The Seer

The spiritual path is the search for truth. In truth there is Relative Truth and Ultimate Truth. Relative Truth is a moving target of increasing honesty with ourselves. Ultimate Truth is our deepest perception of the Present Moment.

The global controversy over Wiki-Leaks stems from the question of whether there are some things that everyone should know and other things that only a few should know.

Certainly we could all agree that to stop nuclear proliferation, the knowledge of how to manufacture nuclear weapons should be restricted.

Some world leaders feel that revealing state secrets on the Internet is tantamount to the Rosenbergs revealing US atomic secrets to the Russians after World War II.

What about the secrets of self-realization?

A lot of questions were asked about A New Earth. Who do we share it with? The answer pertaining to all spiritual transmissions is always that those who relate to the information will be informed and those who are not yet at a level to understand or appreciate the information will fear, disagree or ignore it.

Certainly evangelical religions may state that any religious conversion, even under the might of God’s “terrible swift sword”, is better than no conversion. After all, Osama Bin Laden told the U.S. there would be no attacks if America converted to Islam.

Will Wiki-Leaks change the international landscape or be forgotten like Y2K? This is the difference between Relative Truth and Ultimate Truth. The Wiki-Leaks story is important now in 2011, but ultimately the long term effect may have no impact on history.

In the meantime, each of us needs to return to the Present Moment. The gossip of the 24-hour news cycle is a meaningless Relative Truth, while the Ultimate Truth is always a breath away.

~ Eckhart Tole www.tolleteachings.com

Q: I’ve experienced Presence through music, and it’s a very profound sense of Grace that I feel … I am being ‘played’, in a sense I am an instrument. In a way, what we call instruments are voices. My question is about this connection to the Creative, and the artifacts that come. Does art and music inform the ego of Presence? How does one be part of that manifestation but not get too involved, to keep the distance, so one doesn’t become to obsessed with that process?

Eckhart: On the one hand, you have the creative process — music, or art. And then you have the finished product — the piece of music that is played, or the work of art that somebody contemplates. When you ask, “Can art or music inform the ego of Presence?” — the ego doesn’t know anything about Presence, so it can’t do that.

There needs to be some opening in the ego in order [for you] to be receptive to the power that is latent in music or art, that was created from that deep place. There’s a lot of music and art that’s not necessarily created from that deep place, but the ego is trying to be clever.

Let’s talk about some piece of music or work of art that comes out of connectedness with Stillness, or Presence. To some extent, the work of art or the piece of music still carries that energy field. It can put [a person] in touch with the deeper dimension within. But there’s a little bit of an opening is required. If there’s only the density of the ego, then the transformational possibilities of art or music are not realized.

A little opening is required in the viewer, or the listener, and then it can be quite a wonderful thing to listen to music or to contemplate a work of art. You can be transported, if only for a moment, into that alert stillness out of which it originally came. That’s a beautiful thing.

Another aspect is ‘losing oneself’ — going too deep, almost losing oneself in the ground out of which creativity comes. In the creative process, there’s always a balance that’s needed, so that you don’t lose yourself in Being. It could happen to an artist, it can happen to some people who awaken spiritually — they suddenly plunge so deeply into Being that they lose all interest in doing.

In a minor way, this happened to me, when I lost interest completely in ‘doing’ and drifted around for two years. It wasn’t a ‘problem’ to me, it was only a problem to people who were watching me, or who knew me. So there was a loss of balance for a while, but gradually the balance re-established itself.

I didn’t have a teacher, as such, so it turned out to be a natural process. As long as you go within, and give form to that which is resting in the formless, be used by it — so that through you it can come into this world of form. Don’t stay down there and lose yourself in it — that’s not necessary.

Music is a wonderful way of getting in touch with the stillness within. For the listener, it is important not to become dependent, however, on anything external to enter the state of Presence. Whereas music can be a help, there too needs to be a balance. If the only time you can become still is when you listen to a certain kind of music, then that’s not quite it, because you are depending on something external to get in touch with that.

Use it as a help, and this is the same as a spiritual teacher or spiritual teaching — it can be a great help to listen to a tape or see a video, but don’t become totally dependent on that. Every good spiritual teacher will tell you, when the time comes ‘enough is enough’. The true teacher is within you. What you see in me, that which you find so precious in me, must be in you — otherwise you wouldn’t see it.

A good teacher will always direct you back to yourself, and not foster any kind of dependency. Knowing what is a help, using it, but not becoming dependent. Eventually it is necessary for you to go there without any help. You can still appreciate teachers, and teachings. I love listening to other spiritual teachers if they come from a deep place, I have great joy, and I think “Wow, this is so wonderful”.

