Just recently finished
A New Earth, by Ekhart Tolle. Amazing read. Yeah, I've joined the Oprah bandwagon and decided to study the book along with millions of others. I feel its a great thing. Why not?
Its funny, the first time I picked up
The Power of Now was in college...and I found it interesting, but hard to grasp...being in that place of me and my...and this and that...it didn't really resonate with me at that time and I found it a bit dry...hahaha...imagine!! And, when
A New Earth was first published I bought the book a couple years back. But, at that time, I remember being like yeah this book is great, but I hurried through it...and was onto the next book...not really savoring all the pearls in it. Now, however, I have had grace bestowed on me to look at things differently, and I've found each page just as compelling as the next...
Here are some of the gems that I would like to share from the book...
You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness. Ego is no more than this: identification with form.
The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you.
When you can no longer feel the life you are, you are likely to try to fill up your life with things. "That is the joy of Being," I said. "You can only feel it when you get out of your head." Being must be felt. It can't be thought. The ego doesn't know about it because thought is what it consists of.
Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego. It also strengthens the immune system and the body's ability to heal itself.
By not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out the sanity in others, Your greatest protection, however, is being conscious.
Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Nonreaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for nonreaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence. And the ego's greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment, which is to say, life itself. The very being that you are is Truth.
When you confuse the ego that you perceive in others with their identity, it is the work of your own ego that uses this misperception to strengthen itself through being right and therefore superior, and through reacting with condemnation, indignation, and often anger against the perceived enemy. All this is enormously satisfying to the ego. It strengthens the sense of separation between yourself and the other, whose "otherness" has become magnified to such an extent that you can no longer feel your common humanity, nor the rootedness in the one Life that you share with each human being, your common divinity. Awareness means Presence, and only Presence can dissolve the unconscious past in you.
So there is no such thing as "my life," and I don't have a life. I am life. I and life are one. If cannot be otherwise. So how could I lose my life? How can I lose something that I don't have in the first place? How can I lose something that I AM? It is impossible.
There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.
The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of ego. The ego can never be in alignment with the present moment, which is to say, aligned with life, since its very nature compels it to ignore, resist or devalue the Now.
Through nonresistance to form, that in you which is beyond form emerges as an all-emcompassing Presence, a silent power far greater than your short-lived form identity, the person. It is more deeply who you are than anything in the world of form.
Your inner purpose is to awaken. Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence. Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought.
Yes, whenever there is inspiration, which translates as "in spirit," and enthusiasm, which means "in God," there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of. What is lost on the level of form is gained on the level of essence. You cannot lose consciousness because it is, in essence, who you are. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.
Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you. The misperception that joy comes from what you do is normal, and it is also dangerous, because it creates the belief that joy is something that can be derived from something else, such as an activity or thing.
Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free.Ok...I know I've gone a bit overboard with excerpts from the book...which are only a tiny fraction of the wisdom it has...just wanted to share and spread the word for those who may find it interesting...
Now that I've tagged, highlighted and underlined all over the book...I'm gonna start reading it over again...I'm a dry sponge...ready to be soaked...
