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Edition:	Penguin (Paperback)
Author:	Eckhart Tolle
Published:	January 2008
Pages:	336
ISBN 10:	0452289963
New:	$2.50 (315)
Used:	$0.01 (3235)
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CHAPTER ONE

The Flowering of Human Consciousness

Evocation

Poets and religious leaders throughout the ages have used flowers to describe spiritual concepts—the Buddha with the lotus and Christ with the lily. Birds, which also have a fleeting and ethereal quality, have likewise inspired the human mind toward enlightenment. This recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness.

The Purpose of this Book

There is a sort of “flowering” taking place within human consciousness right now. Some are ready to awaken now, while others will be ready soon. People are discovering that the ego is an imposter pretending to be you. Ego is a darkness that you cannot fight. The only thing you can do is become more “awake” and let the real you illuminate that darkness. This book is intended to help you recognize the tricks the ego plays on you to keep you in the same fruitless patterns. By identifying those tricks you can more easily transform and transcend into a state of enlightenment. This book is nothing more than a tool to help you recognize the truth you already hold inside of you.

Our Inherited Dysfunction

In different forms, and using different descriptions, all great spiritual teachings have at their heart a two-fold truth that is universal. The first part of this truth is that the “normal” human state of mind is dysfunction. For example, the Buddha taught that dukkha—or suffering—is the “normal” state of the human mind. The great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi stated, “The mind is maya.” Maya means “a veil of delusions”. In Christian teachings, the collective state of humanity is “original sin”. The word for sin in the original Greek translation means to “miss the mark” and thereby bring suffering to one’s self and others.

We can readily see for ourselves that human intelligence is tainted with madness. In the last century over one hundred million people were murdered at the hands of their fellow human beings. No, humans are not sane. The history of mankind has largely been a history of madness, including the current widespread destruction of nonhuman life forms on the planet. Anyone who turns on the news will quickly be reminded that humankind’s insanity has not abated.

Fear, greed and the desire for power, which are manifestations of our core dysfunction, have been the driving force behind the conflict between nations and in individual relationships, because they distort our perceptions of others and ourselves. But this can only be changed as an internal process. Communism, which started out with noble ideals, is an example of what happens when you try to change things externally before there is an inward shift.

The Arising New Consciousness

The bad news is that we’re crazy. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be permanent. There is a way to liberation and awakening, whether you call this concept enlightenment, the end of suffering, or salvation—it all means giving up the delusion for something better.

Throughout the centuries great teachers have tried to help those around them awaken from this collective human nightmare. Unfortunately, their teachings were often twisted and used for self-validation, and ultimately became a part of the nightmare by creating even more divisions, rather than the unity they intended.

Now there is a widening polarity taking place. Slowly but surely, many people are starting to rise to a new level of consciousness. At the same time others are becoming even more entrenched in their old, divided ways of thinking.

Spirituality and Religion

Most people understand that you can be spiritual and not religious. You can also be religious and not at all spiritual. For many people their religion actually makes it more difficult to be spiritual because they focus on the “I’m right, you’re wrong” aspect of religion rather than the deeper teachings that their religion originated with. On the other hand, some people are able to see past this limited “me against you” attitude and embrace the core messages in their religions and use them as tools for increasing their individual spirituality.

The Urgency of Transformation

The egoic mind embraced through the centuries is now threatening our very survival. Humanity has now reached a critical point in history where the choice is ultimately to either evolve or die. But the evolution isn’t a new belief system. It is the transcendence of thought itself.

The change goes deeper than the content of your mind, deeper than your thoughts. In fact, at the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought, the newfound ability to rise above thought, to realize a dimension within yourself that is infinitely more vast than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? ‘The one who sees that.’

A New Heaven and a New Earth

A bible prophecy promises that there will be a “new heaven and a new earth”. The esoteric meaning of the word heaven as used by Jesus, refers to the inner realm of consciousness, whereas Earth refers to the outward manifestation of this transformed state of being.

CHAPTER TWO

Ego: The Current State of Humanity

We often fall prey to words, because once we label something we think we know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. All we can see is the surface layer of reality, which is much less than the “tip of the iceberg”. Beneath the surface, everything is interconnected with each other and with the Source of all life from which they came. Even a stone, flower, or a bird could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you hold something and let it be without imposing labels, it will inspire a sense of awe.

When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was once lost.

Words simply reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t much. No combination of vowels and consonants will ever be able to adequately describe the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even something as simple as a tree.

The Illusory Self

The word “I” represents both the greatest error and the deepest truth depending on how you use it. The ego’s version of “I” misinterprets reality. But if you can recognize the illusion, it dissolves. As we grow up we learn to identify “I” with our gender, possessions, nationality, race, religion and profession, or we identify it with roles like mother, father, husband, wife, and so forth. Most people are not aware that there is an “I” that is not their incessant stream of thought processes and accompanying emotions.

The Voice in the Head

Tolle relates a few experiences that left an impression on him. A woman in her early thirties sat across from him on the train on his way to his university. She talked incessantly to herself and appeared to be quite insane. They happened to get off at the same stop and as he walked behind her he was somewhat shocked to see her walk into his same university campus. What was this mad person doing there? As he washed his hands in the restroom he thought to himself, “I hope I don’t end up like her.” Another guy in the restroom looked over at him and he realized in horror that he had said it out loud. He already was like her. We all are, but just to different degrees. This awareness made him laugh out loud. It probably made him sound even more insane, he related, but it was actually the laughter of sanity—he suddenly knew that life wasn’t as serious as his mind was making it out to be. Another incident at the university that had a profound impact on him was showing up for a Monday morning lecture to be given by his favorite professor only to be told that the professor had killed himself over the weekend. He had been certain before that this professor had all of the answers.

Content and Structure of the Ego

The ego mind exists because of identification. We identify with what we think belongs to us. It defines us. At first we identify with our toys, and later with our house, clothes, etc. However we cannot find ourselves in things, but rather end up losing ourselves in them instead.

Identification with Things

The advertising industry is very good at getting people to think they need things in order to be happy, or to more fully express themselves, that they actually don’t need at all. The truth is that trying to find yourself through things never works. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming.

In a consumerist society the only measure of progress is an intangible more, like a tumor created by rapidly proliferating cells whose only goal is to multiply, although the process will eventually kill the body it needs in order to keep growing. Be alert about how much your sense of self-worth is bound up in what you possess.

The Lost Ring

Tolle relates his experience of counseling a terminally ill woman. He would visit her in her home and their visits were usually very quiet ones. But one visit he showed up to find her in a horribly upset state. The woman was certain that her maid had stolen a prized possession—her diamond ring that had once been her grandmother’s and that she had worn every day until the illness made her hands too swollen. Tolled asked her if she didn’t realize that she would have to part with the ring very soon anyway. He asked, “How much more time do you need before you will be ready to let go of it? Will you become less when you let go of it? Has who you are become diminished by the loss?

