Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Eckhart Tolle’s “Approaching the Self”: II

Published
by
Ken
on March 17, 2008
in buddhism and eckhart tolle
. 1 Comment

Last Thursday, the Kansas City Friends of Jung showed the next 1.5 hours of the Eckhart Tolle DVD. I talked about the first hour here. Again at this session, someone pointed out that Tolle is not saying anything new. Anyone who does Insight Meditation or knows much about Buddhism will know just about everything he is talking about. For whatever reason, Oprah has picked up on Tolle and is getting the message to the masses. I guess this is a good thing. It really all depends on how the message is modified for the masses. I expect that there are a few people who tune into Oprah who will be open to Tolle’s message but I expect the majority of her viewers to not really get it. I mean REALLY get it.

Anyway, here are some comments on this session:

Accepting the present includes accepting the past. We all carry grievances and believe that the past interferes with my ability to be myself at this moment. So, to accept who and what we are right now, includes accepting what happened to us in the past.

Become friendly with what is. “I want out” is a resistance pattern. We don’t have to say “yes” to our current story but we also don’t have to stay stuck in our current story and accept it as our unalterable destiny.

Say yes to the present moment. Things will change but I accept where I am right now. Break the continuity between past and future.

Step out of your story into the aliveness of the present moment.

What is the problem NOW? Not what will be the problem in the next minute, hour, day, week, year. What is the problem NOW?

Step out of the thought which judges this present form as wrong.

Don’t solve problems by thinking but by stepping outside. Don’t demand that others behave different so that I can be happy.

Just talk to any tree and see how still it is. What recognizes that stillness in the tree is the still part of me. (This was a great way to put it.) Human beings pull you quickly into forms and thoughts. Nature is easy to be still with.

The now and yourself are one. Things come and go and there’s one underlying piece — who you are.

We don’t have a life because then there is me and life. We are life. Life is living through us — we are not living life.

The old consciousness is identified with form and time. It cannot survive much longer. Many are transitional beings int hat the old still has momentum but the new is arising.

The purpose of true art is to see the formless shining through the form. Our purpose is to become that art so the formless shines through us. This happens when we have access to the realm of stillness. The new state is a balance between what is manifested and what is unmanifested. Living this way, we have become a work of art.

The people of this age are obsessed with form and things. They cannot carry the burden of their overcomplicated structures. Collapse is coming. It is liberating when you see how short-lived all forms are.

Death is the most threatening thing to a civilization obsessed with form.

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Eckhart Tolle’s “Approaching the Self”: I

Published
by
Ken
on March 7, 2008
in buddhism and eckhart tolle
. 0 Comments

Tonight, the Kansas City Friends of Jung showed the first hour of a DVD set of Eckhart Tolle talking about “Approaching the Self.” We’ll be viewing the rest of the 4-hour DVD set at later times. This was my first exposure to Tolle although I had heard of him before tonight. It was very interesting although hardly new — it was essentially Buddhist mindfulness mixed with a hint of Jung. Tolle’s strength, from what I saw tonight, was putting the ideas into language easy for Westerners to comprehend. I’ll go over just a few highlights of what I saw:

Tolle’s main topic was about reaching the Stillness inside us all; a Stillness that we don’t have to get or find because we already have it — we just don’t always notice it. He described this Stillness as “the dimension inside yourself far deeper than the movement of thought.”

“Analysis always destroys the object.” This reminded me of something from The Gateless Gate about the difference between a Westerner and a Buddhist appreciating a flower. The Westerner plucks the flower and analyses it by pulling it apart to see how it’s made and see inside it. The Buddhist leaves the flower where it is and just looks at it.

“If you become truly present [in the now] you will find the sacred everywhere.”

We are not truly present because we are always thinking; thinking about the future, worrying about the past, focusing on our problems. We rationalize it by saying, “I have important problems to think about.” But all our “problems,” the future, all of it are thought forms and all forms crumble.

We focus on who/what we think we are as a separate, independent person. We have a compulsion to search for more, to add more to who we think we are — more possessions, recognition, etc. Yet all these things are thought forms. We complain about things because “complaining makes you feel right and the other person wrong.” This conflict helps us keep our separate sense of self in tact.

We reduce others to caricatures. We relate to the thoughts in our heads that we have about others and not to the persons directly.

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Jesus of Iowa

Published
by
Ken
on March 2, 2008
in jesus
. 3 Comments

I was in a Unity church recently and in one of the stairwells there was a picture of Jesus. He was in his shepherd’s garb and was holding a lamb — you know the one. The only problem was that Jesus looked like a farm boy from Iowa. I shook my head in disapproval and kept walking.

Why did I have that reaction? I think it was, in part, a throwback to my Fundamentalist upbringing. If Jesus was an actual, historical, flesh-n-blood person who was born in Bethlehem to Jewish parents then the odds of his looking like that picture are very slim. And shouldn’t a picture of someone look like they did look, or at least could have looked?

What would you’re response be to my hanging up this picture and saying it was Abraham Lincoln? (Picture credit: www.zztop.com)

That would probably not be very well received. Now, of course, we don’t know what Jesus looked like, but if he was an actual, historical, flesh-n-blood person who was born in Bethlehem to Jewish parents, shouldn’t we at least try to get close?

And what if someone does believe that Jesus was mythological or a conglomeration of ideas or an amalgamation of actual persons? Does that give them “artistic license” to portray Jesus in any manner they choose?

What are your thoughts on this?

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