Eckhart Tolle speaks of being with the 'suchness' of the moment, listening for the silence amidst the "noise", and experiencing consciousness as a result of doing so. In
Stillness Speaks, he writes...
"Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don't want to be where you are. Here, Now."
Dogmas - religious, political, scientific - arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of "I know."
Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas. It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.
What is this basic delusion? Identification with thought.
Spiritual awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.
The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp. When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.
The mind exists in a state of "not enough" and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied.
When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind's hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or - and this is not uncommon - transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for
more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting more food.
Or you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it, as it were. A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows, the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not.
You discover that a "bored person" is not who you are. Boredom is simply a conditioned energy movement within you. Neither are you an angry, sad, or fearful person. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not "yours," not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go.
Nothing that comes and goes is you.
"I am bored." Who knows this?
"I am angry." Who knows this?
You are the knowing, not the condition that is known."
I'm trying to laugh as I think back to my compulsive behaviour at Saturday evening's raw potluck. It was a test. Smile. Here's the recipe for our favourite salad dressing that we enjoyed over organic collards, mustard greens, red and green kale, dinosaur kale and leeks.
1 cup cold pressed oil (I used Sequel's Vega Oil Blend)
1/4 cup or less apple cider vinegar with 'mother'
1/2 cup or more freshly squeezed orange juice
2 Tablespoons or more organic Dijon mustard
1/2 cup or less yacon syrup, agave nectar or raw honey
freshly ground pepper
Last night, we watched Eckhart Tolle's new dvd entitled Finding Your Life's Purpose. We laughed and laughed...Eckhart was very funny. We wish that we could be in two places at once in order to hear Eckhart speak in Toronto at Roy Thompson Hall on January 30th(http://www.eckharttolle.com/eckharttolle-events2009). Kim Eng will conduct sessions on Saturday Janurary 31st at the Zen Buddhist Hall on College St. and Moni and Tomas of Vancouver will be doing workshops in Toronto on December 5, 6 & 7th (http://www.livingpresence.ca/schedule.html#toronto2).
