Tag: Eckhart Tolle

I am what I learn!

Reflections on the old and the new.

So here we are on the last day of 2015, the cusp of a new year and who knows what the next twelve months have in store.

All I am going to do is to reflect on the huge potential our modern ‘wired-up’ world offers for learning.

Most will know the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

But it is wrong!

Here at home, where a number of the dogs are in their old age (Pharaoh is the equivalent in age of 100 human years; one dog year being approximately the same as eight human years) Jean and I see no difficulty in these elderly dogs learning new tricks.  Staying with Pharaoh, as an example, his hearing is pretty poor now but he has learnt a whole range of hand signals in recent months and he still communicates very well with us.

There is much in this new world that concerns me and I know I am not alone with this view. But the rewards of reading the thoughts of others right across the world are wonderful beyond measure.

Here’s a tiny dip into some fascinating items and articles that have graced my in-box in just the last twenty-four hours.

  • Eckhart Tolle’s Moment Reminder: “As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”
  • Val Boyco, “Everything comes to us that belongs to us, if we create the capacity to receive it.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore
  • John Zande in his Sketches on Atheism, “Theism’s most potent, pervasive, irresistibly enchanting gift to frightened but otherwise sane individuals is a belief—a promise—that upon their death they will go home.”
  • Mother Nature Network, “7 ways to meditate while you move – If you don’t have time for sitting meditation, give one of these active meditations a try.”
  • George Monbiot, (on the UK floods), “These floods were not just predictable. They were predicted. There were clear and specific warnings that the management of land upstream of the towns now featuring in the news would lead to disaster.”

and my final selection:

  • Patrice Ayme: (from an essay on Brain & Consciousness) “The best microprocessors you can buy in a store now can do 10 to the power 11 (10^11; one hundred billions) operations per second and use a few hundred watts,” says Wilfred van der Wiel of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, a leader of the gold circuitry effort. “The human brain can do orders of magnitude more and uses only 10 to 20 watts.  That’s a huge gap in efficiency.”

So here’s to a new year of wonderful new learnings.  And let me leave you with this additional message for 2016.

Namely that The Nation weekly journal are celebrating their 150 years of publishing the magazine. They recently published a 150th Anniversary edition and the front editorial is written by Katrina Vanden Heuval. There is a ‘break out’ to one side on Page 2 of that editorial that reads:

Change is inevitable, but the one constant in The Nation‘s history has been a faith in what can happen if you tell people the truth.

Finding out the truth and sharing it so we can all see what can happen is my wish for 2016.

Happy New Year to all of you, and to all of your friends and loved ones.

The power of the present moment.

A reminder of the beauty of the present moment.

Yesterday, I wrote a post I cry for the wolves. A comment from Jeremy Nathan Marks included this:

I have learned slowly that being an adult means learning to face and acknowledge the many horrors of our world. It also means -for me, anyway- recognizing that love is the one saving grace, the one remaining hope, the one promise that might be kept. And I mean love in the hear and now and not in any afterlife. Love is what animates beauty for me -a beauty that is about more than aesthetics.

Some people would perhaps think I am ridiculous for saying that I feel that wolves are my kin. But they are. To be kin doesn’t mean we have to think the same thoughts, speak the same spoken language, or even move through the world in precisely the same way. Being kin to me means that we recognize the life lived in one another. I see that life and its light and love in wolves, just as you have beautifully described. And I know people who have lived and worked with wolves have seen that mutuality in their encounters and interactions with wolves and their packs.

That is such a profound reflection.

Unwittingly, before I read that comment from Jeremy, I had added this comment:

Around 7am I went down to our pond just to enjoy the world Jean and I live in and there was a young deer grazing the field grass near the water. Slowly, I moved towards a bench seat by the edge of the pond and sat down. The deer strolled away, perhaps some 30 feet, and continued to graze. Thanks to Dordie and Bill this young, beautiful creature was perfectly comfortable with my presence.

I sat there and my mind wander back to some far-off time when a curious young wolf might have let curiousity compell it to come a little closer to a human, perhaps nibble at the bone that the human threw in its direction.