Or reading a spiritual book that comes from the deepest place — there’s still great joy in that. It has nothing to do with needing, it’s enjoying a slightly different expression of the same deep truth. It’s wonderful. Also, you can see it wherever it is — no matter in what form it is hiding. You can see the truth shining through wherever it is hiding.

~ Eckhart Tolle www.eckharttolle.com

Eckhart Tolle teaches, that people in the grip of the ‘pain-body’ …

* Can readily recognize the ‘pain-body’ in others, but rarely if ever in themselves.

* Find it very hard to imagine how hurtful their ‘pain-body’ behaviour can be to others.

* Find it very hard to acknowledge hurtful behaviour and say sorry to those they may have hurt

* Find it very difficult to communicate in specific terms any positive feelings they may have toward others.

* Pretend their hurtful behaviour never happened and suppose that if they forget about it, those they have hurt will too.

* Tend to take things terribly seriously most of the time.

* Can become free and happier by observing ‘pain-body’ when it arises and habitually identifying with their essential nature or selfhood.

~ Check out the new hardcover book: Peace in the Present Moment co-authored by Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. It has beautiful photography by Michele Penn and a foreword by Stephen Mitchell (another distinguished author and BK’s husband). Details at >>>Amazon.com.

Often people ask questions about manifesting and the power of intention, and how that relates to the power of Now. One person asked me about the difference between the continuous wanting that I write about in A New Earth and intention — the intention to create something. What is the importance of manifesting things in your life, or creating, or is that counter-productive?

There are many exciting books these days about creating and manifesting: ‘The Secret’, ‘the teachings of Abraham’, and so on. Often people ask, how does that relate to Stillness and inner peace? And acceptance of what is? And surrender to the Present Moment? And living in alignment with Now? Is there conflict, is one wrong … or misleading? This is an important question for almost everybody.

Your own life is a microcosm of the macrocosm. If you look at the Universe, the first thing you will see is that it likes to create, and it likes to manifest. On this planet alone, the Universe is continuously creating and manifesting countless life forms. The life forms, both in the sea, and on land, including humans, they seem to enjoy a dance of coming into being and destruction. It’s a transformational process. By just looking at life, you can see that the Universe loves to manifest.

Also it seems to be the case that life forms, over periods of time, become more differentiated. Many more come. And even human societies become more complex. We have had ancient civilizations that were very complex, but our present civilization is the most complex. It’s also the most problem-ridden. That goes with complexity.

Every individual who is part of this civilization has a life that is full of problems. But complexity cannot go on forever. The Universe likes to create, to manifest, to experience the play of form. That’s one movement. And you can see it in yourself, at some level. There is something else in humans, you can only really see in yourself, an inner phenomenon.

The Universe wants not only to experience that manifested life, it also wants to experience peace and something that is not touched by the continuously fluctuating forms. It wants to know itself deeply, directly, in its essence. That really is the root of spirituality. The Universe not only wants the outward movement, but it also wants the inward — the return movement to the One.

Every human being also embodies these two movements. It seems that you are torn sometimes between the outward movement into form, and the inward return movement to the Source where it all started. The Source that was never really lost, it is always there because it is timeless, and it is within you. You feel drawn back to that, and that is the pull toward spirituality, peace, Stillness.

Not one or the other is right or wrong. It’s only perhaps if you totally lose yourself in one or the other — maybe that’s not quite it. Perhaps this is the challenge of the Universe here on this planet, and perhaps on other planets. The challenge to reconcile the two movements, rather than to have them be separate. Is it possible to reconcile the inner movement toward Stillness and Being, and the outer toward action, and doing? I would say it is, and that is our challenge at this time.

Traditionally, it’s been very unconscious what humans have manifested in this world. They have been identified with doing, and identified with form. That has been going on for as long as anyone can remember — since recorded history and beyond. And we call that ‘ego’.

The One consciousness that underlies everything moves into form, assumes forms, and enjoys the play of form but it’s not enough for the one consciousness to enjoy the play of form, it needs to completely believe in it to make it seem ‘real’. You need to lose yourself in that dream of form.

Every human believes that they have a life of their own, and that means they are identified with the form of that life. This particular physical body, this particular psychological life form, the accumulation of thoughts and the emotions that go with these thoughts; it all becomes part of that form-identity. Consciousness is trapped, or believes itself to be trapped in that. We could say that in that state, the Universe or Consciousness has entered a ‘dream-like’ state. It wants to do that, it must enjoy that dream, up to a point.

Consciousness has entered that ‘dream-like’ state where it is completely identified with form. It doesn’t realize that every other form is an aspect of itself. Of course, then you are just an isolated entity. It becomes quite unpleasant after a while. So you have to get together with other entities and instead of having an ‘I’ form, you have a ‘We’ form, an ‘Us’. For a while, the Universe seems to be okay with that, to have Consciousness identified completely with form. Then the ‘movie’ goes on.

