Eckhart Tolle is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. He writes with the timeless and uncomplicated clarity of the ancient spiritual matters and imparts a simple yet profound message: There is a way out of suffering and into peace. He is the author of Stillness and Practicing the Power of Now. He travels widely spreading his knowledge and speaking to audiences and lives in Vancouver British Columbia.
One of my favorite books is “The Power of Now“.
Nobody’s life is completely free of pain and sorrow. Isn’t it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?
The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some level of judgement. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain, depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind.
My comment
Wow. Given Eckhart is very esoteric, and on what I would call this spiritual plane, he has touched on so many levels here in such a short amount of words. Sometimes we don’t know why we respond to situations the way we do. Often we are unable to shut our minds off.
We walk around ‘in’ our heads having conversations with ourselves and repeating all sorts of things, events and emotions we are dealing with. When we are always identifying with this (the mind), it creates so much internal dis-ease! Eckhart summarizes this down to ultimately being in resistance to the present moment. Does this ring true for you? I really don’t know anyone who truly wants to forfeit their present moments. So this is one of the places where the “egoic” mind does get in the way. Although the ego does serve us (especially when we were youngsters) and, in actuality wants to protect us from a vast variety of painful issues and situations, (and it has), it can also be a great hinderance….by keeping us so protected that our growth is restrained by not allowing us to climb out of our comfort zones.
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