Monday, March 21, 2011

Day #78

Today’s favourite poses: Child's pose, and that's all your getting

Minutes with a relatively quiet mind: -56

Today’s interesting/thought provoking reading: (Taken from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle)

Although this in no way affects my belief in/about God, I’m trying to be more open-minded spiritually. Just as there are aspects of Christianity that I don’t agree with, there are some new-age theories that also make me sceptical. In both instances, extremes, (fundamentalists) or completely going over the top (such as making proclamations that we are all caught in a hologram like flies in a web waiting for an alien being to come and destroy/rescue us) completely insults my sensibilities. But in the interest of expanding my horizons, I have been looking for the deeper meaning of things while trying to weed out the flakes and the fake prophets and ill-intentioned charlatans. Basically, I pick and choose what seems plausible, uplifting, inspiring, and non-harmful (steering clear of anything that denies God’s existence as that is not in line with my personal belief system). I find many of the eastern faiths/traditions usually meet these criteria.

Perhaps my biggest struggle though, has been trying to sort out how the eastern philosophers state that our “thoughts mean absolutely nothing”, while some of the new age thinkers state that our thoughts are so powerful we can “create and change the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.”??? While I’ve always believed in the power of positive thought, this contradiction seems beyond me. How can something that means “nothing”, be so pervasive and formidable?? And how can we as a species even survive if we cannot rely on our thoughts?!!

Descartes’s “Cogito ergo sum” has always made a lot of sense to me, but so far, the overthinking I do (especially on things that are completely beyond my realm/grasp, which is quite a lot), has gotten me into nothing but trouble. It certainly hasn’t added to the quality of my life (who can lead a peaceful existence when you are so sleep deprived from the anxiety developed from not being able to turn those annoying thoughts off?!)

Besides the world's greatest guru (Erik), I think Eckhart Tolle came up with the best explanation for me as to why our thoughts are so ‘unimportant/unreliable’:

Identification with your mind, which cause thought to become compulsive is the greatest obstacle to experiencing reality. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering.

The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement “I think, therefore I am”. He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, live in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being “at one” and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested – at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering, and continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgements, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and GOD.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly, you don’t use it at all. It uses YOU. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken over you. ……The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.

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