Quotes from Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose” (Plume, 2005).
- To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, for the beginning of healing and transcendence. ... If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. ...
- ... on this planet “normal” equals insane ... greed, selfishness, exploitation, cruelty and violence are still all pervasive ... all are suffering from the sickness of mind, some more than others... A collective ego is usually more unconscious than the individuals that make up that ego... Nations frequently engage in behavior that would be immediately recognizable as psychopathic in an individual.
- ... thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence... thinking is only a tiny aspect of the consciousness that we are ... When you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore. ... The thinking mind cannot understand Presence ... so concerned by time they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who you are. ... Presence is a state of inner spaciousness ... All creativity comes from inner spaciousness. ... Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. ... the ego’s greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment which is to say, life itself... Only Presence can free you of the ego ...
- “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is the song of the ego ... the underlying emotion that governs all the activity of the ego is fear ... Awareness means Presence and only Presence can dissolve the unconscious past in you. .. The ego doesn’t know that your only possibility to be at peace is now. Peace is the end of ego ... The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. ... You then realize that you do not live life, life lives you. Life is the dancer and you are the dance.
- Wanting keeps the ego alive more than having. Most egos have conflicted wants. ... voice in head that never stops speaking is the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking ... in the grip of ego. This is forgetfulness of Being. ... The ego is not only the unobserved mind, the voice in the head that pretends to be you, but also the unobserved emotions that are the body’s reaction to what the voice in the head is saying.
- Nonreaction to the ego of others is one of the most effective ways of not only going beyond ego in yourself, but also of dissolving the collective human ego ... by not reacting to the ego, you will also be able to bring out the sanity in others ... Ego takes everything personally. ... Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that wants the negativity ... believes it will get you what you want. ... The ego creates separation and separation creates suffering. ... Do I want the present moment to be a friend or an enemy? ... What is my relationship with life? ... One of the most common ego-repair mechanisms is anger ... Instead of trying to be a mountain ... “Be the valley of the universe”
- “I’ll play who you want me to be. You play who I want you to be.” ... unspoken and unconscious agreement... Role playing is hard work ... a false sense of self is the basis for your life ... the child has a deep longing for a parent to be there as a human being, not as a role ... [transcendence of roles] sameness of bearing before all human beings, whether beggar or king...
- Can you cease looking to thought for an identity? When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are ... When you fully accept that you don’t know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are that thought could ever be... a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined... Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself. Rather than being your thoughts or emotions, be the awareness behind them.
- Happiness is ever elusive but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it. ... To love is to recognize yourself in another. ... love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality. ... The ego doesn’t know that the more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the more easily things come to you.
- The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness. ... you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it. ... Children in particular find strong negative emotions too much to cope with and try not to feel them ... unfortunately that early defense mechanism usually remains in place when a child becomes an adult. ... In some cases it interferes with or sabotages every intimate relationship.
- ... the TV screen. This induces a passive trancelike state of heightened susceptibility, not unlike hypnosis. ... it drains you of energy. ... Excessive tv watching ... largely responsible for attention deficit disorder, a mental disorder now affecting millions of children worldwide. ... To be aware of little, quiet things ... you need to be quiet inside. “Do you hear the sound of that mountain stream?” ... “Enter zen from there.
- Being aware of your breathing takes attention away from thinking and creates space ... Feel the air moving in and out of your body ... One conscious breath (two or three would be even better), taken many times a day, is an excellent way of bringing space into your life. ... Many people’s breath is unnaturally shallow....The more you are aware of your breath, the more its natural depth will restore itself. ... Being aware of your breath forces you into the present moment. ... When you are still, you are who you are ... The “waiting to start living” syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state. ... The joy of Being, is the joy of being conscious. ... to do everything in a sacred manner ...
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Are you implying that our entire country is going insane, or at least those in power?
Is anyone else implying they're not?
Is anyone else implying they're not?
Being. That's it! Being happy all by ourselves is where it's at. Interesting that energy transpires into negative debits via subliminal television receptors zapping away at energy stored in our brains that could be spent completing unfinished WIPs.
Thanks, much to think on here...all good. TG:D
I also wonder what some define as motive. One lady asked me recently "what motivates me" and my immediate response was "I'm not sure but let me think about it further." It's still something I'm still unsure about. If it's more in line with getting things done and moving onto the next thing to be done, I get it.
Reality is neither "sane", "un-sane", nor "insane"; it just is. It contains within it both Being and Thought, Self and Non-Self. Balance is the foundation of contentment; contentment the foundation of happiness.
No life is without pain, un-reason, and un-sanity. Yet no life is without pleasure, reason, and sanity. It is in our manipulation of these factors in our personal lives that we learn to overcome discontentment.
Thinking well and efficiently - reasoning - is to the mind what breathing is to the body. Feeling and reasoning are means to knowing the yin and yang (good and bad) of life and that knowledge allows us to achieve balance. In our balanced state we are most aware of the universe and our place in it. As we achieve that balance, we achieve the possibility of nirvana.
;-)
R
.
No life is without pain, un-reason, and un-sanity. Yet no life is without pleasure, reason, and sanity. It is in our manipulation of these factors in our personal lives that we learn to overcome discontentment.
Thinking well and efficiently - reasoning - is to the mind what breathing is to the body. Feeling and reasoning are means to knowing the yin and yang (good and bad) of life and that knowledge allows us to achieve balance. In our balanced state we are most aware of the universe and our place in it. As we achieve that balance, we achieve the possibility of nirvana.
;-)
R
.
Something tells me I created too much space with my breathing this morning & pressed: Publish! ha ha Zen Out, Libby - you deserve it! R
"...The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness..." that seeming paradox is the cornerstone of Buddha's message. R&R ;-)
A wonderful reminder for me, especially since something happened with my mom today that really hurt. I read this before taking Gracie for her walk and spent the time focusing on my breath while seeing the beauty of the changing colors of fall. It also kept me calm when Grace slipped out of her harness and started to run and I was able to gently and firmly call her back to me. She is only starting to respond to training and things could have gone badly had I reacted angrily or freaked out from fear.
It's also a good reminder to read my Tolle books again. Thank you for the gift.
It's also a good reminder to read my Tolle books again. Thank you for the gift.
Harry's House of Liquor works for me.
Great wisdom here. I'd read the book but I'd miss my favorite tv shows. Just kidding. R
Thank you
~R~
~R~
i think, to answer, you can enter Zen at any point inbetween.
Rated.
Rated.
Too introspective or something for me libby. I did like the line " Life is the dancer and you are the dance" though I'm not sure what it means or implies.
cyber-zen! zen is one of the best religions.
I have only the vaguest concept of zen but I get the general feeling it's about creating finely tuned conditioned responses which create a lifestyle divested of bad or inaccurate or unwanted results. I am rather leery of a life of conditioned responses. And I do not want to be happy all the time. Life is a process of being battered by reality and eventually some miseries can be mitigated but some are inevitable and that's the way the ball bounces.
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