After a few minutes of silence the woman smiled and said that as she thought about the last question she started to feel her own "I AM-ness” and she realized that losing the ring did not diminish her I AM-ness. After that the woman became more at peace and happier. She began to enjoy giving away many of her processions, including giving things to the woman she was sure had stolen her ring. The more things she gave away the more her joy deepened. In the last few weeks before she died she was radiant. After she passed, her mother called Tolle to let him know and also mentioned that they had found the ring in a medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

The Illusion of Ownership

Many don’t realize this until their deathbed, but no thing has ever had anything to do with who you are. When we are faced with death, the whole concept of ownership is exposed for what it is—meaningless. That doesn’t mean you should give away everything you have, but only that you should be aware that you don’t really own anything. Anti-consumerism, however, can become its own ego attachment if used as a tool to believe that you are morally superior to others. One of the ego’s primary goals is to make itself right and others wrong.

The ego tends to falsely equate having with being. The ego thinks that “The more I have, the more I am.” It’s impossible to let go of an attachment to things, but attachment drops away on its own when we no longer seek to find ourselves in them.

Wanting: The Need for More

Because the ego thinks that more things will increase who you are, it always wants more things. Wanting more is what keeps the ego alive. In fact, the ego enjoys wanting more than it enjoys having. That is why the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting. The basic comforts of everyone on the planet could easily be met for all humans were it not for the imbalance of resources created by the ego’s insane and rapacious need for more.

Identification with the Body

We also tend to overly identify with our physical bodies. Gender itself sometimes becomes an identity. In traditional cultures societal gender roles can convince us that our gender is our identity. In the West, many think their physical appearance is a significant aspect of who they are. One might feel a diminished sense of self-worth because they perceive their physical body as ugly, sometimes even if the perceived flaw is entirely in their head, such as in the case of a thin anorexic that believes she is too fat.

While we should obviously care for our bodies’ health and wellness, we should not equate our worth with our appearance. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your body’s beauty and health while it lasts, so long as it does not become your identity, otherwise you will lose your sense of worth as your body invariably changes as you age.

Feeling the Inner Body

Remember that the important thing isn’t what your body looks like, but the fact that it is alive that is truly remarkable. Put your hands together and focus on how alive they are. After a few minutes of feeling—not thinking—about the life in your body you will start to feel it. Allow yourself to feel your own energy field and aliveness in every part of your body.

From Descartes’ Error to Sartre’s Insight

Descartes is regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. He famously believed that, “I think, therefore I am.” This held a primary error, however, that three centuries later Sartre picked up on and stated, “The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.” In other words, if there were nothing but thought in you then you wouldn’t even be able to tell that you were thinking at all.

The Peace That Passes All Understanding

Sometimes great loss spurs individuals to realize that they are not the things they have lost. They realize that I am not this or that, but simply that I Am. That is the peace of God. The peace experienced when you realize that your essential identity is formless and an all-pervasive Presence.

When tragic loss occurs, people either resist or yield. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is, which leads to peace. Resisting hardens the shell of the ego, and further entrenches one into the identity of a victim. The ego doesn’t even care if its identity is miserable, so long as it has a solid identity, good or bad.

CHAPTER THREE

The Core of Ego

Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head—the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it that they actually think the thinker is who they are. The ego is largely a bundle of habitual thoughts, emotions, and a bundle of memories that you identify as “me and my story”. Egos only differ on the surface. Beneath they are all the same. All egos are constantly striving to survive, to protect and enlarge themselves. The conceptual “I” needs to have conceptual “others” in order to exist. The others are most other when I see them as my enemies, which is why the ego has a compulsive habit of finding fault in others and complaining. Jesus referred to this concept when he asked, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Complaining and Resentment

Complaining helps the ego strengthen itself. It helps feed the ego’s need to be right, to point out how everything else is wrong. What you react to in others is strengthened within yourself, but by not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out the sanity in others.

To forgive is to see through the ego of others and to see their essence instead. When you catch yourself complaining about something, out loud or in your head, remind yourself that this is just the voice of the ego talking, which is nothing more than a conditioned mind-pattern, it is not you. When you become aware of this, the ego naturally starts to fall away because awareness and ego cannot coexist.

Reactivity and Grievances

A strong grievance in your life can contaminate many different areas of your existence, and keep you in your ego’s strong grip. Trying to forgive doesn’t work, but forgiveness happens on its own when you realize that your grievance serves no purpose other than to strengthen the ego—your false sense of self.

Being Right, Making Wrong

The ego loves to be right and for everyone else to be wrong. In fact it needs to make others wrong in order to strengthen its own sense of self. It craves the sense of superiority it gets from judging others.

In Defense of an Illusion

You may be right about something, but truth does not need you to defend it. You are really just defending yourself. Yet all egos confuse opinions with facts. Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation.

Truth: Relative or Absolute?

Beyond simple, verifiable facts, any certainty that “I am right and you are wrong” is a dangerous thing in relationships and between nations and religions. Religions that believe they are in sole possession of the truth have historically justified torturing, and murdering human beings solely for not believing their own version of truth. The Catholic Church once felt that anyone whose interpretation of the scriptures varied from their own narrow interpretation of the scripture was not only wrong, but they deserved to be killed for being wrong.

Another example of having a narrow version of truth is the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot who once ordered everyone who wore glasses to be killed because in his mind people who wore glasses belonged to the educated class. He believed that educated people would automatically exploit the uneducated peasant class, and therefore people who wore glasses were killed to make room for a new social order.

Thought can only point to the truth, but it is not the truth itself. Like the Buddhist saying that “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

The Ego is Not Personal

On a collective level, the mindset of “We are right, and you are wrong” is especially disturbing. Countries at war always have two sides that believe they are right, and that they are victims. Likewise they believe that the other side is wrong. They use this as justification for dehumanizing the enemy to where they can inflict death and horror on even small children without empathy.

By far the greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego.

War Is a Mind-set

There is no way to attempt to eradicate evil without becoming evil yourself. Dysfunctional egoic behavior can never be defeated by attacking it. War never works, not a war against drugs, a war against terrorism, or a war against poverty etc. “Attacking” symptoms while ignoring the cause is useless.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, getting medical treatment itself is the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in the US. Some forms of treatment like homeopathy and Chinese medicine do not treat illness as an enemy and therefore they do not create new diseases by “fighting” against the first.

It becomes easier to feel compassion for others when you accept that everyone is suffering from the same sickness of the mind, although some more than others.

Do You Want Peace or Drama?

You want peace, but your ego often wants drama. The ego is quick to race to its own defense by justifying, attacking and blaming.

Beyond Ego: Your True Identity

The ego loses its grip on you the more you allow yourself to just be as the witnessing Presence. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into the world.

