Tag Archives: Eckhart Tolle

consciousness, spirituality, Uncategorized

Wondrous Perception

When I really pay attention I can hear my mind labeling the things and situations it perceives.  It says things like, “Wow, the moon is so bright tonight,” and, “The sky is very blue today!”  But attaching words to my perceptions doesn’t mean I actually have any idea what I’m seeing.  Perception becomes miraculous and new when you can see without mentally labeling everything.  When labels are gone, we can see things for the wonders they truly are.

This video is a beautiful example of the magic of perception:

Thanks to Pilobolus for this amazing work, and thanks to Marc and Angel Hack Life for introducing me to this video!

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consciousness, spirituality

Intention and Making Your Dreams a Reality

You can be secure in the decisions you make when you operate from intention. When you can make a decision about what your intentions are, you free yourself to trust your choices and are also released from the need to rely on the reactions of others to steer your life. Intentions give you guidelines that allow you to operate as your truest self. When you create an intention you can create your own reality, make your dreams come true.

One of the keys to creating what Gary Zukav calls “authentic power” is to examine if your intentions are aimed at the good of all. Do the intentions improve life for all those around you? Do they empower people? Are they in alignment with the abundance that the universe holds for all, or instead do they operate under the false assumption that there is “not enough”? If you want to be famous, is it to have many cars, or to improve the lives of many through your art? When an intention isn’t aimed at having or getting things, but instead is helpful and caring, it is imbued with the power of the entire universe, it is authentic power.

As you go into your week practice operating from an intention you set and see how your actions and their consequences are miraculously transfigured.  In this transformational video, Oprah and Gary Zukav discuss the power of intention on Super Soul Sunday.

“It’s the principle that rules every part of Oprah’s life—and cured her disease to please. Find out why author Gary Zukav says intention is at the heart of owning your authentic power.”

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consciousness, spirituality

Backstreet Boys and God

backstreet-boys-then

The other day in my post about religion as language I mentioned that at this point in my life I can’t help but see God in everything.  Tonight I was at a karaoke bar and the Backstreet Boys’ song “Larger Than Life” came on.  While at first seeing God in a Backstreet Boys song seems ridiculous, (unless you’re a big fan), when I saw the words to the chorus come on the screen I was totally blown away:

 

“All you people can’t you see, can’t you see

How your love’s affecting our reality

Every time we’re down

You can make it right

And that makes you larger than life”

Who knows what the author was going for when this chorus was written, but when I saw these words I heard a powerful message.

Each individual’s state of consciousness has infinite consequences for the whole.  Because of this the most important step to achieving peace for all, is to create peace within yourself.  The far reaching effects of one person’s state of consciousness can never be known; the entire history of time would need to be traced to see the effects in their fullness.  In this way, each person is “larger than life;” we are much more essential than we can know in our current experience of reality.  As for, “every time we’re down, you can make it right,” I hear that when the world is in pain, you can help by dealing with your own pain body.  The collective pain body of humanity is dissolved one person at a time.

So who can say that boy bands are all bubblegum and no substance?  Anything can point you towards God if you receive it.

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consciousness, spirituality

Keeping The Past Alive With Your Mind

Spring woods

Tonight I hope you enjoy this excerpt from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. When I am strongly holding onto thoughts in my head this story helps me laugh at myself, and just let go.

“The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side.

The monks walked on in silence.

Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn’t restrain himself any longer. ‘Why did you carry that girl across the road?’ he asked. ‘We monks are not supposed to do things like that.’

‘I put the girl down hours ago,’ said Tanzan. ‘Are you still carrying her?’”

What are you still carrying in your mind?  What might it feel like to not carry that around all the time?  Just for this present moment allow yourself to drop those thoughts and experience what it feels like.

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consciousness, spirituality, Uncategorized

The Pain Body Practice and The Beginning of Inner Peace

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks. Every morning I listen to an audiobook, interview, sermon, or anything that will inspire me and bring me more fully into the spirit of the present. I am always amazed by how words of inspiration change my inner state from tired and dreary, to awake, energized, and joyful. As I do my makeup I let the positive words sink in. By the time I’m out the door I feel excited for life. This is the polar opposite of the feeling I have when I first wake up in the morning.

Inner peace is a practice. It requires practice in every single moment. This looks different in every moment. I know that when I’m at work it looks different than when I’m at home. At home I can listen to my audiobooks when I get ready for the day. At work I can allow myself to focus fully on each task, keeping my attention on the “doing” instead of the result I am working towards. When I am at home watching TV and a commercial about some deadly illness comes on and I am about to be afraid of it, I have to practice peace by letting go of fear. Each and every now is an opportunity for greater peace. It is totally fine that not all moments seem as peaceful as others, that is all part of the practice.

