To: K-list
Recieved: 2004/01/27 20:24
Subject: [K-list] RE: Fw: more thoughs on Ego
From: Guy Johnson
On 2004/01/27 20:24, Guy Johnson posted thus to the K-list:
: RE: more thoughts on Ego
>I found it coincidental that I was reading this as you were writing about
>ego. So it goes. Hope that you find his premise hopeful. Best personal
>regards
>
>Fred Hodgkins
>
>INTERVIEW
>All You Need Is Now
>Eckhart Tolle explains the power of an eternal present
>A
> T 29, Eckhart Tolle was a research scholar and doctoral candidate at
>Cambridge University in England. He was also deeply miserable. As he lay in
>bed one night, gripped by an intense dread and loathing of his existence,
>he
>experienced a profound spiritual transformation. His first sight upon
>waking
>was the light of dawn through the curtains. "Without any thought, I felt, I
>knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize," he later
>wrote. "That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love
>itself." Though the room was familiar, he realized he had never really seen
>it before. "I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the
>beauty and aliveness of it all."
>Gone was the miserable feeling, replaced by a deep sense of peace. He
>didn't
>have concepts or words for what had happened to him. It was only with the
>help of spiritual texts and teachers that he began to understand. He had
>glimpsed his true nature as "pure consciousness" rather than as the ego
>bound, separate self, which ultimately was "a fiction of the mind."
>Giving up his doctoral pursuits, Tolle spent almost two years with "no job,
>no home, no socially defined identity," sitting on park benches in a state
>of intense joy. In time, people began to approach him with questions about
>the power of his presence. Their dialogues later became the inspiration for
>his books: The Power of Now, Practicing the Power of Now and, most
>recently,
>Stillness Speaks (New World Library).
>Tolle was born in Germany and educated in Europe. He now lives in
>Vancouver,
>British Columbia, and teaches around the world. When I learned that he was
>giving a retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck,
>New York, I knew I wanted to attend. In the crowded hall as the retreat
>began, I felt Tolle's presence as powerful, though not in an overt way; his
>is more the power of silence in a noisy room. What isn't apparent in his
>books is his joyful, often impish sense of humor. His playful gestures and
>faces, as he described what he calls "the little me," were as true to the
>human condition as the comedy of Buster Keaton. Both his humor and his
>quiet, unassuming nature were in evidence again when we met for our
>interview.
>Why do we so often try to escape from relationships and situations we view
>as unfulfilling or difficult?
>The tendency to escape is a form of collective mental conditioning that is
>at work almost all the time, not just when situations turn out to be
>unpleasant or unsatisfying. In ordinary life, there is a continuous moving
>away from the moment to an imagined future that is unconsciously regarded
>as
>more important.
>Our striving toward the future, our inner compulsion to deny the present
>moment, manifests itself as a continuous sense of unease and latent
>dissatisfaction with what is. This seems to be the "normal" state of our
>civilization. Even Freud recognized this when he wrote Civilization and Its
>Discontents. A literal translation of the German title is "The Unease in
>Culture." He saw that our normal state of consciousness could be described
>as one of continuous unease, more pronounced at some times than at others.
>Why are we not more aware of this state? Because it is everybody's normal
>state. Children are conditioned to look to the future from the moment they
>enter school, always needing the next moment and the next. Even if the
>future moment is feared, there is still a projection toward it, which
>generates anxiety. Then the recognition can arise-and this is an amazing
>realization for people who have never looked at it clearly-that the present
>moment is all there ever is in one's life.
>What keeps us living in either the past or the future?
>We live in a world of mental abstraction, conceptualization, and image
>making-a world of thought. And
>that becomes our dwelling place. It is a world characterized by the
>inability ever to stop thinking. The mental noise is a continuous stream.
>Psychologists have found that 95 percent or more of it is totally
>repetitive. Perhaps 10 percent of those thought processes, at most, are
>actually needed to deal with life.