When you recognize yourself as the light of consciousness in which perceptions, thoughts and feelings come and go, then whatever happens to you in life is no longer of absolute, but only of relative importance. You can still honor it, but without heaviness.

All Structures Are Unstable

The ego is driven to strengthen the image of who you think you are. The ego has a strong need to stand out and be special, to have attention, power and always more. The ego always has a hidden agenda because there is always a sense of “not enough yet”.

The ego’s underlying drive, however, is fear. It fears being nobody, the fear of nonexistence. It creates illusions of permanence, but these illusions never quite satisfy. The only way to truly be set free is to recognize the truth of who you are.

Tolle relates an experience of coming across a country home that had been burned in a fire, decades ago. Park authorities had left a sign that stated: DANGER. ALL STRUCTURES ARE UNSTABLE. Tolle recognized that as a profound truth. When we recognize the impermanence of all things, even solid physical things, we awaken to the dimension of the formless within ourselves.

The Ego’s Need to Feel Superior

The ego likes to gossip and possess knowledge that others do not, so that in telling it, it feels superior to the one that does not know. Egos like to criticize others because when others seem to have, be, or know more, then the ego feels threatened and diminished. Or another strategy of the ego is to try to enhance itself by association with the person, who they believe is important in the eyes of others, thereby raising its own importance.

Ego and Fame

The absurd overvaluation of fame is just one of the many manifestations of egoic madness in our world. Some famous people even start believing the collective fiction that they are somehow superior to ordinary mortals, which alienates them from themselves and others and makes them dependent on their continued popularity.

CHAPTER FOUR

Role-Playing: The Many Faces of the Ego

The ego usually wants something from others and will play whatever role it needs to- in order to get what it wants. Because the ego doesn’t understand that the source of all energy is inside of you, it seeks psychic energy in the form of attention from the outside. Even those who are shy want attention, but because shyness often goes in hand with a self-concept of being inadequate, a shy person may also feel afraid of attention.

Villain, Victim, Lover

Know that whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone else, that is just the ego in you. Role-playing is quite common early in romantic relationships where each subtlety promises to fill the other’s void. When that doesn’t turn out to be possible- then conflict, anguish, and blame take over. In most cases the experience of “falling in love” is primarily an intensification of egoic wanting and needing, and has little to do with true love.

Letting Go of Self-Definitions

Many ancient cultures developed deeply entrenched and defined class systems. Only rare beings such as Jesus or the Buddha were able to see the ultimate irrelevance of caste or social class, and see instead the eternal that shines in each human being.

In the modern world, as caste systems begin to fall away to some degree, it can be even more of a challenge for the ego to create an identity for itself. Tolle relates that he congratulates people who say, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Because, he says, “I don’t know does not equal confusion”. Why not let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are?

Pre-established Roles

Those who are completely identified with a role can confuse a pattern of behavior with who they are. A doctor who has totally identified with his ‘role’ will not see you as a human being, but as a patient or case history.

Genuine human relationships are impossible for those who are fully lost in a role. When you take a role very seriously then life loses its joy, lightheartedness and spontaneity.

Temporary Roles

Would you speak to the chairman of your company differently than you would to the janitor? In defined roles, people are not usually communicating with each other at all, but rather- who you think you are is relating to who you think the other person is and vice versa, so actually 4 mental constructs are interacting with each other rather than two beings.

The Monk with Sweaty Palms

Kasan, a Zen teacher, was to officiate at the funeral of a renowned nobleman. As he waited for the governor and lords and ladies of the province his hands began to sweat. Afterwards he told his students that his sweating palms had revealed to him that he was not yet fit to be a teacher since he apparently lacked the sameness of bearing with all beings whether beggar or king. He became the pupil of another master and did not return to his former disciples for eight years.

Happiness as a Role Vs. True Happiness

In America it is very common for people to feel they need to appear happy and “fine”, more so than other countries where looking depressed is almost the norm. If unhappy, there may be a need for action to change a situation, but the primary cause of unhappiness is always your thoughts about the situation—not the situation itself. One can’t find happiness, which is an elusive state, but freedom from unhappiness is immediately attainable. Unhappiness covers up one’s natural state of peace and well-being.

Parenthood: Role or Function?

Some parents don’t see their child as their equal. They talk down to the child. At times it is necessary to tell a child what to do or what not to do, but for some parents their role-playing identity remains long after the function it served has passed.

Some parents will try to control even their adult children through showing disapproval or criticizing. Parents who identify with the parenting role may try to make themselves more complete through their children by pushing the child to be something greater than they perceive themselves, so that they will be greater by extension.

If your parents are doing this, don’t tell them so. Opposition only gives the ego renewed strength. Simply view their behavior with compassion. Often by not taking up a defensive position you will see their need to control and favorably change as well.

Ram Dass said, “If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.” Our primordial relationship that sets the tone for all other relationships is the one we had with our parents. The more shared past there is in a relationship the more present you will need to be in order to avoid reliving the past over and over.

Conscious Suffering

Young children need guidance and protection, and most importantly they need space to be. You may know what’s best for them when they are very young, but as they grow this becomes increasingly less true. Ultimately you cannot save a child from experiencing pain, nor should you want to. Without ever experiencing suffering, human beings remain shallow, and identified in the external. Suffering, or rather the conscious acceptance of suffering, can burn up the ego and bring a new level of consciousness.

Conscious Parenting

Children long for their parents to be there as human beings, not just as a role. They long for attention that is formless, or rather that isn’t connected to them doing something or being evaluated.

The key is to regularly take the time to simply look at, listen to, touch and help your child in a way that is completely present, aware, and alert, while not wanting anything in that present moment to be any different that it is.

Recognizing Your Child

Human is form. Being is formless. Human and Being are not separate but interwoven. You are unquestionably superior to your child in the human dimension because you are bigger, stronger and know more. If that is the dimension you predominantly reside in- then you will at least subconsciously feel superior to your child. But in Being you are equals. Only then will you experience true love in that relationship. Every child longs to be recognized on the Being level.

Giving Up Role-playing

To do whatever is required of you in any situation- without it becoming a role that you identify with- is an essential lesson in the art of living that each one of us is here to learn.

Most people in positions of power like TV personalities, politicians, business and religious leaders are completely identified with their role. They do not recognize that they are unconscious player in an egoic game that Shakespeare described as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

If the egoic earth drama has any purpose at all, it is an indirect one: It creates more and more suffering on the planet, and suffering, although largely ego-created, is in the end also ego-destructive. It is the fire in which the ego burns itself up.

Those who operate from the deeper core of their being, who are simply themselves, stand out as remarkable and are the only ones who make a real difference. People are always most effective and powerful when they are completely themselves, which does not mean that they have defined themselves, but that they realize that you don’t have to “do” something in order to be yourself.

True self-esteem and humility arise from the understanding that at your core, you are neither superior nor inferior to anyone else.

