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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I am so greatful to Eckhart Tolle and Oprah for turning me onto Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her beautiful book “”My Stroke of Insight”". Her story is amazing and her gift to all of us is a book purchase away I’m happy to say.
Dr Taylor was a Harvard brain scientist when she had a stroke at age 37. What was amazing was that her left brain was shut down by the stroke - where language and thinking occur - but her right brain was fully functioning. She experienced bliss and nirvana and the way she writes about it (or talks about it in her now famous TED talk) is incredible.
What I took away from Dr. Taylor’s book above all, and why I recommend it so highly, is that you don’t have to have a stroke or take drugs to find the deep inner peace that she talks about. Her book explains how. “”I want what she’s having”", and thanks to this wonderful book, I can! Thank you Dr. Taylor, and thank you Eckhart and Oprah.