There’s a theme here.  “Love in the here and now ..” from Jeremy and me being lost watching that deer; the love of that moment.

A couple of evenings ago, Jean and I watched a truly wonderful and inspiring film.  The film was called What about me? 1 Giant Leap  The embedded link takes you to the website for the film.

Here’s the trailer.

Following the success of their first double Grammy nominated film & album, What About Me? is the latest offering from 1 Giant Leap. This visionary project took Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman to over 50 locations as they explore through music, the complexities of human nature on a global scale, and aims to reveal how we are all connected through our creativity and beliefs, but most of all through our madness.

Through music and film, “1 Giant Leap” explores the universal complexities of human nature. Jamie Catto (Faithless co-founder) and Duncan Bridgeman set out on their journey recording musical jewels and words of wisdom with the cream of the world’s thinkers, writers and entertainers along the way. The duo traveled to the farthest corners of the planet, to ensure immense cultural diversity in this time capsule of humanity at its most inspirational.

Covering universal topics such as God, Sex, Death and Money, What About Me? features an incredibly diverse collection of collaborators from Noam Chomsky to Will Young, Maxi Jazz to Tim Robbins, Billy Connolly to Michael Stipe, Eckhart Tolle to Baaba Mal, among many others.

Encompassing a TV series, film and album, this is a poignant, emotional and entertaining time capsule of humanity at its most inspirational.

I can’t recommend too strongly that you watch the full-length film – I doubt that you will watch it and remain unchanged.

Veritas Publishing

Note: the next 10 days are pretty challenging, in the most positive and beautiful way, as Jean and I are to be married at Payson Episcopal Church on Saturday afternoon and we have guests until the 29th.  There will always be a daily post from either me or Jon but do forgive us if they are not of the usual longer reflective style.

Dr. David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.

Both Jon and I have written about Dr Hawkins many times in Learning from Dogs.  But there is also a plethora of valuable material available from the organisation, Veritas Publishing, that is the wrapper, so to speak, around David Hawkins work.

His monthly newsletter is free and often very interesting.  For example, in the one that arrived today, there are a couple of extracts from his October lecture that resonate very closely with what Jon published about Eckhart Tolle the previous two days.

“The Self knows.  The mind thinks.  The thinking is just added as a thrill.  Thinking is a thrill and an entertainment.  Can you get along without thinking?  There is a chair.  I don’t think about the chair but I know it’s there.  Most of real knowingness goes on without thinking.  The animal knows without thinking.  It just knows right off the bat who is a friend and who is a burglar.”

“Make choices instead of craving and desire and clutching.  Choose to be happy instead of craving what you don’t have.  Give up all cravingness.  ‘I cannot be happy unless I get to do this or that.’  You are putting happiness as outside of yourself.  The source of happiness is within.  Winning $1 million does not make a big change in your life.  Surrender all cravings to God.”

And do watch this:

Finally, I have repeated a publication today of a post written about Truth published earlier on Learning from Dogs in September.  It has come out at the same time as this Post.

By Paul Handover

Eckhart Tolle postscript

That little more, as promised.

Yesterday, I wrote about Eckhart and included the extract on Manifestation.  Rather than cloud what was presented yesterday with more material, I held it over until today.

All I wanted to do was to draw your attention to Eckhart’s website, which is here – do spend some time going through what’s on offer – and I wanted to include this video of Eckhart speaking about Being Yourself.

But before you click the play button for the video, just listen to the words without having any reactions to how the words are presented, the accent of the speaker or anything else.  You’ll understand when the video starts running.  Just close your eyes and listen deeply to what is being said.

By Jon Lavin

Eckhart Tolle

On Stillness

One of the many lessons that we can learn from dogs is the ability to be still.  On the 2nd November, I wrote a

Eckhart Tolle

piece on Learning from Dogs about the critically important role of silence in our lives.

 

Eckhart Tolle is a very interesting person.  He had a challenging background but has used his life experiences to gain a much deeper awareness of the world.  Indeed, he measures around 600 on the Hawkin’s scale of consciousness.

Anyway, I reproduce in full an item from Tolle’s November Newsletter.  It is called Eckhart on Manifestation.