The Pathological Ego

The ego is blind to the suffering it inflicts on both itself and on others. Negative states like anger and resentment are often seen as not negative, but as justified, because the ego incorrectly believes these feelings were caused by some external factor, whether a person or a situation. In Shakespeare’s words, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Recognize that when you are in a negative state, part of you wants to be there. If in the midst of negativity you are able to realize “At this moment I am creating suffering for myself” it will be enough to raise you above the limitations of conditioned egoic states and reactions.

The Background Unhappiness

Many people live with a feeling of background discontent in their lives. They hold on to the belief that they will be happy when xyz happens, or that they cannot be happy until a situation or person changes.

The Secret of Happiness

The ego tries to convince you that you cannot be at peace now. Being at peace and being yourself, are one and the same. Your only opportunity for being at peace is now. The present moment is the only field where life happens. You can become present by being aware of your thoughts and emotions, including “low level” unhappiness that may permeate your life.

The moment you become aware of a negative state within yourself, it does not mean you have failed. It means that you have succeeded, because then your sense of awareness can experience the shift that you are not those negative thoughts and emotions, you are the awareness that sees them for what they are.

If you think, “One day I will be free from the ego,” then that is your ego talking. Being free from your ego is easier than that. It happens easily when you are aware of your thoughts and emotions—it is simply seeing, not doing.

Pathological Forms of Ego

Some people are driven by the ego’s insatiable need to feel important- to the point that they make up lies about themselves- in order to seem more special to others. The ego fears and mistrusts others, and yet at the same time it needs them. Paranoia is a part of every ego, but manifest’s itself more strongly in those who attempt to make themselves feel more important or special by being the object of special persecution. To be a victim and wronged by so many people makes them feel special.

Collective egos can be especially pathological and paranoid with an “us against the evil others” mentality. This has been the cause of much human suffering such as with the Spanish Inquisition, World Wars, McCarthyism, and prolonged violence in the Middle East.

Work—With and Without Ego

Those whose work is free of ego experience—perhaps without even noticing the transition— their work becomes a spiritual practice. Those who work without ego are usually extraordinarily successful with what they do.

The ego demands personal recognition and wastes energy in resentment if it doesn’t get enough—and it’s never enough. The ego only cooperates with others when there is a secondary motive, and resents others success. Because the ego believes there is “not enough” it falsely assumes that someone else’s success diminishes its own chances of success. But in order to attract success, you need to welcome it wherever you see it.

The Ego in Illness

Illness can either strengthen or weaken the ego. Complaining, resenting the illness and self-pity makes the ego grow stronger. Identifying with your illness also gives the ego strength such as, “I am the victim of ______ disease.”

For others, illness brings awareness and their ego shrinks. Sometimes it reemerges as their illness leaves. Those who experience a strengthening of the ego usually have a harder time recovering.

The Collective Ego

Some people give themselves to a cause and enjoy the collective ego they exist in, but when that illusion breaks and the cause is revealed to be imperfect then they become hardened and cynical.

Often people will feel justified doing something horrible to another group or nation as a collective than they would ever feel right about doing on their own. This doesn’t mean that all groups are bad. Some people form groups of enlightened consciousness, but constant alertness is required to ensure that ego doesn’t reassert itself.

Incontrovertible Proof of Immortality

Believing in the concept of “my life” is delusional. I don’t have life. I am life. My life and I are one, so how could I lose my life? It is impossible to lose something that I Am.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Pain-Body

For most people thinking is not an option. Thinking happens involuntarily like digestion and blood circulation, therefore to state “I think” isn’t necessarily true because it isn’t something you do, its something that happens to you.

Because they are fully identified with their minds, many people feel alienated like they are not at home anywhere. Many great writers have recognized human alienation as the universal dilemma. They do not offer any solutions, but to simply be aware of the cause is the first step.

The Birth of Emotion

Another dimension of the ego is emotion. Not all thoughts and emotions are of the ego, but only when you self-identify with them to the point that your thoughts and emotions become the “I”.

Your body’s intelligence runs thousands of systems without you even being aware of it. You don’t run your body. The intelligence does. This is true for all life-forms. This same intelligence allows a plant to manifest a flower. This intelligence gave rise to instinctive reaction akin to emotion. An instinctive response is the body’s direct response to some external situation. An emotion, on the other hand, is the body’s response to a thought.

Emotions and the Ego

The ego is both the unobserved thoughts and emotions. Emotions are the body’s reaction to your thoughts. Negative unconscious emotions, stemming from underlying assumptions like “Life always lets you down,” create your personal reality.

The voice of the ego continuously disrupts the body’s natural state of well-being. Negative emotions can cause a toxic reaction in your body. Even mainstream medicine is starting to recognize this. Sometimes even “positive” egoic emotions are really negative, because they have opposites that can quickly switch on you. Egoic love is really just possessiveness or clinginess that can turn to hate in an instant. Egoic emotions are contingent and based on ever-changing circumstances. Deeper emotions are not really emotions at all but rather states of being. They have no opposites, and are not contingent. Pure love, joy, and peace emanate from within.

The Duck with a Human Mind

When two ducks quarrel it lasts only briefly and then the two float off in separate directions. They will then quickly flap their wings for a moment to let off excess energy built up from the conflict and continue on as peacefully as if the conflict had never happened. If the duck had a human mind it would then sit there and stew over the conflict angrily, “How dare he get that close to me…the next time that happens I’m going to…” and the mind might still be going over it years later, so as far as the body is concerned the fight still hasn’t ended.

Carrying the Past

There is a story of two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, who walked down a path on a long walk towards their lodging temple. On the way they came across a girl who was trying to pass the muddy road in her silk kimono, which was sure to get stained if she continued. Tanzan immediately picked her up and carried her across the road so she would not ruin her fine kimono. Five hours later Ekido could stay silent about it no more and asked, “Why did you carry that girl across the road? We monks are not supposed to do things like that.” To which Tanzan replied, “I put the girl down hours ago. Are you still carrying her?”

Some people are like that. They won’t let go of the heavy burdens they carry around with them, and let “stuff” accumulate internally. They let memories turn into a burden rather than simply being something they learned from. People carry around large amounts of unnecessary baggage.

Individual and Collective

Negative emotions that are not fully faced and seen for what they are, leave behind a remnant of pain. Children particularly find strong negative emotions too difficult to deal with. Without a fully conscious adult to help guide them with love and compassion into facing the emotion, the remnant of pain can remain in place well into adulthood. This energy field of old but still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body. Even newborns come into the world with a pain-body, but ultimately their suffering can help them break through to a new level of consciousness. Many people have deeply related to the image of Christ suffering on the cross. Christ can be seen as the archetypal human, embodying both the pain and the possibility of transcendence.

How the Pain-Body Renews Itself

The pain-body is its own primitive entity made up of emotion. Like a cunning animal, its intelligence is directed at surviving. Any painful emotion can act as food for the pain-body. It thrives on negative thinking and drama in relationships.

