Topic: Tolle’s “A New Earth”

[Michael]

seems like a good spot to begin this discussion on the wisdom in Tolle's book.

I have a suggestion: how about people reading this book, place quotes that excite them here, and then we can unpack them, to see where they lead.

that way, some can read faster than others, while the others can participate in the highlights.

I'd like to kick off from a quote Luna gave elsewhere:

(I like this part also (pg. 69-70) ...)

Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that wants the negativity, that perceives it as pleasurable, or that believes it will get you what you want.  Otherwise, who would want to hang on to negativity, make themselves and others miserable, and create disease in the body?  So whenever there is negativity in you, if you can be Aware at that moment that there is something in you that takes pleasure in it or believes it has a useful purpose you are becoming aware of the ego directly.  The moment this happens, your identity has shifted from ego to awareness.  This means ego is shrinking and awareness is growing.

If in the midst of negativity you are able to realize "At this moment I am creating suffering for myself" it will be enough to raise you above the limitations of conditioned egoic states and reactions.  It will open up infinite possibilities which come to you when there is awareness - other vastly more intelligent ways of dealing with any situation.  You will be free to let go of your unhappiness the moment you recognize it as unintelligent.  Cleverness pursues its own little aims.  Intelligence sees larger whole in which all things are connected.  Cleverness is motivated by self-interest, and it is extremely short-sighted.  Most politicians and businesspeople are clever.  Very few intelligent.  Whatever is attained through cleverness is short-lived and always turns out to be eventually self-defeating.  Cleverness divides; intelligence unites.

I find myself in disagreement with him here - not his base statement:

Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that wants the negativity, that perceives it as pleasurable, or that believes it will get you what you want.

That has been painfully obvious to me for a very long time. It's the old comment. "What's in it for you?"

In my observations of people who fall for this recursive pattern - negativity in its forms of fear, complaining, worry, anger, antagonism and so forth - it is painfully obvious that they do actually enjoy it. On some level, in some form of inverse pleasure. I have come to the view long ago that that is an accurate insight.

I'm not speaking of two types of negativity - immediate (like when you drop a rock on your toe) or in cases of high pressure (like when the police are coming tomorrow to turf you out of your home).

What we are speaking of, is the habitual sliding into an identity posture of negative moods. Play the tape over and over of what so-and-so did to me, or what a nasty person so-and-so is, or how my life will be misery because of ...

There are so many good reasons today to be in some form of dispair, but good reasons are not the issue - it is the hanging on, that demonstrates a secret pleasure.

So, fine. I'm perfectly in agreement with Eckhart on that (BTW, does anyone know what his name was before he changed it to Eckhart?) What I'm not in agreement about is the simplicity of his answer.

I do admit that if I am the person caught in this mood trap, then for me,

If in the midst of negativity you are able to realize "At this moment I am creating suffering for myself" it will be enough to raise you above the limitations of conditioned egoic states and reactions.

there may be some truth.

And I agree:

The moment this happens, your identity has shifted from ego to awareness.

despite his inaccurate use of the term 'ego', nonetheless, I think we all know what he means - ie egotism.

The problem is that that shift is too temporary to change a life long pattern. It is a major starting step, the first time you realise it yourself, but woefully insufficient to turn the Queen Mary around.

It did happen that way for me, but I was never a negative mood person anyway, so I was only realising the correctness of my natural behaviour - bully for me.

However, in my experience, explaining this to another person who is the victim of such mood traps, has had absolutely no effect whatsoever on their habit. Even when they agree, and acknowledge it themselves, it makes no difference.

This is the point of the difference between Priests and Magicians, in the I Ching.

I did not understand why this was the case for a long time. Eventually I discovered two critical things:

Very very very very few people are internally constructed to have the power to utilise an idea in changing their behaviour. Only a tiny portion of humanity are so designed, that their mind can affect their 'horse'. For most people, behaviour is linked to body and emotion, not thought. Meaning they will change from repetitive action or from repetitive emotion. Not from thought alone (although I have watched with considerable interest the use of repetitive thought by some modern psychologists).

Secondly, and more importantly, what holds a person in this mood trap, is a special kind of force. They are powerless against this force.

I recall a potent dream in my twenties, about a friend who was in a pit - negativity of self-esteem and bulimia, very low as I saw her in the dream, although she put on a good front in daily life. What was pointed out to me clearly in the dream, was that making her aware of her problem, about this stuff that it was in her hands to be different etc, was resulting only in humiliation.

