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

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

A: Thanks for your question. It’s one of the most common concerns raised about the teachings of non-duality.

While there is just one reality or one Being here, the manifestations and movements of that one Being are as diverse as can be. Oneness seems to love to appear and dance as many. And there are also many levels of truth that operate within this amazing dance of life.

So your question about murder and war can be answered at different levels, and all of the answers would have some relevance. At the most relative level, there is the definite appearance of free will. It’s important what we do, and if people made better choices, this would be wonderful for the world.

If we shift to a more absolute perspective, we can see that all action is purely an illusion created by our consciousness. No action has ever harmed consciousness, and so the appearances of murder and war are just that: an appearance.

But to be complete, we also can experience how both of these perspectives are true, and also experience a perspective that is in between these two extremes. It turns out that when someone directly experiences their true nature as empty spacious presence, this doesn’t necessarily lead to a disinterest in the appearances and illusions of this world. In fact, the recognition that there’s no one here and no individual doing anything most often leads to the experience and expression of a deep love for this world and all of the illusions in it.

If it’s just an illusion, then why bother with murder or war? If you and your actions are just an illusion, then the pain and fears of the illusory ego simply do not matter anymore. If we see through the illusions of our personal story, then there are no longer any motivations that would lead to murder or war.

In the absence of a personal self, we are not left with nothing. There are many deeper qualities of true nature that are revealed as the ego loosens it’s grip on us. And it is perhaps a surprise to find out that they are all positive qualities like love, joy, peace, clarity, strength, and wisdom. I say it is perhaps a surprise because of the psychological view that our unconscious is filled with all kinds of repressed negative emotions that must be contained.

And while there is also some truth to this perspective, the missing piece in much of psychology is that underneath even our darkest unconscious emotions are these essential qualities of our Being. It turns out that at the core, we are loving, joyful and divine. This is not something that you can grasp intellectually, but it is something that you can experience as your sense of self is weakened or dissolved by direct inquiry.

It’s possible to have a purely intellectual grasp of the concept that there is no individual doer, and that the world is just an illusion. And like any belief or concept, it can just be believed and identified with and lead to all kinds of distortions and justifications for terrible actions.

For examples, just examine the history of religious fundamentalism where teachings about peace and love have been used to justify hatred, murder and war. Even a belief in there being no doer can lead to this kind of fundamentalism if it is just a belief. But in the actual experience of the dissolving of an egoic sense of self, there is an opening to the deeper realities of our essential Being, and beyond that to the mystery at the core of Being which can not be described or defined.

The positive qualities at the core of our Being are strangely found to be nondual also. At that depth of experience, it is seen that there is only goodness and that there is no opposite thing called badness. This is the important discovery that counterbalances any tendency of the ego to form a belief about nonduality that denies the importance or value of the world and its beautiful illusions.

It’s this essential core of goodness that loves the world and everything in it, and so makes it extremely unlikely that someone resting in their deepest essence would ever act to harm another. In fact there is a natural arising of a compassion and appreciation for all of life.

The concept of nonduality is just that: a concept. As such it can be distorted and co-opted by the ego and the mind to justify anything. But the reality of our nondual nature is not a concept, and the direct experience of it is filled with peace, love and joy beyond anything we could have imagined.

But don’t take my word for any of this. See what you find when you inquire deeply into this question of who it is that acts in this world. Do you find a complete lack of any love and concern for the world when you experience a more open and complete sense of your true nature, or do you find that there is no limit to the love and compassion that can be found within the empty spaces of your soul?

~ by Nirmala

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

~ E James Rohn

It’s not — emphatically not — knowing all about Natureless Nature, or understanding it profoundly, or believing in it sincerely, or even feeling it acutely, but seeing it with such finality and such intimacy that we see this Absence which we are and are this Absence which we see. But alas, how liable even the most apt words are to complicate what is, after all, simplicity itself!

The awkward fact is that this Experience, which is none other than the substratum of all experience, is impossible to describe. It’s as ineffable and incommunicable as the redness of red or the sweetness of honey or the smell of wild violets. Try telling a man colour-blind from birth what purple is. Well, telling him about his Empty Core is even more futile.

Somehow you must get him to look in for himself at himself by himself instead of just out at you. Then and only then nothing could be easier or plainer, more blazingly self-evident to him, than his Nothingness, his disappearance in your favour.”

Intrigued? You can read more by Douglas on The Experience and the Meaning, HERE

BTW, you might like to see or page on Who is the Experiencer? by Tolle.

AND, Hagai Avisor recommends Daniel Kahneman on: The Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self.