How the Pain-Body Feeds on Your Thoughts

Most people experience a pain-body that has active and dormant stages. For some the dormant stage can last for days, months and even years, but when it gets hungry even the slightest trigger can provoke it to become active, and suddenly your thinking will become deeply negative. It’s like a psychic parasite that wants you to feel pain, so that it has something to feed on. Happy thoughts aren’t food for it, because it can only devour the same kind of energy that it is made of.

How the Pain-Body Feeds on Drama

The pain-body will sometimes be so desperate for food that it will deliberately push others buttons in an effort to create conflict and the ensuing negative emotions. This is why many relationships will go through periodic pain-body episodes at regular intervals, and often young children have to witness this emotional violence of their parents and thus the human pain-body is passed onto the next generation. Most pain-bodies want to both inflict and suffer pain, but some are predominantly perpetrators or victims. Sometimes this draws two people into a relationship where their pain-bodies get what it wants.

In most intimate relationships, the pain-body is clever enough to lie low until after you start living together and have signed a contract committing to be together for the rest of your life. People might notice that one day after the “honeymoon” their beloved is like a whole new person full of hostility, anger and fear. Everyone has a pain-body, but it is perhaps wise to pick a partner with one that is not excessively dense.

Dense Pain-Bodies

Some people have pain-bodies that are never totally dormant. They can smile and make small talk, but you can sense their hungry pain-body beneath the surface. The pain-body magnifies the ego’s need for enemies. Some are consumed with hatred toward and ex-spouse or partner.

Entertainment, the Media, and the Pain-Body

Violent films attract an audience by feeding the human addition to unhappiness. People enjoy those films because they actually “enjoy” feeling bad. Pain-bodies write and produce these films and pain-bodies pay to see them.

However, if a film shows the true nature of violence in its wider context with its origins and consequences to humanity, then it can be a part of awakening humanity by acting as a mirror to show humanity its own insanity. These films do not feed the pain-body. Often these films are anti-war films that show the stark reality of it rather than a glamorized version. The pain-body feeds on films that glorify violence.

The Collective Female Pain-Body

Most women experience a collective pain-body, especially around the time prior to menstruation when they become overwhelmed by negative emotions. Women have egos too, but egos more easily take root in men, because women are less mind-identified than men. Women usually have greater openness and sensitivity to other life-forms and the natural world.

Between 3 to 5 millions women were tortured and murdered during the “Holy Inquisition” founded by the Roman Catholic Church, making it one of the worst atrocities along with the holocaust. The sacred feminine was declared demonic and women were brutally murdered as witches for something as simple as showing love towards animals, walking alone in a field, or picking medicinal herbs. Judaism, Islam and even Buddhism have also suppressed women in one form or another.

Pre-Christian civilizations such as Sumerian, Egyptian and Celtic respected and revered the feminine principle. But the ego could not fully develop with the recognition of the feminine divine, and so in subsequent ages the ego had to make sure that males controlled the planet and that females become powerless, reduced to nothing more than child-bearers and men’s property.

Because the sacred feminine is repressed, women experience it as emotional pain. But now, because the ego was never as deeply entrenched in woman, it is losing its hold on women more quickly than on men.

National and Racial Pain-bodies

Older nations tend to have stronger pain-bodies whereas younger countries that have remained largely sheltered from the surrounding madness—like Switzerland, Canada and Australia—tend to have lighter collective pain-bodies. China’s heavy pain-body is to some extent mitigated by the widespread practice of t’ai chi. Spiritual practices that involve the body—such as t’ai chi, qigong, and yoga—without causing a separation between body and spirit will play an important role in global awakening.

Jewish people, Black Americans, and Native Americans and others all have strong collective pain-bodies as well, resulting from the horrors inflicted on them. However, even when blame is justified, you can go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state now. Instead of blaming the darkness, bring in the light.

CHAPTER SIX

Breaking Free

In order to free yourself of the pain-body you have to first recognize that you have one, and be alert enough to notice it when it is activated and when you experience a heavy influx of negative emotions.

Once you stop identifying with it, the pain-body cannot control your thinking. It will not disappear immediately, but awareness of it severs the link and causes it to grow increasingly weaker.

Every human being emanates an energy field that others can feel—whether consciously or subconsciously. Pain-bodies love to feed off of each other, and can cause a normal person to become a temporary maniac, such as in the case of road rage.

The pain-body has its temporary usefulness. It leads many to the place where they cannot stand the endless cycle of suffering any longer, and so they choose to become more conscious and end the cycle.

Presence

No one can be unhappy if they do not have an “unhappy story” about themselves that they carry with them. The “unhappy story” along with the emotions it generates is what creates unhappiness. When we can let go of the story, and instead consciously become aware of exactly what we are feeling in the moment, then unhappiness loses its power over us.

The Pain-Body in Children

Sensitive children can be highly effected by parents with heavy pain-bodies, and then grow into adulthood with their own heavy pain-body. Trying to protect your children by suppressing the pain-body doesn’t work, because suppressed pain-bodies are even more toxic than open ones. Consciousness is the only way to diminish the pain-body.

Pain-body episodes in children are usually more short-lived than in adults. After an incidence occurs you can help the child not identify with the pain-body by asking questions. You don’t need to tell the child about the pain-body concept, but you can ask questions that they can relate to in a completely nonjudgmental way. You should not sound critical, but rather curious. Some suggested questions are, “What came over you yesterday when you wouldn’t stop screaming? Do you remember? What did it feel like? Was it a good feeling? That thing that came over you, does it have a name? No? If it had a name, what would it be called? If you could see it, what would it look like? Can you paint a picture of what it would look like? What happened to it when it went away? Did it go to sleep? Do you think it may come back?”

The next time it happens you can relate to it in the words the child used and ask, “Its come back hasn’t it?” These questions are designed the help the child awake the witnessing faculty and become more present and aware.

Unhappiness

The pain-body’s unhappiness is always disproportionate to the cause. Even insignificant things can act as a trigger that brings old accumulated emotions back to life. When you are trapped by these emotions you do not know how to step outside of them because there doesn’t even appear to be an outside—it seems as if your reaction is the only one possible.

Breaking Identification with the Pain-Body

Pain-bodies and egos are close relatives that feed off of each other. People with heavy and active pain-bodies frequently find themselves in conflict situations, even if they are not provoking them. The negativity they emanate can attract hostility. It can be difficult to remain Present around people with heavy pain-bodies, but if you can, that is the best way to help them dis-identify their pain-bodies and initiate an awakening.

Tolle relates a situation from his own life when a neighbor with a heavy pain-body came to his apartment clearly agitated. Most of Ethel’s family had been murdered in Nazi concentration camps. She spread out a folder of documents and said she needed him to help her fight a great injustice. The landlord was suing her because she refused to pay her service charge because there were some maintenance issues that needed attention.

