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“Some people think it’s holding on
that makes one strong. Sometimes it’s letting go.”
- Sylvia Robinson.
The Power of Now
by Eckhart Tolle
(Hodder and Stoughton, London, U.K., 1999).
Freedom
from unhappiness
p. 64-65. Whether your thoughts and
emotions about this situation are justified or not makes no difference. The
fact is that you are resisting what is.
You are making the present moment into an enemy. You are creating unhappiness,
conflict between the inner and the outer...Either stop what you are doing,
speak to the person concerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the
negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no
purpose whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Recognising its
futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any
situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real
change. Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by
it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, any
negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a
physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent
negativity in others, unless they are immune - that is, highly conscious.
p.65-66. [Dropping negativity]: How
do you drop a piece of hot coal that you are holding in your hand? How do you
drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying? By recognising that
you don’t want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting
go of it. Deep unconsciousness, such as the pain-body, or some other deep pain,
such as the loss of a loved one, usually needs to be transmuted through
acceptance combined with the light of your presence - your sustained attention.
Many patterns in ordinary consciousness, on the other hand, can simply be dropped
once you know that you don’t want them and don’t need them anymore, once you
realise that you have a choice, that you are not just a bundle of conditioned
reflexes. All this implies that you are able to access the power of Now. Without
it, you have no choice.
p.67. When you have been practising
acceptance for a while, as you have, there comes a point when you need to go on
to the next stage, where those negative emotions are not created anymore.
p.68-69. To complain is always non-acceptance
of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you
complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your
power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary
or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
Ordinary
consciousness is always linked in some way with denial of the Now. The Now, of
course, also implies the here. Are you resisting you’re here and now? Some
people would always rather be somewhere else. Their ‘here’ is never good
enough. Through self-observation, find out if that is the case in your life.
Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find you’re here and now intolerable
and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the
situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility
for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose
now. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.
If
you take any action - leaving or changing your situation - drop the negativity
first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required
is more effective than action arising out of negativity.
Any
action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an
unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn
something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you
learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear,
watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts
the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the
Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.
If
there is truly nothing that you can do to change you’re here and now, and you
can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept you’re here and now
totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves
feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive.
This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in
it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender you will
be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes
without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.
Or
is there something that you ‘should’ be doing but are not doing it? Get up and
do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or
passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it.
Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you
will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner
conflict, no resistance, no negativity.
[Then again, as Jonathan Cainer once
told Sagittarians: “You’ll be amazed at how many of your worries start to fall
away once you have something to look forward to”].
“we, spirit beings, are here...
to accumulate wisdom through
lessons learned in this physical
body....
Creation is nice enough...
to SIMULATE situations...
for us to learn from.
nothing really happens to anyone...
we are ETERNAL...
this is ALL a simulation!
trust me, I’m not avoiding
anything...
simply because, in ‘reality’...
it is all a void!
once you come to ACCEPT
everything...
once you realise that this is ALL a
game...
the game will be over for you!
MEANING...
YOU, my friend, have ARRIVED!
blessing to all consciousness,
waid.”
(A
blog on www.myspace.com/waidsplace).
"Sometimes I lie awake at
night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is
going to take more than one night.'" - Charlie Brown.
Two cannibals are eating a clown.
One says to the other: 'Does this taste funny to you?'
"The greatness of a man's power
is the measure of his surrender." - William Booth (www.suffering.net/buildch.htm).
“The discipline of suffering, of
great suffering - do you not know that only this discipline has created all
enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which
cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its
inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting, and
exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity,
secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness - was it not granted to it through
suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?” (Beyond Good and Evil, translated by W. Kaufmann, Vintage, New York,
U.S., 1966).
“Only great pain is the ultimate
liberator of the spirit...I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better;’ but I know
that it makes us more profound.” (The Gay
Science, translated by W. Kaufmann, New York, Vintage, U.S., 1974).
We must strive to overcome
challenges and grow through pain to what we can be and ought to become - to
realise our full highest potential. However, it seems quite reasonable to me
that a person should wish
to end their suffering. It’s just a matter of choosing the best way and
therefore also a matter of awareness and that follows on from loving truth. At
the same time, grace (and even humour if we can stretch that far) is a useful
gift to give ourselves, born of wisdom and humility. After all, if we find
ourselves still stuck in the realm of physical limitation, it is the result of
the choices we made in other lifetimes. Clearly, in the long-run, it would have
been smarter to
have sacrificed our attachments sooner and turned towards God’s Light!
-
Paul Adkins.
“The true
test in life does not occur when all is going well. The true test takes place
when we are faced with challenges.” - Catherine Pulsifer.
“I work
really hard in life for one reason, so I never, ever have to be around the
people who would get on my nerves. And that is success to me, being able to
live your life so you just don’t ever come into contact with the people you
hate. And I almost never do anymore. So I guess that means I’m successful.” -
John Waters.
“Accept
life as it comes and you will find it a blessing.” - Nisargadatta Maharaj (I Am That, chapter 95).
“Man suffers only because he takes
seriously what the gods made for fun.” – Alan Watts.
“Shall I
tell you what I find
most beautiful about you [human beings]? You are at your very best when things
are at their worst.” - An alien (played by Jeff Bridges) in Starman (directed by John Carpenter,
1984).
"You
can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humour in
anything, even poverty, you can survive it." - Bill Cosby.
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