Reading through history, you can see what happens when Consciousness is identified completely with form. Then it comes time for another stage to arise, when Consciousness is beginning to awaken from complete identification with form. This is beginning to happen at many stages, this is why human beings are drawn to spiritual teachings. It is the awakening from the dream of form.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

As you may know by now, Pearl and I have had to curtail group gatherings at Gurukula pending our anticipated move to Melbourne, However, Martine Tiller is keen to continue the Eckhart Tolle and Adyashanti group gatherings in Perth and is presently looking for a suitable venue. At this stage, Martine is considering two get-togethers each month.

If you were a regular attender at Gurukula, you’ll remember the wonderful support given over the years by our dear friends, Noel and Marion. As they are no longer able to help in this way, Martine would like to hear from any who would be willing to assist her set up the room and help with the refreshments etc.

If you’d like to be a helper or just attend the ongoing Eckhart Tolle and/or Adyashanti DVD groups in Perth, please contact Martine on (08) 9444 5917 or via martinetiller@yahoo.com

The ‘Headless Way’ group will continue to meet once a month at Julie Hillin’s home. For details and to get on the group mailing list, contact Sam Blight on 0412 039 050.

Our house is still on market, though, unless we get an acceptable offer soon, we may withdraw it for a month or two till economic conitions improve. Please note, we will continue to offer counselling services until we actually move, but our bookstore has been suspended until further notice.

Thanks again for many wonderful expressions of love and appreciation we’ve received over the past six weeks … we will try to acknowledge all these individually in due course.

The recent rescue of the miners in Chile, broadcast live to over 1 billion people worldwide, had built in to it a sense of Presence. Perhaps that presence was transmitted by the Chilean President who looked deeply into the eyes of each miner as he emerged from deep inside the earth.

Or perhaps it was the way family members greeted these men who survived the longest underground entrapment from a mining accident that seemed so certain to take their lives. Or perhaps it was the collective energy of so many people all over the planet wishing and praying for the miners’ safety and then seeing these wishes come true as the best possible of all outcomes – every miner brought back alive and well.

Inside this Presence of Being lives other virtues like Cooperation, Compassion and the Brotherhood of Man. Deep inside this experience lives the teachings of Jesus beamed out to world from a country that is 70% Catholic. During this rescue mission, we truly saw one man being another brother’s keeper.

And the whole world watched, in unison. For 22 hours the world was joined in a shared, emotional moment of good will. Every viewer, onlooker, family member and rescue worker were participating in a New Earth moment. And the whole world watched.

In this New Earth moment, we became a planet and a people where care and consideration are resident dwellers of open and caring hearts; where the highest elected official of a country stands with his wife in parkas in the freezing cold all night to hold the space for safety and survival; and where each rescued miner is greeted like an equal by dignitaries and ordinary people alike.

We are capable of this kind of New Earth moment every day. It is the power of Now, fueled by genuine care and love for one another, infinite and all penetrating in every moment.

~ by Eckhart Tolle www.opraheckhart.com

Dear Raphael,

Thanks for clarifying your situation for me … I now have a better idea of where you are in your life-experience.

With regard to the feelings of depression etc. which have arisen in your awareness over the past eight years, I take it that you’ve been having some therapy or counselling for this condition and that this is helping you return to a more normal state of wellness. Is that so, or have you been following some form or ’self-healing’? If you feel comfortable about it, you may like to tell me something of how the improvement came about.

One important thing we all need to know is that inner peace does not come about as a result of thinking or because one ‘masters’ one’s thoughts etc. If that were so, only highly intelligent people would experience inner peace and content, but that is obviously not so.

Peace is lost the moment we resist the way things are. We either want something we don’t have, don’t want something we do have or pass judgement by convincing ourselves that things ’should’ be different to what they are.

So, the way to find inner peace is to be able to accept the way things are at any given moment. That doesn’t mean you can’t try to improve your situation if you feel it is a bad one, but at least you can say to yourself, “Well, this is the way things are right now … is there anything I can do about it?” And if there is, do it.

I and many thousands of others, many known to me personally, have found the writings of Eckhart Tolle very helpful and indeed, quite liberating, in getting free of mind-made suffering and finding lasting inner peace. Eckhart is not the only teacher sharing this timeless wisdom but he is one of the clearest.

I would strongly suggest that you persevere not only with his book, ‘The Power of Now’, but also that you get and read his second major book, ‘A New Earth’. Eckhart has read both these books onto CD disks and I’d recommend that you get hold of these if you can and listen to them. There’s something about Eckhart’s voice that helps the understanding of these life-changing teachings.