>People's sense of identity, of self, gets bound up with their mental
>concepts and mental images of "I" and "me." This conceptual sense of self
>is
>also often threatened by other people, so it is always very uneasy and
>defensive and constantly needs to replenish and enhance itself. There is
>always the need for more of "me" to add to who I am. I need to add
>relationship; I need to add knowledge; I need to add material possessions;
>I
>need to add status. If people's opinions of me are good, if they think
>highly of me, then I will have status in society, and that can become the
>basis of my identity. If they think badly of me, if I have no
>status, that, too, can serve as the basis for my identity-an identity that
>says, "I haven't made it. I'm not good enough," and is characterized by a
>continuous feeling of insufficiency, lack, fear. Either way, the story of
>"me" is not complete.
>A further characteristic of this fictional self is that it cannot sustain
>itself in the prolonged absence of conflict or strife. It needs other
>people
>and situations with which it can be in opposition, because to be in
>opposition to something strengthens our sense of self. This need for
>enemies
>is part of the insanity of normal human consciousness, which has afflicted
>us for many thousands of years.... And the madness of the world is not just
>out there. The root of the madness lies in every person's mind. Of course,
>it takes on more extreme forms in certain people and less extreme forms in
>others. An extreme manifestation of insanity is the terrorist who kills
>thousands of people, including himself. ... It is possible because the
>terrorist has conceptualized a large group of people-the other religion,
>the
>other tribe, the other nation-as the enemy. And once he has made labels and
>judgments, he no longer sees them as human beings.
>So you've killed them before you have killed them.
>Yes, that's right. But, before one condemns the terrorists, one needs to
>see
>that terrorism is only a more extreme manifestation of the same dysfunction
>that exists in everyone.
>There is a summer camp near where 1 live in Maine called Seeds of Peace,
>founded by John Wallach. It brings together Israeli and Palestinian
>teenagers to live, eat and play sports: to discover that the "enemy" has a
>human face. Yes, and gradually, the mental construct loses its density, and
>they see some of the reality shine through-it is amazing. But it is
>important to realize we are all trapped in mental constructs, and so we
>separate ourselves from reality; the whole world loses its aliveness-or,
>rather, we lose our ability to sense that aliveness, the sacredness of
>nature. When we approach nature through the conceptualizing mind, we see a
>forest as a commodity, a concept. We no longer see it for what it truly is,
>but for what we want to use it as. It is reduced. This is how it becomes
>possible for humans to destroy the planet without realizing what they are
>doing.
>You speak of a shift that is taking place.
>I see a shift in consciousness happening for the first time in more than
>just a few individuals here and there. It is a shift that ancient teachers
>such as the Buddha and Jesus pointed to-a possibility of living in a
>different state of consciousness.
>If you look at all the ancient teachings-Hinduism, Buddhism, the teachings
>of Jesus-you'll see they have two things in common.... First, they all saw
>that there was something not right with the human condition, though they
>expressed this in different terms. Buddha said the human condition is one
>of
>suffering; Jesus said the human condition is one of sin; Hinduism said the
>human condition is one of illusion. And second, they all realized that
>there
>is a way beyond that, and that way is the spiritual path that these
>original
>teachings show.
>Those ancient teachings pointed the way, but not many people got the
>message. As a whole, mankind was not ready for it. But it could somehow
>sense that there was truth in those teachings, so they were not forgotten.
>Then the human mind, with its tendency to conceptualize, obscured the
>original truth of these teachings and built on top of them superstructures
>of religious beliefs, which became part of people's identities: total
>delusion.
>And we are born into this conditioning?
>Yes, that is the collective conditioning of the human mind. But to see the
>conditioning in oneself is to begin to get free of it.... Then you wonder:
>what part of you sees this? That seeing part is not another thought, but it
>is aware of thought, and also of the emotions that accompany thought. So
>there comes the ability to observe the workings of the mind and the
>emotions
>that go with them. And that is a new level of consciousness arising, a new
>level of awareness: to see one's conditioning and observe it in action.
>Why is this new state of consciousness arising now?
>I'd say the change is happening now or, at least, a real possibility of
>change is arising-because it has to happen now. There's an urgency that
>wasn't there before, because the survival of humanity wasn't threatened.
>There was human madness, but not so much that humanity could destroy
>itself.
>Now the madness has been magnified, amplified by technology and science, to
>the point where humanity can destroy itself.
>The stakes have been raised.
