The Seer

by Richard Rohr, OFM

“Although Eckhart Tolle is arousing great interest today, many think he is a novelty, New Age, or even non-religious. The process — and that is what it is — that he is teaching, can be traced through the Greek and Latin traditions of contemplation, the apophatic tradition in particular, and the long history of what was sometimes called “The Sacrament of the Present Moment” (Brother Lawrence, OCD, Francisco de Osuna, OFM, Jean Pierre de Caussade, S.J.).

Eckhart Tolle is teaching a form of natural mysticism or contemplative practice. He is NOT asking you to believe anythin. He is asking you to TRY something! You will know if it is true, if you try it, and you will not know if it is true or false, if you don’t try it. No point in arguing it theoretically or in the abstract.

For Tolle, Being, Consciousness, God, Reality are all the same thing, which is not all bad, when you come to think of it. Of course, his very point is that you cannot think of it at all, you can only realize it. I would not call him pantheistic (all things are God) as much as panentheistic (God is IN all things).

I must join with Paul who in preaching to the secular Athenians, said “God is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live, and move, and have our very being.” (Acts 17:28). That is an excellent foundation for trusting Tolle’s natural mysticism. We are also preaching to a largely secular world, and must find a language that they can understand and draw from, as Paul did, and not insist that they learn our vocabulary before we can even talk to them or hear them. “How else can we ever be ?all things to all people.” (1 Corinthians 9:22) or dare to think that we can “preach the Gospel to all creation.” (Mark 16:16):”

~ To read Rohr’s complete article, >>>Click Here,

You can also hear Eckhart Tolle in a rare, recent interview on Namaste Radio. Some of the topics Eckhart discusses include: the current state of the world, living in the Now, how to raise present-minded children, sex and the pain body, what it takes to be a great leader and more. To listen, just >>>Click Here.

Question: How long does it take to become free of the pain-body?

Eckhart: It depends both on the density of an individual’s pain-body as well as the degree or intensity of that individual’s arising Presence. But it is not the pain-body, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. It is not the pain-body but identification with the pain-body that forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness.

So a more important question to ask would be this: “How long does it take to become free of identification with the pain-body?” And the answer to that question: It takes no time at all. When the pain-body is activated, know that what you are feeling is the pain-body in you. This knowing is all that is needed to break your identification with it. And when identification with it ceases, the transmutation begins.

The knowing prevents the old emotion from rising up in your head and taking over not only the internal dialogue, but also your actions as well as interactions with other people. This mean the pain-body cannot use you anymore and renew itself through you. The old emotion may then still live in you for a while and come up periodically. It may also still occasionally trick you into identifying with it again and thus obscure the knowing, but not for long.

Not projecting the old emotion into situations means facing it directly within yourself. It may not be pleasant, but it won’t kill you. Your Presence is more than capable of containing it. The emotion is not who you are.

When you feel the pain-body, don’t fall into the error of thinking there is something wrong with you. Making yourself into a problem – the ego loves that. The knowing needs to be followed by accepting. Anything else will obscure it again.

Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.

Jesus points to this when he says, “Be ye whole, even as your Father in Heaven is whole.” The New Testament’s “Be ye perfect” is a mistranslation of he original Greek word, which means whole. This is to say, you don’t need to become whole, but be what you already are – with or without the pain-body.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

Question: How do I maintain a sense of presence when I’m in the company of another person? How do I bring presence into conversation?

Eckhart: It’s not easy. The moment you start talking, the two minds come together and so they strengthen each other. A flow starts, a stream of thought. A moment ago you were present, and then somebody starts talking. What applies here is the loss of space during the conversation. Both participants of the conversation have lost any sense of space.

There are only the words, the mind, the verbalization, the stream of thinking that becomes sounds. They are taken over by that. It has its own momentum — almost a little entity, a stream, that doesn’t want to end. Often, it generates emotions in the body. That strengthens it, amplifies it.

If the mental stream triggers emotions, which it often does, especially when talking about other people, what they did, failed to do, did to you, did to others, criticisms, gossip, all kinds of emotional [things], the ego comes in. When you can criticize another, the ego feels a little bit stronger. By diminishing another, in the delusional system of the ego, you have enhanced your own self-image a little bit. Any criticism of another is a part of that energy stream.