Ignorance of her real situation was all that was protecting her from suicide. She quite simply was completely powerless - it was a matter of shakti. She had none. The more people told her she could change herself, the more it compounded her depression - to be in such a powerless state was bad enough, but to know she had the key to change, and yet to be completely impotent to use it, could only cause utter despair.

It is not knowledge of our situation that transforms us, it is shakti - personal power. Only when we have the inner power to throw off our leech, can that knowledge be of assistance.

[Sky]

This has been something of my current interest in observing lately, in fact after being around so many people this summer Ive come to see it surrounding me so deeply that some part of me longs to escape to a remote wilderness.(ha.. yes even more remote then I am) Sounds bitter in ways doesnt it.. but I dont mean it to be bitter.. I just find this condition overwhelmingly dominate on a scale that it tips the earth.. the results of this are obvious. In some ways I feel as if I would be giving up on humanity all together so I take a long look in the direction of compassion and pray.. remaining among them yet always.. always! Alone.

Alone in a powerful way.

To 'see' this condition as the dominate energy around me in some ways also sparks my will like a tug of war game I know I win.

Michael, you mention personal power being the only movement that will remain. No amount of understanding or shift of perception will keep the footing in a new land. I have also learned this in the most intimate ways and found that the shift is one I can help with.. yet it becomes like a thread addiction to me, because it doesnt remain.. the results of this can become horrific for the other, when they realize the life line is theirs not mine.

I do think for a rare few the shift is enough to spark the will into movement of its own.. I havnt given up on the glimps but have learned the limits of that.

Ive also discovered in the face of such a condition the very idea of increasing their own personal power drives them further into their pool of glory. My coyote medicine has shown me how to approach in a very soft hidden way.. perhaps suggesting a project that would increase the light inside yet not be seen as 'self work'

Ive learned how to keep my footing balanced and strong in the face of this also.. not an easy task at first.. the first opening of letting go and its easy to be plunged so deeply in you forget your own sanity and take a good swim in the shit.

A result of emotional attachment (I have had many battles with my heart)

What to do.. what to do.. I ask for other suggestions when we find ourselves surrounded by such things in this world. In service of spirit.. is there more the coyote can do?

Stand tall and shine untouched as an example.. a positive reflection?

[DancingRain]

While I have yet to read this book, it's on my "list"  Along with a few others.

Michael you bring up an interesting topic, one that has almost been haunting my significant other.  And it is trying to teach me, I can feel that, but it's a lesson that seems as stubborn as the situation itself.

I just can't understand why the attachment to the negitave.  To me it seems like such a low vibration, that I can't understand how he'd want to be there all the time.  But when you mention that, in these types of situations, they don't have the personal power to shake off the leech, it rings with truth.

[littlefeather]

This has been something of my current interest in observing lately, in fact after being around so many people this summer Ive come to see it surrounding me so deeply that some part of me longs to escape to a remote wilderness.(ha.. yes even more remote then I am) Sounds bitter in ways doesnt it.. but I dont mean it to be bitter.. I just find this condition overwhelmingly dominate on a scale that it tips the earth.. the results of this are obvious. In some ways I feel as if I would be giving up on humanity all together so I take a long look in the direction of compassion and pray.. remaining among them yet always.. always! Alone.

Alone in a powerful way.

To 'see' this condition as the dominate energy around me in some ways also sparks my will like a tug of war game I know I win.

Michael, you mention personal power being the only movement that will remain. No amount of understanding or shift of perception will keep the footing in a new land. I have also learned this in the most intimate ways and found that the shift is one I can help with.. yet it becomes like a thread addiction to me, because it doesnt remain.. the results of this can become horrific for the other, when they realize the life line is theirs not mine.

I do think for a rare few the shift is enough to spark the will into movement of its own.. I havnt given up on the glimps but have learned the limits of that.

Ive also discovered in the face of such a condition the very idea of increasing their own personal power drives them further into their pool of glory. My coyote medicine has shown me how to approach in a very soft hidden way.. perhaps suggesting a project that would increase the light inside yet not be seen as 'self work'

Ive learned how to keep my footing balanced and strong in the face of this also.. not an easy task at first.. the first opening of letting go and its easy to be plunged so deeply in you forget your own sanity and take a good swim in the shit.