Yesterday I began talking about the pain body, the residual energy of past pain that lives within each of us. The pain body creates great opportunities for practice. Of course they don’t feel great, but the awareness gained in the moment of disidentification from the pain body can put you light years ahead of your current state of consciousness. Practicing inner peace with a heavy and active pain body can thrust anyone into a spiritual awakening.

When I was just entering high school I had a very active pain body. I can see now how the emotional pain and the thoughts in my head fed each other constantly. This was a blessing because I knew something was wrong. I knew that the pain and anxiety was not okay. I remember telling my mom, as she was driving home from a friend’s house, that there was something wrong with me. I told her that the voice in my head was always coming up with horrible scenarios about the worst things that could possibly happen to me. It would come up with scenarios where everyone I loved died and play through how I would cope and what it would feel like. While that all sounds quite dramatic, it wasn’t until many years later that I realized everyone had a voice in their head that was making up various scenarios, many of which had negative outcomes. The active pain body was so uncomfortable that it woke me up to that voice as a “problem.” Instead of assuming that the mind is just the way it is, I knew it was causing me too much pain to be in its natural state.

Together the pain body and the voice in the head create the ego. They live their lives through you, and until a little spark of disidentification comes in, they are you. They make your decisions, they create your reactions, and they completely obscure the inner peace that is your natural state. The ego will cease to run your life the moment you realize it is not you. That is all that is required. That is where the practice of inner peace begins.

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consciousness, spirituality

What Is The Pain Body?

For the last two weeks I have been driving my Mom’s car, and what a blessing it has been!  I had totally forgotten when I had to give it back, and was just reminded that tomorrow I would be without a car once more.  Although not having a car was normal for me, hearing I wasn’t going to have one anymore provoked some negative feelings.  I felt disappointment and then it slowly dissipated.

What would have happened if I hadn’t let go of those negative emotions and held onto them?  My mind would have started thinking negative thoughts.  The voice in my head would have been talking about all of the reasons it was anxious about not having a car, describing exactly what would be more difficult, and why this was indeed an upsetting situation to be in.  Those thoughts in turn would have given rise to even more negative emotion than I had felt at first.  When emotional pain turns into thinking, the voice in the head is acting on the assumption that being upset will somehow help it get what it wants.

Eventually that pain subsides, and the mind starts thinking about other things and moves on.  What happens to the pain that subsides but is not let go of?  It is still within, and when an emotion akin to itself is provoked at some other time, it takes that opportunity to arise once more and add to the new emotional pain being experienced.  The new negative energy feeds the old negative energy lying dormant within.  And when that past pain is woken up, it takes the opportunity to feed negative thinking, which will make the negative emotions grow.

Eckhart Tolle describes the negative energy field that dwells within us as the “pain body.”  Deeply negative people are often controlled by the pain body.  That is the deep negativity; the heavy pain body.  It is not who that person is.  Awakening to the pain body is freedom.  The cycles of the pain body no longer have to operate.  You don’t have to feel bad every 3 weeks, or have a fight once a month with your partner.  When it wakes up and you know how it operates, it ceases to control your life.  Instead you have the opportunity to observe the pain body, be with the pain without reacting, and dissolve the past pain whenever you choose to express and let go of a negative emotion.

Consequently, when you awaken to your own pain body, it is easy to awaken to the pain body in others.  For me this has helped me to not take negative comments and actions from others as personally.  When I see it is just the pain body, I am able to see through the person’s pain to their true self. Have there been situations in your life where you can see now that a person had been taken over by their pain body?

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consciousness, spirituality

Today’s Take Away

I feel this last week’s lesson in “divine compensation” is very relevant today.  When someone takes something away from you, or harms you, the universe repairs itself by restoring to you what you lost in a new form.  The person who took from you will also get to experience the loss they facilitated in some form in their own life.  But to feel the peace of this knowing requires complete trust.  For me learning a lesson helps evoke this trust, which is why I write these posts.  I think we are all learning something about ourselves, and what our personal views of justice are, from the Trayvon Martin case.

Eckhart Tolle sends out “present moment reminder” emails and the one he sent out this week, from A New Earth, says, “Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”  So today I look within, with an open mind, at the assumptions and attitudes I hold.  Where do I perpetuate injustice?  What assumptions and attitudes do I make about people who I don’t truly know?  When do I put the blinders on and stop seeing my human kin as brothers and sisters and instead treat them as “other”?  Without judging what I find, I am able to learn from myself.  From the higher vantage point of the watcher I can view the parts of me that do not operate from my true self, and find they dissolve in the light of awareness.

In the coming weeks I will begin to address the pain body, that energy created by past pain that lives within us and is added to when painful events are not fully accepted and let go of.  I feel that the recent events from Florida may add to this nation’s pain body.  Our collective pain body has surely been awoken, as can be seen on any social media outlet.  But it can be dissolved, by dissolving our own individual pain bodies.