And then emotions come, and they amplify the thoughts. It’s the loss of space.For you to regain space, without saying “I’m not talking anymore”, one thing is necessary for you — which is the realization that you’ve lost space. Without that, there’s nothing you can do — when you’re so taken over by a stream of thought, that you don’t even know you’ve been taken over by a stream of thought — there’s nothing you can do.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do”. They are unconscious. They are the stream of thought. And as the stream of thought, you don’t want it to end — because you don’t want your own end. Every entity wants to remain in form for as long as possible.If there’s the slightest realization that you’ve lost space, at that moment you have a choice.

What is your choice? Your choice is to bring some presence, some space, into the stream of thought. But how do you do that? It’s coming at you not only from within your own mind, but it’s coming at you from the other person too. The awareness is there, and it may only last three seconds, and then it’s gone again. So you have to use those two or three seconds, where you realize the loss of space, and do something in that space where you have some freedom to act.

By a conscious choice, you take your attention out of thinking — but you have to anchor it somewhere else, otherwise it won’t work. So you choose your breath, or your body, or some other sense perception around you that you become aware of. When you are actually talking to another person, it’s probably easiest to either use your breath or your inner body.

Practice this beforehand, when conditions are easier, so that you can do it once it’s necessary. Go into your inner body, feel that your energy field is alive. And you’ll notice, you’re not thinking anymore. You can still listen. The amazing thing is that you can listen to another person, without thinking, easily, beautifully. You are listening, but part of your attention is on your energy field — so you’ve taken attention away from your thoughts.

There is a sense of aliveness in the background. It’s ultimately formless; it’s already the doorway into the formless. Feel that while you sit there and listen, and you’ve stepped out of the stream of thinking. Then, the quality of the interaction immediately changes. The other person may not consciously notice what’s happening, and may carry on for a while.

It also does not mean that you cannot respond anymore. But how you respond and the quality of your response changes, too. You are no longer contributing to the negative nature, which is often the case, in conversations. A certain amount of stillness, then, will also be a part of the words that you speak. It’s so subtle that the other person probably will not notice it, consciously.

So hang on to the inner body, let it be the anchor, and then you become present. If you lose it again, if the other person says something challenging, then after a little while you remember — and you go back into the inner body. That’s a powerful anchor, and then everything changes from there. It takes continuous practice.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

When the ego is at war, know that it is no more than an illusion that is fighting to survive. That illusion thinks it is you. It is not easy at first to be there as the witnessing Presence, especially when the ego is in survival mode or some emotional pattern from the past has become activated, but once you have had a taste of it, you will grow in Presence power, and the ego will lose its grip on you.

And so a power comes into your life that is far greater than the ego, greater than the mind. All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible.

Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. This is why we may also call it Presence. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose is to bring that power into this world. And this is also why becoming free of the ego cannot be made into a goal to be attained at some point in the future. Only Presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. only Presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of consciousness.

What is spiritual realization? The belief that you are spirit? No, that’s a thought. A little closer to the truth than the thought that believes you are who your birth certificate says you are, but still a thought. Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away.

The Buddha was probably the first human being to see this clearly, and so anata (no self) became one of the central points of his teaching. And when Jesus said, “Deny thyself,” what he meant was : Negate (and thus undo) the illusion of self. If the self – ego – were truly who I am, it would be absurd to “deny” it.

What remains is the light of consciousness in which perceptions, experiences, thoughts, and feelings come and go. That is Being, that is the deeper, true I. When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but only of relative importance. I honor it, but it loses its absolute seriousness, its heaviness.

The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times? To be more accurate, can I sense the I Am that I Am at this moment? Can I sense my essential identity as consciousness itself? Or am I losing myself in what happens, losing myself in the mind, in the world?

~ by Eckhart Tolle

“You are the light of the world. You are the consciousness that illuminates the world. Know yourself as that, and that’s freedom, liberation, awakening, the end of suffering and madness. And it’s happening right here.”

~ Eckhart Tolle

This story illustrates the uniquely human ability to cling to the past by holding on to our stories.

When two ducks get into a fight, it never lasts long — they soon separate and fly off in opposite directions. Each duck then flaps its wings vigorously several times. This releases the surplus energy that built up in him during the fight. After they flap their wings, they fly on peacefully as if nothing had ever happened.

Now, if the duck had a human mind, this scene would go very differently. The duck may fly away peacefully, for a moment, but he would not put the fight behind him. He would keep the fight alive in his mind, by thinking and story-making.