A result of emotional attachment (I have had many battles with my heart)

What to do.. what to do.. I ask for other suggestions when we find ourselves surrounded by such things in this world. In service of spirit.. is there more the coyote can do?

Stand tall and shine untouched as an example.. a positive reflection?

 

[≈*≈]

The problem is that that shift is too temporary to change a life long pattern. It is a major starting step, the first time you realise it yourself, but woefully insufficient to turn the Queen Mary around.

To me, this is the challenge.  For myself and in dealing with others.  Let's face it, we all here, I'm pretty sure, have experienced, glimpsed or held on to that moment ... that aha!  what the hell am I doing?  What is the solution ... There was always someone there "holding out their hands" to us, even if we didn't see them at the time.

What to do.. what to do.. I ask for other suggestions when we find ourselves surrounded by such things in this world. In service of spirit.. is there more the coyote can do?

Stand tall and shine untouched as an example.. a positive reflection?

Yes!  Because your shining is infectious and it spreads.  I've witnessed it with others who have no idea what "path" I'm on, or what philosophy I prescribed to.  It's true Presence of Being.  It has such a huge effect on others!

Yup - this is it in a nutshell, Michael.  In my own dealings with a former friend/associate who was on the path, a new term came into being.  Simply put:  negative pleasantries.  This friend had a good heart, was kind, generous, and had all the traits of what we traditionally refer to as "a good person", yet she had become so locked into the chains of her "negative pleasantries" that there was no turning her around.

The interesting thing is that she worked directly with Orlando for a period of about 5 years, and during that time she did come to see and realize that her negative pleasantries were essentially a habit - i.e., a program stuck in its own groove.  THAT seemed to be the key more than anything - and for about a good two years, she actually did turn herself around, lost her hypochondriac manifestations, became healthy and even happy.  The problem was MAINTENANCE!  Once that program of negative pleasantries sets in, it becomes much easier to simply *allow* for THAT, than to attempt to MAINTAIN a more "positive" life.  So in the long run, she dropped off of the path and went back to her woeful old self, but even THAT (which she called a "failure") seemed to hold some delight for her, as if she had proven herself right and she really was a "failure" after all.  Validation of her worst fears, in other words.

Now, after some years in between, she is leaning toward the path again, but I have no reason to think she has really changed - for precisely the reasons you mention.  Even though she reached that point which Tolle refers to as the shift from ego to awareness, she was never able to get a handle on maintaining that awareness at the level of do-ing, at the level of change.  So, I would simply say that awareness in this case isn't sufficient, but has to be carried further into the invocation of the will to actually move the assemblage point away from its habitual settling places - i.e., comfort zones.

Keep your hands out for your friend, Della ... it takes some longer than others.  If we become impatient with them, they sense this and fall back to old habits.

I read some of Tolle awhile back, and basically found him to be a bit too simplistic in his approach.  Some would say, "But it IS that simple."  Sure, on paper, it's very simple.  But in practice, it's a commitment that carries far more weight than even marriage - and very few people are capable of making that kind of commitment, even to themselves.

Therein lies the beauty ... Simplicity.  And your right, it's a huge commitment. Will everyone make it .... probably not, but I'm feeling more people than we may think, are ready. Planting a seed and nurturing it.  Some sprout up fast, some grow slowly, others wither and die.   

As with all things, of course, they key seems to reside in balance. 

Yes! ... the state of just Being ... no negative, no positive .... perfect balance.

Page 100:

PRESENCE
"A woman in her thirties came to see me. As she greeted me, I could sense
the pain behind her polite and superficial smile. She started telling me her
story, and within one second her smile changed into a grimace of pain. Then,
she began to sob uncontrollably. She said she felt lonely and unfulfilled.

There was much anger and sadness. As a child she had been abused by a
physically violent father. I saw quickly that her pain was not caused by her
present life circumstances but by an extraordinarily heavy pain-body. Her
pain-body had become the filter through which she viewed her life situation.

She was not yet able to see the link between the emotional pain and her
thoughts, being completely identified with both. She could not yet see that
she was feeding the pain-body with her thoughts. In other words, she lived
with the burden of a deeply unhappy self. At some level, however, she must
have realized that her pain originated within herself, that she was a burden to
herself. She was ready to awaken, and this is why she had come.

