Posted by: "Aquarius Blue" aquarius_bl@yahoo.com aquarius_bl
Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:21 am (PST)
Eckhart Tolle: On Awakening from "The New Earth"
Sat Jan 13, 2007
Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness
separate. For most people it is not an event but a process they undergo.
Even those rare beings who experience a sudden, dramatic, and seemingly
irreversible awakening will still go through a process in which the new
state of consciousness gradually flows into and transforms everything they
do and so becomes integrated into their lives. Instead of being lost in your
thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind
it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes
possession of you and runs your life. Awareness takes over from thinking.
Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of
awareness. Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence.
Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought.
The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace. You cannot make
it happen nor can you prepare yourself for it or accumulate credits toward
it. There isn´t a tidy sequence of logical steps that leads toward it,
although the mind would love that. You don´t have to become worthy first. It
may come to the sinner before it comes to the saint, but not necessarily.
That´s why Jesus associated with all kinds of people, not just the
respectable ones. There is nothing you can do about wakening. Whatever you
do will be the ego trying to add awakening or enlightenment to itself as its
most prized possession and thereby making itself more important and bigger.
Instead of awakening, you add the concept of awakening to your mind, or the
mental image of what an awakened or enlightened person is like, and then try
to live up to that image. Living up to an image that you have of yourself or
that other people have of you is inauthentic living -- another unconscious
role the ego plays. So if there is nothing you can do about awakening, if it
has either already happened or not yet happened, how can it be the primary
purpose of your life? Does not purpose imply that you can do something about
it?
Only the first awakening, the first glimpse of consciousness without
thought, happens by grace, without any doing on your part. If you find this
book incomprehensible or meaningless, it has not yet happened to you. If
something within you responds to it, however, if you somehow recognize the
truth in it, it means the process of awakening has begun. Once it has done
so, it cannot be reversed, although it can be delayed by the ego. For some
people, the reading of this book will initiate the awakening process. For
others, the function of this book is to help them recognize that they have
already begun to awaken and to intensify and accelerate the process. Another
function of this book is to help people recognize the ego within them
whenever it tries to regain control and obscure the arising awareness. For
some, the awakening happens as they suddenly become aware of the kinds of
thoughts they habitually think, especially persistent negative thoughts that
they may have been identified with all of their lives. Suddenly there is an
awareness that is aware of thought but is not part of it.
What is the relationship between awareness and thinking? Awareness is the
space in which thoughts exist when that space has become conscious of
itself. Once you have had a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it
firsthand. It is no longer just a concept in your mind. You can then make a
conscious choice to be present rather than to indulge in useless thinking.
You can invite Presence into your life, that is to say, make space. With the
grace of awakening comes responsibility. You can either try to go on as if
nothing has happened, or you can see its significance and recognize the
arising of awareness as the most important thing that can happen to you.
Opening yourself to the emerging consciousness and bringing its light into
this world then becomes the primary purpose of your life.
"I want to know the mind of God," Einstein said. "The rest are details."
What is the mind of God? Consciousness. What does it mean to know the mind
of God? To be aware. What are the details? Your outer purpose, and whatever
happens outwardly. So while you are perhaps still waiting for something
significant to happen in your life, you may not realize that the most
significant thing that can happen to a human being has already happened
within you: the beginning of the separation process of thinking and
awareness. Many people who are going through the early stages of the
awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What
drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our
civilization so clearly, they may feel somewhat alienated from the culture
around them. Some feel that they inhabit a no-man´s-land between two worlds.
They are no longer run by the ego, yet the arising awareness has not yet
become fully integrated into their lives. Inner and outer purpose have not
merged.
~ Eckhart Tolle, from A New Earth - pages 259-262
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