“When your attention moves into the Now, there is an alertness. It is as if you were waking up from a dream, the dream of thought, the dream of past and future. Such clarity, such simplicity. No room for problem-making.”– Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
Tag: Eckhart Tolle
The Game of Life: Who’s playing?
“True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such a way as if you had completely chosen whatever you feel or experience at this moment. This inner alignment with now is the end of suffering.”
—
“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do.”
—
“What you truly need may not be what you think you need.”
—
I never made any plans-
the Plan is there
and we can fit in
with joyous ease
and delightful uncertainty.
—
I like movies. A lot. Have you seen The Game? It’s way high on my list of favorites.
So, Michael Douglas’ character signs up to play a very mysterious game – there seem to be no rules, no boundaries and no objectives. Or, he is not told what the point is when he signs up to play.
The Game is different for each player, and the rules change continuously, depending on the player’s responses and reactions. Once a player has committed to the game, it does not stop… until… well, writing too much about it will spoil the effect for those of you who haven’t seen it :)
—
“Awakening is Truth-recognition. It is not an experience, state, or form of anything you can mentally know. The path of awakening involves finding false ideas, or lies, and seeing their falseness. When you see their falseness, you see truth. To find truth you have to be a detective. You have to notice that things don’t add up, like a bad alibi.”
–James Wood The Path of Awakening (2007) p. 2-3
Who’s playing? ;)
Have you met a teacher of spiritual awakening?
Have you met or studied in person with any of the teachers listed in the sidebar of the home page here? I would love to hear from you if you have!!
It is exciting to see ‘spiritual awakening’ become a more commonplace interest. Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle seem to be the most popular voices right now; they both present the teaching in a way that jives with living a typical modern life.
If you are familiar with Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle, probably you have wondered, as I have – what was it like to be with these teachers before they got famous? How did they teach before they were booking huge, sold-out venues? Who were their first students?
Perhaps our task of discernment is easier with teachers who already have an established following of relatively intelligent, ‘normal’ people (whatever that means :)
Perhaps it’s easier to recognize teachers who have published books and videos because we can digest the message from a distance. We can sit back, comfortable in our own homes, and run the material through our BS detectors. We can check to see if it’s the same message (different expression/terminology) given by the true teachers we already recognize. We can check to see if the inner teacher says, “yes!”
But before Eckhart Tolle wrote The Power of Now, and before Byron Katie wrote Loving What Is, I wonder… how did people respond to them? What was it like to be with them?
Here is a written interview in which Byron Katie talks about the early days after her ‘transition’. And a super fun video interview with Eckhart Tolle on Canadian TV show The Hour. In it, Eckhart talks about his childhood.
—————————–
I started a Twitter account today… let’s connect if you are there too!
Svaha 