I directed the focus of her attention to what she was feeling inside her
body and asked her to sense the emotion directly, instead of through the filter
of her unhappy thoughts, her unhappy story. She said she had come
expecting me to show her the way out of her unhappiness, not into it.

Reluctantly, however, she did what I asked her to do. Tears were rolling
down her face, her whole body was shaking. “At this moment, this is what
you feel.” I said. “There is nothing you can do about the fact that at this
moment this is what you feel. Now, instead of wanting this moment to be
different from the way it is, which adds more pain to the pain that is already
there, is it possible for you to completely accept that this is what you feel
right now?”

She was quiet for a moment. Suddenly she looked impatient, as if she
was about to get up, and said angrily, “No, I don't want to accept this.” “Who
is speaking?” I asked her. “You or the unhappiness in you? Can you see that
your unhappiness about being unhappy is just another layer of unhappiness?”
She became quiet again. “I am not asking you to do anything. All I'm asking
is that you find out whether it is possible for you to allow those feelings to be
there. In other words, and this may sound strange, if you don't mind being
unhappy, what happens to the unhappiness? Don't you want to find out?”

She looked puzzled briefly, and after a minute or so of sitting silently,
I suddenly noticed a significant shift in her energy field. She said, “This is
weird. I 'm still unhappy, but now there is space around it. It seems to matter
less.” This was the first time I heard somebody put it like that: There is space
around my unhappiness. That space, of course, comes when there is inner
acceptance of whatever you are experiencing in the present moment.

I didn't say much else, allowing her to be with the experience. Later
she came to understand that the moment she stopped identifying with the
feeling, the old painful emotion that lived in her, the moment she put her
attention on it directly without trying to resist it, it could no longer control
her thinking and so become mixed up with a mentally constructed story
called “The Unhappy Me.” Another dimension had come into her life that
transcended her personal past – the dimension of Presence. Since you cannot
be unhappy without an unhappy story, this was the end of her unhappiness. It
was also the beginning of the end of her pain-body. Emotion in itself is not
unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness.

When our session came to an end, it was fulfilling to know that I had
just witnessed the arising of Presence in another human being. The very
reason for our existence in human form is to bring that dimension of
consciousness into this world. I had also witnessed a diminishment of the
pain-body, not through fighting it but through bringing th light of
consciousness to it.
 
A few minutes after my visitor left, a friend arrived to drop something
off. As soon as she came into the room she said, “What happened here? The
energy feels heavy and murky. It almost makes me feel sick. You need to
open the windows, burn some incense.” I explained that I had just witnessed
a major release in someone with a very dense pain-body and that what she
felt must be some of the energy that was released during our session. My
friend, however, didn't want to stay and listen. She wanted to get away as
soon as possible.
 
I opened the windows and went out to have dinner at a small Indian
restaurant nearby. What happened there was a clear, further confirmation of
what I already know: That on some level, all seemingly individual human
pan-bodies are connected. Although the form this particular confirmation
took did come as a shock."

[≈*≈]

I know I'm pulling from the latter part of the book, but these seem relevant to our conversation.  Hope y'all don't mind
Page 106:
"BREAKING IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PAIN-BODY
A person with a strong, active pain-body has a particular energy
emanation that other people perceive as extremely unpleasant. When they
meet a person, some people will immediately want to remove themselves or
reduce interaction with him or her to a minimum. They feel repulsed by the
person's energy field. Others will feel a wave of aggression toward this
person, and they will be rude or attack him or her verbally and in some
cases, even physically. This means there is something within them that
resonates with the other person's pain-body. What they react to so strongly is
also in them. It is their own pain-body.

Not surprisingly, people with heavy and frequently active pain-bodies
often find themselves in conflict situations. Sometimes, of course they
actively provoke them. But at other times, they may not actually do anything.
The negativity they emanate is enough to attract hostility and generate
conflict. It requires a high degree of Presence to avoid reacting when
confronted by someone with such an active pain-body. If you are able to stay
present, it sometimes happens that your Presence enables the other person to
disidentify from his or her own pain-body ad thus experience the miracle of
a sudden awakening. Although the awakening may be short-lived, the
awakening process will have become initiated.

One of the first such awakenings that I witnessed happened many
years ago. My doorbell rang close to eleven o'clock at night. My neighbor
Ethel's anxiety-laden voice came through the intercom. “We need to talk.
This is very important. Please let me in.” Ethel was middle-aged, intelligent,
and highly educated. She also had a strong ego and a heavy pain-body. She
escaped form Nazi Germany when she was an adolescent, and many of her
family members perished in the concentration camps.

