. I have no issue with what Tolle is trying to say. Seth recommended regular 'dissociation practice' - which is basically quieting the mind. And if you look at the Tolle quotes I've just posted about moving into the NOW etc., you'll see that Seth and Tolle are not that far apart because what Tolle describes as recognizing beauty or seeing beyond the mere form is basically what Seth means by using the inner senses or what A-H call seeing thru the eyes of Source. You have to keep in mind that according to Seth, the outer senses are part of the camouflage, in fact, they create the camouflage. So they cannot be used to see beyond/prior to the camouflage. And camouflage is nothing more than 'solidified vitality' anyway. So the outer senses only allow you to see the solidified aspect of vitality while the inner senses allow you to realize vitality directly. |
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Post by Reefs on May 1, 2019 0:43:04 GMT -5
ET and Ramana both misunderstand Renee I think, and it seems to me a matter of terminology and cultural context. Yes, I had to think of Lolly's comments on the matter. Nevertheless, ET makes a valid point. |
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