>Yes, and something is arising, because there is a great intelligence at
>work
>that goes far beyond the human mind. It is the vast intelligence found in
>every organ of the body, in the DNA of every cell. It is the intelligence
>that runs and coordinates all the functions of the human body ... and that
>created the galaxies and the world of nature. And that is what is arising
>now.
>How does it arise in us?
>It arises at first as the ability to watch the workings of one's mind. Then
>comes the choice not to identify with those mental structures.
>it seems easier to be in the state that you describe when 1 am in nature.
>Occasionally even people who are immersed in mental noise have moments in
>nature when the noise subsides, and suddenly they are alert and present.
>Then they get to watch and see and sense the aliveness all around them: the
>sacredness, the beauty, the hº- nony that holds everything together. It is
>wonderful to walk in nature with a mind that has become quiet---or, rather,
>with no-mind, but simply in a state of alert presence. Nature can be a
>great
>help there.
>And if nature isn't available?
>You can watch a plant, a flower, a cloud, a sky. Even the sound of water
>dripping. Anything.
>What about when we need to use conceptual thought, for example, when
>planning for the future?
>Then mental concepts are fine. You can use them. It is not a problem at
>all,
>because you are no longer striving for completion of your self through
>adding "more." Once the compulsion not to live in the Now goes away, you
>realize that there is nothing wrong with acquiring more knowledge, having
>more experiences, or learning new skills, all of which require time. Even
>acquiring some material thingsthough no longer compulsively, only certain
>things that you would like to have or that you need-is all right when it is
>free of self-seeking.
>What does one need to do to become free? The good news is that you don't
>need another thousand years to become free. All you need is to become
>present to this moment; to open yourself up to the fullness that already
>is,
>now. . . .
>The word attention is very helpful. The state of not being identified with
>thought is one of heightened alertness. Jesus tells several parables about
>waiting for someone to arrive: When you don't know when that person is
>going
>to arrive, you are alert, awake. It's like listening to catch the faintest
>noise. Attention is also the essence of Zen, a state of alertness in which
>there is no
>tension. It is a relaxed alertness, as if you were listening, though there
>is nothing to listen to. In this state, thought actually subsides; it
>stops.
>Some people have attained this state of heightened awareness in dangerous
>situations, where they can't afford the luxury of thinking, because thought
>would be too slow... Great artists create from there; great scientists,
>too.
>Scientists, of course, use their mind in their work, but the great
>scientists have all said that their best insights came at a time of mental
>stillness: They had been doing a lot of thinking and couldn't arrive at a
>solution, and then the mind stopped, and out of that stillness, out of that
>aware presence, came the answer. Great athletes also enter that state. They
>are not thinking about what they're doing; the mind has nothing to do with
>it. Right action happens spontaneously, and they are totally alert.
>The ancient teachings point out that it is possible to live that way, such
>that your whole life is a statement of that state of consciousness; the
>madness doesn't reassert itself the moment you stop your artistic or
>athletic activity.
>Isn't the mind involved in creation? Creativity doesn't come from the human
>mind. The human mind may give it form, but the deep inspiration for it-the
>essence of it-always comes out of that state of alert presence: not the
>mind, not thought. Subsequently perhaps, thought comes in, more so in
>certain activities: writing, for example. But even the writer listens and
>waits for it to come.
>The shift will occur when humans begin to habitually live in that state of
>consciousness. If this happens, mankind will survive. If it doesn't happen,
>it's unlikely that mankind will make it. So let's see what happens But a
>very important factor in whether or not mankind will make it is you-the
>individual.
>* Steve Donoso is a freelance human being living in Rockport, Maine
>(stevedonosoATDyahoo.com). This interview is adapted from a longer version
>that first appeared in The Sun Ouly 2002). Subscriptions: $34/yr. (12
>issues) from Box 469061, Escondido, CA 92046; wwwthesunmagazine.org
>JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2004 151 1 utne
>
>
>
DISCLAIMER!
Home | Archive Index | Search the archives | Subscribe
K. List FAQ | Kundalini FAQs | Signs and Symptoms | Awakening Experiences | K. list Polls | Member Essays | Meditations | List Topics | Art Gallery | Cybrary | Sitemap | Email the moderators.
symbol.