Ethel sat down on my sofa, agitated, her hands trembling. She took
letters and documents out of the file she carried with her and spread them
out all over the sofa and floor. At once I had the strange sensation as if a
dimmer switch had turned the inside of my entire body to maximum power.
There was nothing to do other than remain open, alert, intensely present –
present with every cell of the body. I looked at her with no thought and no
judgment and listened in stillness without any mental commentary. A torrent
of words came out of her mouth. “They sent me another disturbing letter
today. They are conducting a vendetta against me. You must help. We need
to fight them together. Their crooked lawyers will stop at nothing. I will lose
my home. They are threatening me with dispossession.”

It transpired that she refused to pay the service charge because the
property managers had filed to carry out some repairs. They in turn
threatened to take her to court.

She talked for ten minutes or so. I sat, looked, and listened. Suddenly
she stopped talking, looked at the papers all around her as if she had just
woken up from a dream. She became calm and gentle. Her entire energy
filed changed. Then she looked at me and said, “This isn't important at all, is
it?” “No, it isn't,” I said. She sat quietly for a couple more minutes, then
picked up her papers and left. The next morning she stopped me in the street,
looking at me somewhat suspiciously. “What did you do to me? Last night
was the first night in years that I slept well. In fact, I slept like a baby.”

She believed I had “done something” to her, but I had done nothing.
Instead of asking what I had done to her, perhaps she should have asked
what I had not done. I had to reacted, not confirmed the reality of her story,
not fed her mind with more thought and her pain-body with more emotion. I
had allowed her to experience whatever she was experiencing at that
moment, and the power of allowing lies in non-interference, non-doing.

Being present is always infinitely more powerful than anything one could say
or do, although sometimes being present can give rise to words or actions.
What happened to her was not yet a permanent shift, but a glimpse of
what is possible, a glimpse of what was already within her. In Zen, such a
glimpse is called satori. Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out
of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the
body as emotion. It is the arising of inner spaciousness where before there
was the clutter of thought and the turmoil of emotion.

The thinking mind cannot understand Presence and so will often
misinterpret it. It will say that you are uncaring, distant, have no compassion,
are not relating. The truth is, you are relating but at a level deeper than
thought and emotion. In fact, at that level there is a true coming together, a
true joining that goes far beyond relating. In the stillness of Presence, you
can sense the formless essence in yourself and in the other as one. Knowing
the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion."

[Michael]

Thanks for those Luna.

I always have mixed feeling when I read this type of 'therapy'. I don't mean that word pejoratively - it is just a way to describe such interactions - I'm sure there is a better word.

On the one hand I am in admiration that in that case, that situation, that technique produced highly successful results. I really enjoy such stories. On the other hand, something niggles at me, that something is not right, yet I most often can't articulate to myself what that is.

His technique is well based. Essentially, to stop fighting against the emotions that are inflamed. I also agree with him about the thought process - I am constantly aware that by following the thought process, the argument, you tend to find yourself on a road to nowhere. The emotion is the key. The thought are only the latest frame work - people will rail against some person or thing that happened, but those things are simply the latest vehicle of a pain that lies much deeper, and has a completely different cause.

So if you or the person upset, keep going over the 'latest arguments' they never resolve the emotion.

The only way to respond, is for you the companion, or the upset one if you have the ability to do this, to pull out of the thread of 'objects' being thrown up - the thoughts, the latest 'trigger' of upset. Pull away and say, "there is a deeper cause for this pain - what is that?".

That is what he is calling Presence. It has a powerful effect. So he is asking the person to just be with their emotions, and not their thoughts. I agree, that is an excellent technique, and it can apply to much more than emotion.

We can take this a lot further, in the old form of healing - be it yourself or another you are healing. The method is to go to the source of the emotion. We begin with the current upset... stop and focus on the emotions... hold that and allow yourself to sink into it till you actually journey back in 'astral time' - till you find something buried that is like a thorn deep in the 'flesh' of your being - your endlessly mysterious being.

Then we respond to that thorn, which could be many different things. I call this 'hub' healing, but that's for another day.

So why do I feel not quite right about these stories?

I'm not sure. Perhaps it is because there is some evolution in me that has found this type of healing, no matter how dramatically effective some event appears, still doesn't heal the one most important thing.