The duck’s story would probably go something like this: “I can’t believe what he just did. He came within five inches of me. He has no consideration for my private space. He thinks he owns this pond. I’ll never trust him again. I know he’s already plotting something else to annoy me with. But I’m not going to stand for it. I’m going to teach him a lesson he will never forget.”

And in this way the duck’s mind spins its tale, still thinking and talking about it, days, months, or even years later. He man never see his adversary again, but that doesn’t matter. The single incident has left its impression and now has a life of its own deep within the duck’s mind.

As far as his body is concerned, the fight is still continuing, and the energy his body generates in response to the imaginary fight is emotion, which in turn generates more thinking. This becomes the emotional thinking of the ego. The emotions feed the story and the story feeds the emotions. Endlessly. Unless the duck chooses to recognize that the fight is over, unless he drops the story, he will suffer from the endless cycle of his mind’s creation.

You can see how painful and troublesome the duck’s life would become if he had a human mind. But this is how most of us live all the time. For the average person, no situation or event is ever really over and done with. The mind and the mind-made story keep it going.

Unlike the duck, we are a species that has the power to remember, which is both wonderful and problematic.

Our duck has an important lesson to teach us and his message is this: Flap your wings, which means “let go of the story,” and live your real life — here and now, in the present moment.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

Your spiritual awakening is not only for yourself, it is a gift you give to humanity. For the first time ever in our history, humanity needs desperately to awaken. If this does not happen, we are at risk of losing the life we know, of becoming a race extinct.

The Earth is faced with a radical crisis of yet unknown proportions. Never before have we had the capacity to pollute our air, food and water. Never before have we been so heavily armed and angry that a single incident (of ego reactivity) can spawn an all-out decimation of our population, the human race and the great animal kingdom we share this planet with.

As with any radical crisis, we are faced with a monumental choice: we continue to live and behave along the old patterns — the very patterns that brought us to this point of crisis – or we recognize that we have outgrown the old ways and we must rise above the familiar and evolve. In the crisis we face in the world today, both individually and collectively, the bottom line truth is this: we must evolve or die. It is that simple.

The true culprit for the many difficult and life-threatening problems we face in the world and in our lives is the dysfunction of the egoic mind that is unique to human beings. We may be more evolved than the animals with whom we share this planet, but our use of our higher brain function is not keeping pace. We are growing technologically much more quickly than we are spiritually. This presents a dangerous situation. This situation has been cooking for about a hundred years and is now a pressure cooker that can blow at any time.

Don’t be fooled by the New Age and New Thought promises that we can visualize our way out of the crisis and create a new world with our thought and vision. Evolution is not this easy. The evolution that will save humanity is not about a new belief system, a new religion, a new mythology, nor in creative, ways of using the mind and its thought. The evolution that will save humanity will be the transcendence of thought altogether.

The transcendence of thought is nothing more than discovering and realizing a dimension within yourself that is beyond thought. It is the source of thought itself. It is the true higher mind. And we know this mind, we recognize and connect to it, by the simple act of Presence, Being, and settling into a heart-based consciousness.

Our evolution is a shift from identification with form and ideas (ego consciousness) to the increasing awareness of our own existential Being. This is the flowering of human consciousness, and it is happening now, for the first time in such large numbers of people. It is happening now because it is imperative.

Awakening is the most urgent need of humanity and it is the primary purpose in your life.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

Growth — whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual — is an unconscious process outside the realm of our own doing.

Our own birth and life was not of our own doing. We are given life – a physical body, a mind and a heart – and each of these grow in a mysterious way. As children we grow bigger and taller with each next year. We don’t know how or even when it is happening. It just happens. We don’t control the process. But we do influence it greatly.

Some children grow more strong and healthy than others. This is in part due to genetic inheritance. But it is also a measure of the quality of nourishment and care the child receives. Growth is influenced by the emotional environment in which the child is raised.

Medical researchers are discovering that growth is influenced by how much a child values himself or herself – or not. Children are capable of developing such a low sense of their own value that they do not care about their own welfare, health or happiness. These children will suffer from many internal mechanisms that limit or stunt their physical, emotional, mental and later their spiritual growth. The same is true for any person at any time in their life.

Growth is an act of grace bestowed by the evolutionary impulse that animates and enlivens all of life. The evolutionary impulse is an optimizing force. We attract this grace by creating favorable conditions to our growth. Another way of saying this is that we align ourselves with the evolutionary impulse.

Growth is what happens if you don’t do that which will hinder growth. You actually have to work against the evolutionary impulse in order not to grow. Unfortunately, many of us do. What are some of the hindrances to our growth?