I also find it very healing to remind myself that I am seeing current events from a very limited viewpoint and cannot judge what I see.  I have no idea for what purpose any event happens,  and labels such as “good” and “bad” are merely thoughts in my head.  For now, I think we could all use a bit of good news:

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consciousness, spirituality

How do you forgive yourself?

When I visited an ashram for a short time at the age of 21 I was offered a different perspective about what it meant to forgive yourself. When staying at the ashram I had to do various jobs like housekeeping, landscaping, kitchen duty etc. My first day of housekeeping I was sent outside to bleach shower curtains. As I sprayed, the bleach splashed onto a pair of gray sweatpants hung on the line just in front of me. I rushed inside dousing the pants with water but sure enough, like mold on a strawberry, little white dots began to appear. When the guest came to retrieve his sweatpants he was extremely upset, they had been his favorite pair of pants. I felt terrible and cried to the head of housekeeping about it. There is no concealing your inner state, however you might try, and the other people in my program knew I was sad the rest of that day.

Across the hall from my dorm was a blonde boy, probably a couple years older than me, named Chandler. The most charming thing about him was that he actually said “golly” with all sincerity. When I told him what had happened his response was something I never expected. He said, “Katie, that man has given you the greatest gift! The chance to forgive yourself!” I had never looked at forgiving myself as a gift before. But forgiveness is a gift even when the person you happen to be forgiving is yourself. By forgiving you say, “While this or that has taken place, I see through that to your true self, the same self which is in all of us, holy and untouched by outer circumstance.” When you can say that to yourself, you are loving yourself. And while forgiving yourself at first may seem difficult, because of emotions like guilt and shame, you can practice by forgiving other people.

There are a million moments each day to forgive other people, to look past their outer form and see their truest inner being. When someone has an opinion you find offensive, you can look through that, you can forgive. When someone is unkind, unhelpful, or unforgiving to you, that is a moment to practice forgiveness. Even further, you can practice forgiveness by forgiving the present moment. Allow the now to be as it is by forgiving whatever it brings. When the present moment is undesirable, practice forgiving that moment by bringing inner acceptance to what is. When you accept and allow you open up space for change. Forgiveness does this for moments you experience, for people in your life, and for you. Forgiveness transforms the illusion of form into the reality of timeless being. Forgiveness makes all and everything holy and unified. No matter what you have done, that you now see in the light of awareness was not the right thing to do, practice forgiving yourself. Practice seeing past what you have done, to who you truly are. Looking past the outer circumstances of your life in turn allows you to do the same for all other beings. It connects us all, and gives us all the chance to live our destiny as fully conscious beings, unshaken by the illusion of outer circumstance.

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consciousness, spirituality, Uncategorized

The Bed Bug Incident Part 3 – Conclusions

As the days passed before the extermination I experienced great fluctuations in my state of consciousness.  There would be brief moments of clarity where I felt fine, peaceful, above my circumstance.  Then I would soon despair again.  I had to pack up my apartment as if I was moving, treat all my clothes.  I had to live apart from my boyfriend who graciously stayed at the apartment, per instructions from the exterminator, while I fled to my parents’ house in the suburbs.  We’ve lived together for years and now we were in separate places, both without any of our “stuff.”

My mind constantly tormented me with the fear that I was going to bring the bugs to my parents’ house.  But as the days went by, my moments of clarity were able to shine through more and more.  I was learning to bring acceptance to my outer circumstance.  The negative thoughts were so obviously unwanted and unhelpful at this point that I made the choice to start letting them go, one by one, as they came up in my mind.  And they came up all the time.  So this was a lot of great practice at letting go of negative thoughts.

I then had to go back to the apartment to “test” the results of the extermination.  Everything was fine.  On my fifth day back I woke up and went to work.  As I was typing on my computer I noticed one of my fingers was swollen.  Then I felt something on my thigh, went to the bathroom, and saw it had swollen up the size of a large tomato.  I had been bitten.  I left that morning assuming I would see my boyfriend after work.  But now I’d be driving back to the suburbs, living apart for another two weeks while the second round of treatment took effect.  I emailed the exterminator.  I called my boyfriend to tell him what had happened.  I called my mom to tell her I was coming home.  And I was okay.  I had been through this once before, I was learning how to let go of the circumstance.  I was learning to be okay with uncertainty.  I was learning how to accept what happens, because to not accept what happens is to cause yourself unnecessary suffering.