The ideas he has given above in your quote - I say take them and work with them yourself. If you can apply this method yourself, in the midst of your own emotional turmoil, then you on the right track - you are going somewhere essential.

When it comes to others.... I personally have been with people who have had the most gobsmackingly life changing realisations, of not just themselves, their emotional causation, their unique being, but also of the universe. And yet they stepped off the path.

QS talks elsewhere about 'being' the path rather than 'being on' the path. This is very insightful, and accurate - when we are on the path, we are the path. Yet I still use this phrase, being on or off the path, because I have seen so many step off. The image of a train is so strong in my imagination, that I see some people at a crucial moment, take an irretrievable step.

So yes, healing in the way he describes is indeed a wonderful experience to be present at, to participate in, even when doing nothing.

I sometimes wonder, as Julie said last night, when we were talking about the sixties, and why so many people who had such intense experiences and such high ideal, at some point in the eighties, just gave it all up and went off to live very straight lives: she said she now feels they were never there. She only thought they were there with her, but actually they never were. They were only playing a game of youthful adventure, but it never meant much, no matter what fine words they read or sprouted.

Why should we 'put our hands' into anyone who is not going to stick to the path? Aren't we only switching light bulbs in the eyes of a phantom - always was a phantom and always will be one?

I don't know the answer to this, but I certainly know the question.

[Sky]

M;Why should we 'put our hands' into anyone who is not going to stick to the path? Aren't we only switching light bulbs in the eyes of a phantom - always was a phantom and always will be one?

I don't know the answer to this, but I certainly know the question.

[≈*≈]

When I keep my hands out, I Am All that I am.  I am an example.  People see this whether they are on a "path" or not. 

When I close them they turn into fists.

To me, it's all in the approach.

[littlefeather]

When I keep my hands out, I Am All that I am.  I am an example.  People see this whether they are on a "path" or not. 

When I close them they turn into fists.

To me, it's all in the approach.

Absolutely agree with you Luna.

It might be easier to give up, they had their chance, but for me, when I give, I also receive.

[Definitive Journey]

~

That is what he is calling Presence. It has a powerful effect. So he is asking the person to just be with their emotions, and not their thoughts. I agree, that is an excellent technique, and it can apply to much more than emotion.

Here's just a bit Tolle mentions concerning emotion.  He covers emotion quite extensively.

In addition to the movement of thought, although not entirely separate from it, there is another dimension to the ego: emotion. This is not to say that all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become “I.” 

The physical organism, your body, has its own intelligence, as does the organism of every other lifeform.  And that intelligence reacts to what your mind is saying, reacts to your thoughts. So emotion is the body's reaction to your mind. The body's intelligence is, of course, an inseparable part of universal intelligence, one of its countless manifestations. It gives temporary cohesion to the atoms and molecules that make up your physical organism. It is the organizing principle behind the workings of all the organs of the body,
the conversion of oxygen and food into energy, the heartbeat and circulation of he blood, the immune system that protects the body from invaders, the translation of sensory input into nerve impulses that are sent to the brain, decoded there, and reassembled into a coherent inner picture of outer reality.  All these, as well as thousands of others simultaneously occurring functions,
are coordinated perfectly by that intelligence. You don't run your body. The intelligence does. It also is in charge of the organism's responses to its environment.

Indirectly, an emotion can also be a response to an actual situation or event, but it will be a response to the event seen through the filter of a mental interpretation, the filter of thought, that is to say, through the mental concepts of good and bad, like and dislike, me and mine. For example, it is likely you won't feel any emotion when you are told that someone's car has been stolen, but when it is your car, you will probably feel upset. It is amazing how much emotion a little mental concept like “my” can generate.

Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if it were a reality. It doesn't know it is just a thought. To the body, a worrisome, fearful thought means “I am in danger,” and it responds accordingly, even though you may be lying in a warm and comfortable bed at night. The heart beats faster, muscles contract, breathing becomes rapid. There is a buildup of energy, but since the danger is only a mental fiction, the energy has no outlet. Part of it is fed back to the mind and generates even more anxious thought. The rest of the energy turns toxic and interferes with the harmonious functioning of the body.

z

[Michael]

Indirectly, an emotion can also be a response to an actual situation or event, but it will be a response to the event seen through the filter of a mental interpretation, the filter of thought, that is to say, through the mental concepts of good and bad, like and dislike, me and mine.