Tolle says all he could do was remain open, alert, intensely present—present with every cell of the body. I looked her with no thought and no judgment and listed in stillness without any mental commentary. For a while her words continued in a torrent, but after 10 minutes or so she suddenly stopped and seemed to have a realization. She suddenly became calm and gentle and she said, “This isn’t important at all, is it?” “No, it isn’t,” he responded. She then quietly picked up her papers and left. The next day she stopped him in the street and asked him what he had done to her, because she’d slept better that night than she had in years. Tolle relates that it wasn’t what he’d done, but in what he didn’t do—he didn’t interfere, but allowed her to experience whatever she was experiencing at the moment. Being present is always infinitely more powerful than anything one could say or do.

"Triggers"

Some pain-bodies have one particular trigger that resonates with the pain they have suffered in the past. If the trigger involves money, then even a trivial amount in dispute can cause intense anger, for example.

As you become aware of your own pain-body you will be able to recognize the triggers. When a trigger occurs you will want to stay extra alert and aware. You will still notice the emotional reaction, but you won’t identify with it, which means it cannot take over. The pain-body needs your unconsciousness. It cannot tolerate the light of Presence.

The Pain-Body as an Awakener

Sometimes having a strong pain-body is an advantage of sorts—you’ll feel like your life is becoming unbearable sooner and hence it can instigate an awakening where you are ready to shed the pain and drama. Inner peace becomes a priority.

Breaking Free of the Pain-Body

It is not the pain-body, but rather your identification with it, that causes suffering. You can free yourself from identifying with your pain-body immediately. Awareness that you are not the pain-body prevents the old emotions from taking over your thoughts and controlling your interactions with others.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Finding Who You Truly Are

Knowing yourself has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

Who You Think You Are

If small things can upset and disturb you then that is an indication of how you see yourself: small. If peace is what you really want, then you will choose peace. You would remain non-reactive and alert when confronted with challenging people and situations.

Becoming aware of the ego only tells you who you are not. No one can tell you what you are. Who you are- requires no beliefs.

Abundance

Recognizing all the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance. Whatever you believe the world is withholding from you, you are actually withholding from the world. Whatever you think people are withholding from you—praise, recognition, love etc, give it instead. Soon you will start to receive it back. Don’t think about what the moment can give you, but rather what you can give the moment. You cannot receive what you don’t give. Outflow determines inflow.

Knowing Yourself and Knowing About Yourself

Many people secretly fear that they are bad. But nothing you know about yourself is you. There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysis or finding out about your past, but don’t ever confuse knowing about yourself, with knowing yourself.

Chaos and Higher Order

Most people define themselves by referring to the content of their lives. The Zen saying: “The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place” expresses the truth that there is wholeness in life. There are not bad and good experiences, because all is part of the whole.

Good and Bad

Thinking tends to isolate events and label each one as bad or good as if they were separate. Don’t judge what is. Accept it. It is impossible for the mind to know how each event falls into the tapestry of the whole. There are not random events, and things do not occur in isolation. The word cosmos means order, and indeed there is order to all things, even if it is not apparent because it is beyond human comprehension.

Not Minding What Happens

The great Indian philosopher, J. Krishnamurti, said his secret in life was that he didn’t mind what happened. If you are aligned with what is, then you have a relationship of inner nonresistance with what is. You do not label it. You accept it.

Is That So?

The Zen Master Hakuin lived in a Japanese town where he was revered and respected by all. One day his teenage neighbor told her parents that Hakuin had gotten her pregnant. The angry parents rushed to Hakuin angrily and related to him that their daughter had confessed that he was the father. “Is that so?” he responded simply. The whole town spoke of the scandal and the Master lost his reputation. No one came to see him anymore. When the baby was born the parents brought it to him and said, “This is your son, now you care for him.” His response was, “Is that so?” He took the child and lovingly cared for it. A year later the girl confessed to her parents that the father was actually the young man at the butcher’s shop. The parents went to the Master and apologized. They told them they had come to take the baby back. “Is that so?” replied the Master as he gave them the child back.

The master responded to false news, truth, good and bad all the same, because he was not a victim. He did not personalize the events, or take offense. Consequently he was not in distress and a child received loving care. Bad turns into good through the power of nonresistance.

The Ego and the Present Moment

Your most important relationship in life is your relationship with the Now. The ego is basically a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. You can always decide if the present moment is your friend or your enemy. The present moment is life, so you are really deciding what you want your relationship with life to be.

The ego can never be in alignment with the present moment. Its very nature is to resist and devalue the Now. The ego lives on time, and is always trying to get to some future moment. The present moment is regarded and treated as if it were an obstacle to be overcome.

The Paradox of Time

There is only ever this moment. Life is always now. Everything seems to be subject to time and yet it all happens in the now.

Eliminating Time

Eliminating time from your conscious will also eliminate the ego. There is nothing wrong with clock time, it helps us make plans and function in the world, but what you want to eliminate is psychological time—the mind’s endless preoccupation with the past and future that prevents you from ever being Present in the Now.

The Dreamer and the Dream

Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Resistance makes things of the world appear to be more solid and lasting than they are. Everything in the world of form is fleeting.

When we choose to awake from the “dream” of the ego-created earth-drama, a new and more wondrous dream arises. This is the new Earth.

Going Beyond Limitation

You are Present when you do things for their own sake and not as a means to an end- (money, prestige). Tolle relates that in the late 70s as he ate lunch with friends at Cambridge University where he was studying he would sometimes notice a man in a wheelchair accompanied by 3-4 other people. One day he was sitting close enough that he noticed how totally paralyzed and emaciated his body was. Those with him were putting food in his mouth, much of which was falling out again. Occasionally he would produce croaking sounds, and someone would put their ear to his mouth and somehow interpret what he was saying. Tolle, somewhat in shock, asked his friend if he knew who the man was.

His friend explained that he was a mathematics professor and those were his students. He had a neuron disease that progressively paralyzes every part of the body, and had been given 5 years to live at most. His friend noted that, “It must be the most dreadful fate that can befall a human being.”

A few weeks later Tolle held an elevator door open for the man and he was surprised at how clear his eyes were. There was not a trace of unhappiness in them.

Years later as Tolle was buying a newspaper at a kiosk he was amazed to the see the man on the front page of a popular international news magazine. Not only was he still alive, but also had become the world’s most famous theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. A line in the article confirmed what Tolle had sensed in his eyes years earlier. Commenting on his life—now with the aid of a voice synthesizer—Hawking noted, “Who could have wished for more?”

The Joy of Being

Unhappiness and negativity is like a disease, a pollution of the planet on an inner level. People believe their happiness is dependent on what happens to them. They don’t seem to realize that what happens is the most unstable thing to base your happiness on in the universe because it is constantly changing.

The joy of Being is the only true happiness. It does not come through form, possession, achievement or an event—it emanates from the consciousness within you.

