The line in
the movie, “The Best Man,” in regards to Harper’s book, 'Unfinished Business' (the main character's name was Harper Stewart, played by Taye Diggs), his friend, Quentin (Terrence Howard) simply stated, “I read your book, the book is ‘like that’.” The phrase ‘like that’ is a
colloquialism which equates to, ‘it’s a very good book. “A New Earth” is ‘like
that’ and hard to put down.
The [brackets] are the words of taskeinc.
Excerpts from “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” by Eckhart Tolle
The [brackets] are the words of taskeinc.
Excerpts from “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” by Eckhart Tolle
Spirituality and Religion
p. 15
Religions,
to a large extent, [have become] divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead
of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the
fundamental oneness of all life, [religion] has brought more violence and
hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions
and even within the same religion. Religion has become ideologies, belief
systems people identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of
self. Through [religious beliefs], people make themselves “right” and others “wrong”
and thus define their identity through their enemies, the “others,” the “nonbelievers”
or “wrong believers” who not infrequently see justification in killing [in the
name of their god]. The eternal, the infinite, and un-nameable [has been] reduced
to a mental idol that you have to believe in and worship as “my god” or “our
god.”
p. 17
Many people
are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They
realize that having a belief system – a set of thoughts that you regard as the
absolute truth – does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those
beliefs [are]. In fact, the more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your
identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within
yourself. Many “religious” people are stuck at that level. They equate truth
with thought, and as they are completely identified with thought (their mind),
they claim to be in sole possession of the truth in an unconscious attempt to
protect their identity. They don’t realize the limitation of thought. Unless
you believe (think) exactly as they do, you are wrong in their eyes, and in the
not-too-distant past, they would have felt justified in killing you for that.
And some still, even now.
How
spiritual you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do
with your state of consciousness. This, in turn, determines how you act in the
world and interact with others.
p. 19
Some
churches, sects, cults, or religious movements are basically collective egoic
entities, as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of
any political ideology that is closed to any alternative interpretation of
reality.
p. 19 and 20
- The Urgency of Transformation
[Awakening]
When faced
with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting
with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when
survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual
life-form – or a species – will either die or become extinct or rise above the
limitation of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
A
significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they
haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve
or die.
If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils; the same dysfunction.
If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils; the same dysfunction.
p. 31
Thinking
without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.
p. 33 – Content and Structure of the Ego
The egoic
mind is completely conditioned by the past. The content you identify with is
conditioned by your environment, your upbringing, and surrounding culture.
p. 41
Life will
give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your
consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is
the experience you are having at this moment.
p. 42 - The Illusion of Ownership
In the days
of the white settlement, the natives of North America found ownership of land
an incomprehensible concept. And so they lost it when the Europeans made them
sign pieces of paper that were equally incomprehensible to them. They felt they
belonged to the land, but the land did not belong to them.
p. 46
Some egos
know what they want and pursue their aim with grim and ruthless determination –
Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, to give just a few larger-than-life examples. The
energy behind their wanting, however, creates an opposing energy of equal
intensity that in the end leads to their downfall.
When forms
around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed
from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in
matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive
Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identification. You realize your
true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had
identified with. That’s the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are id
not I am this or I am that, but I Am.
p. 69 – Truth: Relative or Absolute?
Beyond the
realm of simple and verifiable facts, the certainty that “I am right and you
are wrong” is a dangerous thing in personal relationships as well as in
interactions between nations, tribes, religions, and so on.
The history
of Christianity is, of course, a prime example of how the belief that you are
in sole possession of the truth, that is to say, right, can corrupt your
actions and behavior to the point of insanity. For centuries, torturing and
burning people alive if their opinion diverged even in the slightest from
Church doctrine or narrow interpretations of scripture (the “Truth”) was
considered right because the victims were “wrong.” They were so wrong that they
needed to be killed. The Truth was considered more important that human life.
And what was the Truth? A story you had to believe in; which means, a bundle of
thoughts… If you believe only your religion is the Truth, you are using it in
the service of the ego. Used in such a way, religion becomes ideology and
creates an illusory sense of superiority as well as division and conflict
between people… Laws, commandments, rules, and regulations are necessary for
those who are cut off from who they are, the Truth within.
p. 74 – War is a Mindset
These days
you frequently hear the expression “the war against” this or that, and whenever
I hear it, I know that it is condemned to failure. There is the war against
drugs, the war against crime, the war against terrorism, the war against
cancer, the war against poverty, and so one. For example, despite the war
against crime and drugs, there has been a dramatic increase in crime and drug-related
offenses in the page twenty-five years. The prison population of the United
States has gone up from just under 300,000 in 1980 to a staggering 2.1 million
in 2004. The war against disease has given us, amongst other things,
antibiotics. At first, they were spectacularly successful, seemingly enabling
us to win the war against infectious diseases. Now, many experts agree that the
widespread and indiscriminate use of antibiotics has created a time bomb and
that antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, so-called super bugs, will in
all likelihood bring about a reemergence of those diseases and possibly
epidemics.
War is a
mind-set, and all action that comes out of such a mind-set will either
strengthen the enemy, the perceived evil, or, if the war is won, will create a
new enemy [which is what America continues to do, create new enemies from Bin
Laden to Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda to ISIS], a new evil equal to and often
worse than the one that was defeated.
p. 95 – Happiness as a Role vs. True Happiness
The primary
cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be
aware of the thoughts you are thinking… Awareness is the greatest agent for
change.
p. 106 – Giving Up Role-Playing
Most of the
people who are in positions of power in this world, such as politicians, TV
personalities, business as well as religious leaders, are completely identified
with their role, with few notable exceptions. They may be considered VIPs, but
they are no more than unconscious players in the egoic game, a game that looks
so important yet is ultimately devoid of true purpose. It is, in the words of
Shakespeare, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.”
p. 134 – Emotions and the Ego
What is a
negative emotion? An emotion that is toxic to the body and interferes with its
balance and harmonious functioning. Fear, anxiety, anger, bearing a grudge,
sadness, hatred or intense dislike, jealousy, envy – all disrupt the energy
flow through the body, affect the heart, the immune system, digestion,
production of hormones, and so on… Love, joy, and peace are aspects of your
true nature.
After two
ducks get into a fight, which never last long, they will separate and float off
in opposite directions. Then each duck will flap its wings vigorously a few
times, thus releasing the surplus energy that built up during the fight. After
they flap their wings, they float on peacefully, as if nothing had ever
happened.
If the duck
had a human mind, it would keep the fight alive by thinking, by story-making.
This would probably be the duck’s story: “I don’t believe what he just did. He
came within five inches of me. He thinks he owns this pond. He has no
consideration of my space. I’ll never trust him again. The mind continues to
spin its tales for days, months, or years later. As far as the body is
concerned, the fight is still continuing, and the energy it generates in
response to all those thoughts is emotion, which in turn generates more
thinking. This becomes the emotional thinking of the ego. You can see how
problematic the duck’s life would become if it has a human mind. This is how
most humans live all the time.
We are a
species that has lost its way. Everything natural, every flower or tree, and
every animal have important lessons to teach us if we would only stop, look,
and listen.
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