Read “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle.
I surely don’t buy all that spiritual level speculation, but there are still plenty of good ideas in the book. Here some excerpts (including some of the spiritual stuff which I find hard to agree with, and some observations which I do find good. Decide for yourself which parts to agree with…)
- …our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?
- … our state of consciousness creates our world…
- On our planet, the human ego represents the final stage of universal sleep, the identification of consciousness with form. It was a necessary stage in the evolution of consciousness.
- The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.
- The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.
- If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do – stop.
- You don’t have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need.
- Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.
- Here is a spiritual practice that will bring empowerment and creative expansion into your life…activities that you may consider uninteresting, boring, tedious, irritating, or stressful. But don’t include anything that you hate or detest doing… whenever you are engaged in those activities, let them be a vehicle for alertness. Be absolutely present in what you do and sense the alert, alive stillness within you in the background of the activity. You will soon find that what you do in such a state of heightened awareness, instead of being stressful, tedious, or irritating, is actually becoming enjoyable… This is finding the joy of Being in what you are doing.
- The ego’s wanting always tries to take from something or someone; enthusiasm gives out of its own abundance.
- Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all.
- At the core of all utopian visions lies one of the main structural dysfyunctions of the old consciousness: looking to the future for salvation. The only existence the future actually has is as a thought form in your mind, so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form, and that is ego.
- Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening. Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence.
- ”Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”… The meek are the egoless. They are those who have awakened to their essential true nature as consciousness and recognize that essence in all “others”, all life-forms. They live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the Source.