Allowing the Diminishment of the Ego

If someone criticizes, the ego feels it has been diminished and immediately attempts to self-repair through self-justification, defense and blaming. The ego doesn’t care if it’s right or wrong. It only cares about self-preservation. These dysfunctional repair mechanisms seem perfectly normal to the ego.

A powerful spiritual practice is to consciously allow the diminishment of the ego when it occurs without attempting to restore it. For a short while- you may feel uncomfortable and as if you have shrunk, but soon and inner spaciousness is felt, an intense aliveness, and you will know that you have not been diminished at all, but rather expanded. Through becoming less, you become more.

As Without, so Within

We are awed when we look into outer space at the inconceivable depth and countless worlds. A balanced human life is a dance between two dimensions: form and space. Most of us are so identified with form—things that we can see, hear, and touch that we forget about space. Just as without silence there could be no sound, you would not exist without the vital formless dimension that is the essence of who you are.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Discovery of Inner Space

Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

Nonattachment does not mean you cannot enjoy the good the world offers, in fact you enjoy it more, but you have a higher vantage point from which to view the events in your life rather than being trapped inside of them. You can enjoy and honor the things of this world without giving them an importance and significance they don’t have.

Object Consciousness and Space Consciousness

Most peoples’ lives are filled with material things, things to do and things to think about. Winston Churchill described it as “one damn thing after another.” In all this clutter, people lose themselves.

Awareness is being able to sense an alert inner stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground. Remember the statement that “I am never upset for the reason I think.”

Falling Below and Rising Above Thought

Alcohol and certain drugs can make you feel more alive and relaxed, because you feel less burdened by your mind, you can glimpse the joy of Being, but there is a high price: unconsciousness. You have not risen above thought. You have fallen below it. Space consciousness is not the same as being “spaced out”.

Television

Watching television is also relaxing because you can escape from your endless thoughts and let something else think for you, which induces a trancelike passive state. Advertisers love it, because it induces a highly susceptible state of mind, whether for direct advertising or product placement.

Watching television is almost always falling below thoughts, although there are rare programs that have been extremely helpful for many people, and sometimes even comedy is unintentionally spiritual as it teaches us to not take anything too seriously.

Recognizing Inner Space

The joy of Being is found in simple, unremarkable things. To be aware of these quiet, little things, however, you have to be quiet inside.

Can you Hear the Mountain Stream?

The student asked the Zen master as they stopped on a trail to rest, “Master, how do I enter Zen?” The Master was silent for several minutes and then asked, “Do you hear the sound of that mountain stream?” The disciple did not, but as he listened he began to hear the very quiet murmur of the stream. “Yes I can hear it now,” he said. The Master raised his finger and said, “Enter Zen from here.”

Suddenly, the disciple knew what Zen was without knowing what it was that he knew! As they continued on, the disciple was awed at the aliveness of the world, and experienced everything as if for the first time. Later he asked, “Master, what would you have told me if I had not heard the mountain stream?” The master stopped, raised his finger and said, “Enter Zen from here.”

Right Action

The ego wants to know how it can get a situation, or future situation, to fulfill its needs. Presence asks how it can respond to the needs of this situation or moment. When Present, instead of reacting to a situation, you merge with it. Right action is action that is appropriate to the whole. When creation occurs, be vigilant not to take credit for the accomplishment, or the ego returns and spaciousness is obscured.

Perceiving Without Naming

Most people are only vaguely aware of the world around them because they are so caught up in their thoughts. That is why some people enjoy travel. It forces them to observe newness without labeling, but just experiencing.

For most people, the moment something has been perceived, then it is named and interpreted as good or bad by the ego. You do not awaken spiritually until the compulsive and unconscious naming ceases.

Who Is the Experiencer?

“What is consciousness?” is a question that cannot be answered. Although you cannot know consciousness, you can sense it everywhere and in every situation.

The Breath

Inner space is discovered in the gaps in the stream of thinking. The duration of the gaps can be short at first. Focusing on breath takes attention away from thinking and thereby creates space. Daily conscious breathing is a great way to bring space into your life. When you breathe, it is the intelligence inside your body doing it. All you have to do is watch as it happens. Notice the still point at the end of each breath.

Because breath is not an object and has no form, it is an effective way to generate space and consciousness. Conscious breathing makes thoughts cease, but you are still fully awake and highly alert. Rather than falling below thinking, you are rising above.

Addictions

Whether your compulsive behavior is smoking, drinking, TV watching, Internet addiction, overeating etc, you can notice the compulsion when it arises in you. When it does arise, stop for a moment and take three conscious breaths. Consciously feel that need to physically or mentally ingest or consume a certain substance or the desire to act out some form of compulsive behavior. Then take a few more conscious breaths.

Sometimes this causes the urge to disappear for a time. If it overpowers you don’t make it into a problem. Just keep practicing awareness. As your awareness grows, your addictive patterns will eventually weaken and dissolve. If you have thoughts that justify the addiction ask, “Who is talking here?” You will find that it is the addiction talking.

Inner Body Awareness

A feeling of aliveness is always there but is often overlooked. Sometimes even drama in relationships is used in vain as a substitute for the genuine sense of aliveness. We believe another person can “make us happy” and we feel upset when they invariably cannot.

Take a few deep, conscious breaths and see if you can feel your own aliveness.

Inner and Outer Space

You body is not solid. It is space. We perceive of the physical body as form, but over 99.99% of it is space between atoms, and there is that much space again within in each atom. Your inner space is like a microcosmic version of outer space. Light from the nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri must travel for 4.5 years before it reaches Earth. The space between is unfathomable. Light from the nearest galaxy, Andromeda, takes 2.4 million years to reach us. We have to enter the body to go beyond it and find out that we are not the body.

Noticing the Gaps

Throughout the day, before our minds label things, there is a short gap of alert attention where we do not think—we perceive. A new sight or sound arises, and in the first moment of perception, there is a brief cessation in the habitual stream of thinking.

The frequency and duration of these spaces determine your ability to enjoy life, to feel an inner connectedness with other human beings as well as nature.

Consciousness of these brief gaps causes them to lengthen and become more frequent, where you can enjoy perceiving with little or no interference by thought.

Lose Yourself to Find Yourself

Jesus taught that you must lose yourself to find yourself. You must become less so that you can become more. Here are a few ways people unconsciously attempt to strengthen their form-identity: they demand recognition for something they did and get angry if they don’t get it, they talk about their problems or illnesses, making a scene, giving opinions when not called for, and being more concerned with how another person sees them than they are about that person.

Stillness

There is a saying that “Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation.” To be still means to be conscious without thought. When you are still, you are who you are beyond your temporal existence: consciousness—unconditioned, formless, and eternal.