Whether you read or listen, do not try to ‘comprehend’ everything Eckhart is saying. Just pass over the bits you can’t grasp straight away, just as you would put aside a bit of tough gristle while eating an otherwise enjoyable and nutritious meal. I myself could not understand everything Eckhart said at the first reading, but later, as I reread his books, it all became wonderfully clear and freeing.

What Eckhart is trying to say about time is essentially this … instead of feeling regret or guilt about the past, and/or anxiety or dread about the future (psychological time), we can just focus on this present moment, or, if you like the Now, enjoy what it has to offer, or at the very least, make the best of whatever is happening for us.

Actually, he is trying to help us to see that we are really beings of pure consciousness or awareness, that can never become injured or ill. Illnesses can and do happen to our body and mind structures, but these are temporary episodes, and do not affect our true nature, which simply observes all these comings and goings in and around our person.

When we discover who we really are, instead of what we appear to be or other people tell us we are, then we find that we can find new and creative ways to manage the arising challenges of our unique life-experience. Healing happens naturally when we don’t fight with what is at any given time and simply allow it to be. It’s a bit like allowing a cloud to be a cloud and knowing that it will eventually pass … and maybe other clouds will appear etc. and so on.

All the great sages point to the truth that there is a great providence guiding our lives and that ultimately, we aren’t separate from it in any way. That’s why the saint, Julian of Norwich, was able to say with such confidence centuries ago: “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

So, Raphael, of course you have everything to look forward to, but don’t let that fact keep you from experiencing the wonder and richness of THIS moment, and the ‘next’ one, and etc. etc. etc.

“It is a sacred moment when there is a meeting beyond the person, beyond the personal sense of self. When there’s no thought as you look into the eyes of another person… through awareness not through thinking… and then the meeting is sacred because that meeting is the realization of not two, but one.”

~ Eckhart Tolle

BTW: In a Speaking of Faith radio show, host, Krista Tippett, interviews Eckhart and he shares his youthful experience of depression and despair — suffering that led him to his own spiritual breakthrough, and ultimately, freedom and peace of mind. He also explains his view of what he calls “the pain body” — the accumulated emotional pain that may influence us and our relationships in negative ways. And Tolle talks about spirit and God, and what those concepts mean to him.

Watching television is the favorite leisure activity or rather non-activity for millions of people around the world. The average American, by the time he is sixty years old, will have spent fifteen years staring at the TV screen. In many other countries the figures are similar.

Many people find watching TV “relaxing.” Observe yourself closely and you will find that the longer the screen remains the focus of your attention, the more your thought activity becomes suspended, and for long periods you are watching the talk show, game show, sitcom, or even commercials with almost no thought being generated by your mind. Not only do you not remember your problems anymore, but you become temporarily free of yourself – and what could be more relaxing than that?

So does TV watching create inner space? Does it cause you to be present? Unfortunately, it does not. When you are watching television, the tendency is for you to fall below thought, not rise above it. Television has this in common with alcohol and certain other drugs. While it provides some relief from your mind, you again pay a high price: loss of consciousness. Like those drugs, it too has a strong addictive quality.

One solution to this problem is to stop watching TV altogether. But this is not very likely. A more practical and realistic solution is to watch TV as consciously as possible. How do we do this?

Avoid watching programs and commercials that assault you with a rapid succession of images that change every two or three seconds or less. Excessive TV watching and those programs in particular are largely responsible for attention deficit disorder, a mental dysfunction now affecting millions of children worldwide. A short attention span makes all your perceptions and relationships shallow and unsatisfying. Whatever you do, whatever action you perform in that state, lacks quality, because quality requires attention.

Frequent and prolonged TV watching not only makes you unconscious, it also induces passivity and drains you of energy. Therefore, rather than watching at random, choose the programs you want to see. Whenever you remember to do so, feel the aliveness inside your body as you watch.

Alternatively, be aware of your breathing from time to time. Look away from the screen at regular intervals so that it does not completely take possession of your visual sense. Don’t turn up the volume any higher than necessary so that the TV doesn’t overwhelm you on the auditory level. Use the mute button during commercials. Make sure you don’t go to sleep immediately after switching off the set or, even worse, fall asleep with the set still on.

~ Eckhart Tolle

PS. In a recent radio show interview with Krista Tippett, Eckhart shares his youthful experience of depression and despair — suffering that led him to his own spiritual breakthrough, and ultimately, freedom and peace of mind. He also explicates his view of what he calls “the pain body” — the accumulated emotional pain that may influence us and our relationships in negative ways. And Eckhart talks about spirit and God, and what those concepts mean to him. To listen, >>>Click Here

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.