* Negativity of any kind
* Negative friends
* Negative thoughts
* Negative actions
* Criticizing yourself or others
* Blaming yourself or others
* Indifference toward the well-being of yourself or others
* Laziness
* Feelings of worthlessness
* Incessant thinking, doubt or worry
* Fear of stillness and silence
* Medicating with alcohol, drugs or other addictive behaviors

Be honest with yourself as you re-read this list. There is at least one that will apply to you. The truth is, there will be more. But choose one, and for the next week, observe this barrier to growth with an interested curiosity. Look for it in your daily activity and in your inner mental activity. Don’t try to make it go away. Just allow it to be as you watch it and learn how it influences your life.

For the next week, give yourself the gift of practicing this exercise.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

The main aim of this teaching is to transcend the Ego, the Ego being a false sense of self, a false sense of identity.

Morality is important in many traditional teachings because those teachings have not gone beyond Ego, so they still function within the framework of the Ego.

If you live in a society that is inhabited by Egos, you need certain external rules of behavior and regulations so that there is not absolute chaos. What you need then is commandments, or laws that need to be in place so that the Ego does not create absolute chaos in the world.

The emphasis of this teaching is to transcend the Ego so that a different state of consciousness arises, we call it *presence*. Once this state of consciousness operates, external rules and regulations are not really needed anymore, because a knowing of what is right and wrong arises from within you, and you are no longer able to inflict suffering on others because the illusion of absolute separateness between who you are and who another human being is, has disappeared.

You’re no longer trapped in that illusion, so you know that ultimately, whatever you are doing to another, you are doing to yourself. Most importantly, there is love as the recognition of the other as yourself — the recognition of oneness. Once that is the basis of your life, you don’t need rules or regulations anymore because that arises directly and spontaneously from within you.

One could say that all you need to do is to be in that state of love, which is not conventional love, but the recognition of non-separation, recognition of the ultimate Oneness of all beings. Once that is there, then the right conduct flows naturally from within you. You don’t need to memorize the commandments anymore to tell you what’s right and wrong.

Once the Ego is transcended, morality emerges from within. Morality arises spontaneously as the effect of the inner transformation. The emphasis of this teaching is not on morality, but on something deeper, out of which true morality flows.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

Many people who choose to seek the spiritual path do so because they are, quite frankly, miserable. They have lived a life that lacks meaning, feels empty, is filled with reactivity, or perhaps is emotionally excruciating. Whether mild or severe, pain itself is the great motivator when it comes to choosing to grow psychologically and spiritually. And it can be said that this is one benefit that pain and suffering offer to human beings.

Emotional pain and psychological suffering often are felt as depression or unhappiness. It is human nature to desire happiness and a life that feels full, satisfying and alive. When there is a gap between that desire and the reality of our life, we may feel keenly interested in finding out what will bring us happiness.

There are two steps to becoming more happy.

First, we must understand why we are unhappy. In a nutshell, we are unhappy because we are trapped in the small, limited confines of our ego personality – identified with a false self that is not who we really are. The ego is endlessly preoccupied with past and future, which are also false realities in the sense that neither are ever happening NOW.

The less we are experiencing ourselves and life in the present moment, which is where reality exists, the more unreal and false our life is and the less happy we will be. Understanding this will begin to help liberate you from ego and its trappings and live increasingly in the aliveness of present moment.

The second approach to becoming more happy is contained in a little secret that is very simple and very potent. The great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti expressed this secret in a lecture he gave near the end of his life. He said to his audience, “Do you want to know my secret?… My secret is that I don’t mind what happens.”

Another way of saying this is …

* “I accept the present moment as it is.”
* “The present moment is my friend, not my enemy.”
* “I am in alignment with what is, as it is, in this moment.”
* “Whatever is happening in this moment is OK, neither good nor bad. It just is.”

The secret to happiness is letting go of judgment and resistance to the way things are. When we accept and align with what is, we are not resigning ourselves to a fate we may or may not like. We are empowering ourselves with peace, tranquility and a sense of clarity that will allow us to make wise, non-reactive choices about our conditions.

When we befriend the present moment with acceptance and non-resistance, we will feel more peaceful and be less torn by what we like and don’t like. To be more happy, make friends with what is.

Here’s a question to ask yourself regularly through your day:

“Am I making the present moment my friend or my enemy?”

~ by Eckhart Tolle