CHAPTER NINE

Your Inner Purpose

Many feel like life has passed them by, or that they are restricted by the demands of a job or family. How do you find your true purpose? Inner and outer purposes are intertwined. Your inner purpose is solely to awaken. One’s outer purpose, on the other hand, can change over time. Living your inner purpose is the necessary foundation for fulfilling your outer purpose. Without that alignment you can only achieve things through effort, struggle, sheer hard work, or cunning.

Awakening

Awareness naturally takes over from thinking. When you ‘awake’ you cease to be lost in your thoughts, but rather recognize yourself as the awareness behind the thinking.

The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace. You cannot make it happen nor can you prepare yourself for it or accumulate credits toward it.

Awakening can happen to a sinner or a saint; you do not have to be “worthy” to experience it. It is not a goal you can strive for. If you find this book incomprehensible- it has not yet happened. If something within you responds to the things you are reading in this book it means the process of awakening has already begun for you. It cannot be reversed, but it can be delayed by the ego.

While you may still be waiting for something significant to happen in your life, the most significant thing that could ever happen to you is already beginning. For some- awakening makes them uncertain what their outer purpose is, now that the world no longer drives them. They see the madness in our civilization and feel alienated from its culture.

They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purpose has not yet merged.

A Dialogue on Inner Purpose

If you are not in alignment with your primary purpose first—being aware—then every outer purpose will ultimately be of the ego and will be destroyed by time.

When you look upon what you do or where you are as the main purpose of your life, you negate time. This is enormously empowering…whatever you do, you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the doing itself becomes the focal point of your attention.

You cannot become successful; you can only be successful once there is a sense of quality in everything you do, no matter how small and simple. Forcing yourself to do something that is not pleasant will never lead to true success. The ends and the means are one, so if creating a thing did not contribute to human happiness, then the thing itself will not either.

See each step as the only thing to do, and give it your full attention. What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.

Outer purpose varies greatly from one person to the next, and no outer purpose is eternal because outer purpose is subject to time and will eventually be replaced by a new purpose. When your inner purpose is honored, things will start to fall into place, even if the changes seem negative at first—they are paving the way for something new to emerge in your life.

CHAPTER TEN

A New Earth

The sunrise and sunset illustrate relative and absolute truth. In a relative sense it is true to say that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, but in an absolute sense that statement would be false. The sun rises and sets only according to the perspective of a limited observer. In reality the sun doesn’t rise or set, it shines continuously.

A Brief History of Your Life

Each life represents a world—a unique way in which the universe experiences itself. When the form ends, that world comes to an end.

Awakening and the Return Movement

Because there is so little spirituality in our culture, most people do not recognize aging and the dissolution of form as an opportunity to more fully awaken. They see it as a bad thing that should not be happening. In ancient cultures, older people were respected and revered. But in today’s world “old” has a negative connotation. In today’s world, that does not value wisdom, old is considered useless because the emphasis shifts from doing to Being. Our civilization knows nothing of Being, and only understands doing.

Ultimately, nothing happens that is not meant to happen, which is to say, nothing happens that is not part of the greater whole and its purpose.

On the new earth, old age will once again be recognized and valued as a time for flowering consciousness. It will be a late homecoming for those who were previously lost in the outer circumstances of their lives. For others it will be a time of intensification and culmination of the awakening process.

Awakening and the Outgoing Movement

Human intelligence has been severely misused by the ego, or “intelligence in the service of madness.” Splitting the atom required intelligence. Stockpiling atom bombs on the other hand was pure insanity and extremely unintelligent. Intelligent stupidity threatens our survival as a species. But without the egoic dysfunction, our intelligence can become aligned with the outgoing cycle of the universal intelligence’s impulse to create.

Struggle or stress is a sign that the ego has returned…no matter how active we are, how much effort we make, our state of consciousness creates our world, and if there is no change on that inner level, no amount of action will make any difference.

Consciousness

Consciousness is the organizing principle behind the arising of form. The human brain is a form through which consciousness enters this dimension. Each brain contains approximately one hundred billion nerve cells, which is about the same number of stars in our galaxy—the macrocosmic brain.

Awakened Doing

The consciousness can be aware of itself and still create and experience form for the sheer enjoyment of it through awakened doing.

Consciousness flows through you into this world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it…a reversal of your priorities comes about when the main purpose for doing what you do becomes the doing itself.

The Three Modalities of Awakened Doing

The modalities of awakened doing are: acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm, and each represents a different frequency of consciousness.

Acceptance

Not only is it important to accept what happens, but also it is equally important to accept what you have to do. This means that you are at peace with what you do, even if it is not something that you love to do. You do it willingly with consciousness, which creates peace.

Enjoyment

The peace that comes from surrendering becomes aliveness when you start to enjoy what you are doing. When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do—and with it the quality of your life—increases dramatically.

Joy is not created by what you do, but rather it flows into what you do and into the world from within you. Any activity can be enjoyed when fully present, and when the activity is not seen as just a means to the end. What you do in a heightened state of awareness ceases to be experienced as stressful or tedious and becomes enjoyable instead. The joy of being is the joy of being conscious.

As you start to accomplish great things, don’t let it go to your head. You are still an ordinary human being. What is extraordinary is what comes through you into this world.

Enthusiasm

For those who remain true to their awakening—their inner purpose—they will eventually know their outer purpose. They will have a vision, a goal that they will then work towards. There is deep enjoying in what you do, plus vision that you work toward. You will feel like an arrow that is moving toward the target—and enjoying the journey.

However, when you want to arrive at your goal - more than you want to be doing what you’re doing, then you become stressed. Stress lessens the quality and effectiveness in everything you do, and long-term also leads to degenerative diseases like cancer and heart disease.

The word enthusiasm comes from ancient Greek—en and theos, meaning God. The related word enthousiazin means “to be possessed by a god”. Indeed, with enthusiasm you do not have to do it all by yourself. Enthusiasm creates a wave of energy where all you have to do is “ride the wave”.

The Frequency-holders

Not everyone is compelled to get involved in, or change the world and create great things. Some are inward looking by nature. There doesn’t seem to be a place for these types of people now who traditionally were considered “contemplatives”. In today’s world they find it difficult to fit in. Some are lucky to find a sheltered niche in life with a job or small business to bring them income. They may feel drawn to a spiritual community or monastery, while others may “drop out” of life and live on the fringe of a society they have difficulty relating to. Some find living in the world too painful and turn to drugs, while others become healers or spiritual teachers.

On the arising new earth, their role is just as vital as the role of the creators. They can bring spacious stillness into this world just by being completely present in whatever they do. Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on this planet.

The New Earth is No Utopia

Utopian visions are a mental projection of a future time when there will be peace and harmony and no more problems. However, when you look to the future for salvation, you are looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in ego.

Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment.

As Jesus explained to his disciples, “Heaven is right here in the midst of you.” He also promised that “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” The meek are the egoless, those who have surrendered to the oneness with the whole and the Source.