The universe gave me a round two, another opportunity to try again.  And this time it was easier not to freak out.  It didn’t feel like a horrible struggle prepping my apartment for extermination, or commuting to work from the suburbs, or not knowing when I would live at my apartment again.  I’m still learning to accept that bugs exist.  But now, in comparison, the other ones don’t seem so bad.  I’m now back at my apartment and haven’t had any bites again.  Although that doesn’t mean they won’t come back.  And I am okay with that now, I have learned to be comfortable with the not knowing.  I really don’t know what is going to happen, where I’ll be living day to day, if the next apartment I get will be bed bug free.  From experiencing the suffering I caused after having bed-bugs I have learned that it is much more helpful, peaceful, and joyful to let go of those fears and be in the moment I am in.  After all, it is the only moment I will ever be in.  So if I’m afraid and worried now, it is likely I’ll continue to be afraid and worried.  But if I’m peaceful and accepting now, it is quite likely that my future moments will also be peaceful.  After all, the future never happens, when it does it is called the “now.”

So what can you let go of now?  What uncontrollable circumstances in your life can you bring acceptance to?  What negative thoughts repeat in your head that you are ready to let go of?  The bed bugs taught me many things; the universe always gives you the lesson that is most helpful for your state of consciousness at that moment (as Tolle puts it).  And while I perceived the situation as suffering while in the midst of it, it was for my learning, for fostering greater peace, joy, love, and awareness in my life.  What a gift.

PS- I also have a different relationship with things now.  Although I don’t perceive “stuff” as a burden as I did after getting bed bugs, I am not as interested in having more “stuff.”  I would rather have just a few things to tend to.  It has actually stopped me from wanting to buy clothes and other things.  All I wanted after having bed bugs was to be just me, to feel clean and untainted.  While that is an extreme that would be detrimental to stay at, it pushed me more to the middle in terms of my desire for objects, another blessing in disguise!

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The Bed Bug Incident Part 2

I never found out what had been causing those bites for so many months. But the situation developed when I learned a couple apartments in my building had bed bugs and were having exterminations. I freaked out. Freaking out is a good sign that you are totally taken in by a circumstance and cannot view it at the higher vantage point of the true self, the watcher which is unaffected by what “happens” and is always whole. I wasn’t being the watcher, I was being a body threatened by outside forces. I took many precautions after learning my neighbors had bed bugs, putting things in trash bags, keeping the lights on at night, spraying poison around my door. But to the universe all of those precautions were really just me saying, “I’m afraid of something, this bothers me, I’m totally attached and identified with this situation.” That was the truth of the matter. I hadn’t let go. I was clinging to circumstance.

I was living in fear of bugs. For you this experience might have manifested in another form in your own life. About a month after the bed bug incident I thought I was in the clear. Everything was going to be fine. And when the thought that everything will be fine occupies your mind, that can be saying that you don’t feel fine in this moment, the only moment you will ever actually be experiencing. That very week I woke up with bug bites. These were very different from the ones I had been having all year. There were multiple bites and they were on my upper body not my legs. I even had bites on my fingers. The only thing familiar about them was the terrible allergic reaction. But the itching was even worse. I called the exterminator to inspect, and sure enough I had bed bugs.

The morning I found out I fell to pieces. You would have thought a real tragedy had struck. I was distraught, beside myself. I felt completely contaminated, as if everywhere I went would become infected by bed bugs. I didn’t want to tell anyone, I didn’t want to hang out at other apartments. Mostly, I never wanted to return to my apartment ever again. I no longer cared about my stuff, I did not want any of it anymore. In my eyes, the place would be forever contaminated.

This is a great example of a strong reaction. My reaction was a clear message of the feelings, fears, and beliefs I had been holding onto ever since my first bad bite from October. It was now May, and there was no more fooling myself. I was completely attached to my outer circumstance, and when my outer circumstance did not fit with the picture I had in my head of what I needed to feel safe, comfortable, and at ease, I caused immense suffering for myself. Suffering is often created by the outer circumstance not matching up with your thought’s picture of how things “should” be. This cannot be reconciled by more thoughts. The only way to stop the self created suffering is to recognize the thoughts and how they operate. The thougths don’t really want problems to be solved, even though that is what they claim. They want to keep thinking, that is their whole life up there in your head. They just want to stay alive. So when the outer circumstance doesn’t match with the thoughts’ visions, your mind will take that opportunity and run with it. Literally run, you know how thoughts run on and on in your mind. It loves doing that. But you are the observer of your thoughts, you have the ultimate control once you recognize that they are not helpful and in no way actually improve the uncontrollable circumstance.

When you have thoughts like this that keep running and cause you great emotional suffering, become very alert. Say to yourself, “what is my next thought going to be?” and then watch your mind until one comes in (a great tool from Tolle’s The Power of Now). Don’t judge the thoughts, allow them, give them your fullest attention. In this way the light of your presence will shine through the illusion that your thoughts can help you with their insane ramblings. Another way to quiet down an insane thought pattern is to bring complete inner acceptance to your outer circumstance even though your thoughts don’t want you to. Allow a situation to be. It will be the end of the mind using you, and the beginning of you using the mind.

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