What he says here is an accurate description. However, I employ Gurdjieff's distinction, in which G calls this type of emotion, emotion associated with the mind centre. G has three main centres - the mind, the emotional, and the physical. But a component of each of these has a sub-area of the others.

So there is an emotional sub-area of the mind. That is what ET is referring to. The emotional sub-area of the mind is when our emotions are affected by our mental processes, in it's broad context. But these emotions are still connected to the emotional centre itself - ie they still draw their energy from the emotional centre.

This distinction is one of the easiest to see. There are times when the emotional centre activates outside our mental processes or stasis. These are very unusual experiences, and extremely powerful, when we feel emotion but have no thoughts connected to it - for no apparent reason we find ourselves in an emotional state.

We could also be experiencing emotion from it's sub-area of the body - when emotion arises directly from physical receptors, like when we feel highly pleasant emotion from lying in the sun on a balmy day. Immediately that may trigger an association in our mind, which in turn triggers an emotion from the mind centre.

It is not common to feel emotions arising spontaneously from the emotion centre itself, but when it happens, it has a strange consuming quality.

These distinctions are not just for mental gymnastics - they are first to aid observation. Watch what is happening in our being, so that we can pull out of our identification. It is also to assist in exercises and practices which develop each of these centres and sub-areas in turn.

What ET is describing is perhaps the most misused and addictive form of emotionality. Weird how out of control we are with our mental-emotions. He is right about the filtering. Every input is filtered by our tyrant - the mind. By which I mean the whole 'world' we know. And it is given free access to our power source, our emotional engine, to do with as it pleases.

By dropping out of the mental process, and sitting with the emotion, we are in fact stepping outside the tyrant's control, and we are left with the emotion. But we find that without the mental process, the emotion lacks purpose, because it does not spring from the emotional centre itself. It looks silly, without the tyrant's ploy. Thus it tends to drop away very quickly. Which happens anyway, and is why you observe people replaying the same thought threads over and over - they are trying to sustain the emotion with the mental trigger, by pulling it repeatedly until it has finally been drained.

But then we look for another mental trigger. Because we are addicted to these mind-emotions. In fact 99% of people live only to fire up these emotions. When they die off, we become bored.

[≈*≈]

Absolutely agree with you Luna.

It might be easier to give up, they had their chance, but for me, when I give, I also receive.

And to give/love unconditionally is to not expect anything in return.  There is no "giving up", no "they had their chance".  Those concepts don't exist.  It is what is.

Btw, while sitting on the patio this morning, I looked down and saw a little feather .. thanks for enjoying the beautiful a.m. with us  ... warm smiles.

[Definitive Journey]

~

Here's another section of the book that I enjoyed:

Tolle:
You may remember the paradox of time we mentioned earlier:  Whatever you do takes time, and yet it is always now. So while your inner purpose is to negate time, your outer purpose necessarily involves future and so could not exist without time. But it is always secondary. Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.

As you already know, your secondary or outer purpose lies within the dimension of time, while your main purpose is inseparable from the Now and therefore requires the negation of time. How are they reconciled? By realizing that your entire life journey ultimately consists of the step you are taking at this moment. There is always only this one step, and so you give it your fullest attention. This doesn't mean you don't know where you are going; it just means this step is primary, the destination secondary. And what you encounter at your destination once you get there depends on the quality of this one step. Another way of putting it: What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.

When we speak of the elimination of time, we are, of course, not referring to clock time, which is the use of time for practical purposes, such as making an appointment or planning a trip. It would be almost impossible to function in this world without clock time. What we are speaking of is the elimination of psychological time, which is the egoic mind's endless preoccupation with past and future and its unwillingness to be one with life by living in alignment with the inevitable ‘isness’ of the present moment.

Whenever a habitual 'no' to life turns into a 'yes', whenever you allow this moment to be as it is, you dissolve time as well as ego. For the ego to survive, it must make time – past and future – more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment except briefly just after it got what it wanted. But nothing can satisfy the ego for long. As long as it runs your life, there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.

z

[littlefeather]

And to give/love unconditionally is to not expect anything in return.  There is no "giving up", no "they had their chance".  Those concepts don't exist.  It is what is.

Btw, while sitting on the patio this morning, I looked down and saw a little feather .. thanks for enjoying the beautiful a.m. with us  ... warm smiles.