Often people ask questions about manifesting and the power of intention, and how that relates to the power of Now.  One person asked me about the difference between the continuous wanting that I write about in A New Earth and intention – the intention to create something.  What is the importance of manifesting things in your life, or creating, or is that counter-productive?

There are many exciting books these days about creating and manifesting: The Secret, the teachings of Abraham, and so on.  Often people ask, how does that relate to Stillness and inner peace?  And acceptance of what is? And surrender to the Present Moment? And living in alignment with Now?  Is there conflict, is one wrong?  Or misleading?

This is an important question for almost everybody.  Your own life is a microcosm of the macrocosm.  If you look at the Universe, the first thing you will see is that it likes to create, and it likes to manifest.  On this planet alone, the Universe is continuously creating and manifesting countless life forms.  And in outer space, we can only assume – we don’t know what exactly is there – but there is a vastness of life out there, and probably many more life forms than we have on this planet.  The life forms, both in the sea, and on land, including humans, they seem to enjoy a dance of coming into being and destruction.  It’s a transformational process.By just looking at life, you can see that the Universe loves to manifest.  Also it seems to be the case that life forms, over periods of time, become more differentiated.  Many more come.  And even human societies become more complex.  We have had ancient civilizations that were very complex, but our present civilization is the most complex.  This of course includes problem-ridden.  That goes with complexity.  Every individual who is part of this civilization has a life that is full of problems.  But complexity cannot go on forever.

The Universe likes to create, to manifest, to experience the play of form.  That’s one movement.  And you can see it in yourself, at some level.  There is something else in humans, you can only really see in yourself, an inner phenomenon.   The Universe wants not only to experience that manifested life, it also wants to experience peace and something that is not touched by the continuously fluctuating forms.  It wants to know itself deeply, directly, in its essence.   That really is the root of spirituality.  The Universe not only wants the outward movement, but it also wants the inward – the return movement to the One.  Every human being also embodies these two movements.  It seems that you are torn sometimes between the outward movement into form, and the inward return movement to the Source where it all started.  The Source that was never really lost, it is always there because it is timeless, and it is within you.  You feel drawn back to that, and that is the pull toward spirituality, peace, Stillness.

Not one or the other is right or wrong.  It’s only perhaps if you totally lose yourself in one or the other – maybe that’s not quite it.  Perhaps this is the challenge of the Universe here on this planet, and perhaps on other planets.  The challenge to reconcile the two movements, rather than to have them be separate.  Is it possible to reconcile the inner movement toward Stillness and Being, and the outer toward action, and doing?  I would say it is, and that is our challenge at this time.

Traditionally, it’s been very unconscious what humans have manifested in this world.  They have been identified with doing, and identified with form.  That has been going on for as long as anyone can remember – since recorded history and beyond.  And we call that ‘ego’.  The One consciousness that underlies everything moves into form, assumes forms, and enjoys the play of form but it’s not enough for the one consciousness to enjoy the play of form, it needs to completely believe in it to make it seem ‘real’.  You need to lose yourself in that dream of form.

Every human believes that they have a life of their own, and that means they are identified with the form of that life.  This particular physical body, this particular psychological life form, the accumulation of thoughts and the emotions that go with these thoughts; it all becomes part of that form-identity.

Consciousness is trapped, or believes itself to be trapped in that.  We could say that in that state, the Universe or Consciousness has entered a “dream-like” state.  It wants to do that, it must enjoy that dream, up to a point.  Consciousness has entered that “dream-like” state where it is completely identified with form.  It doesn’t realize that every other form is an aspect of itself.  Of course, then you are just an isolated entity.  It becomes quite unpleasant after a while.  So you have to get together with other entities and instead of having an “I” form, you have a “We” form, an “Us”.

For a while, the Universe seems to be okay with that, to have Consciousness identified completely with form.  Then the “movie” goes on.  Reading through history, you can see what happens when Consciousness is identified completely with form.  Then it comes time for another stage to arise, when Consciousness is beginning to awaken from complete identification with form.  This is beginning to happen at many stages, this is why human beings are drawn to spiritual teachings.  It is the awakening from the dream of form.

A little more about Eckhart tomorrow.

By Jon Lavin