Eckhart Tolle’s Findhorn Retreat Seminar Part 1 of 6: Have and Have Not
December 3, 2009 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
As many of you know, Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, has shaken me to the core and provided a new paradigm for my life. I recommend it to many of my patients who are seeking happiness but find that goal elusive. His short audiobook on a seminar he conducted in Scotland, entitled Findhorn Retreat, is also wondrously enlightening to those with an open heart and a receptive ear.
Tolle talks about how in life we are miserable because we are in need of having something only to find that when we attain it our happiness is equally as fleeting. It reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s famous quote: ”In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” How true. Tolle reveals how badly he wanted to excel in academics only to find when he attained those touted marks he was only happy for a cursory 2 weeks.
The reason that we are always sad is that we are putting a condition on our happiness external to ourselves (which we have talked about before) leading only to certain misery. ”I will only be happy if…” ”I know when I find the right person in my life then I shall be happy.” ”If my career were more fulfilling then I would be happy.” Really?
We are not a product of our circumstances but a product of our attitude in life. We choose happiness by allowing ourselves to be there. When we are not there, it is owing to our choice not to be there. We will explore this theme further in the following blogs in this series. Be happy now.
The Power of Now Part 5 of 5: Listening to the Inner Body
January 30, 2009 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
The inner body defines your inner self, what you feel when you are at peace. Yes, it is a feeling and not a thought. It is related to the outer body, but it is different. When we are in tune with our inner body, we enter the present moment fully; we enter the now.
We can start by closing our eyes, then concentrating on our breathing and feeling the breath enter our body without resistance. We feel the breath transform our inner body and how our body reacts to it. We are attuned to the present moment and live fully within it. Our senses are heightened and we are alert to our own self.
Our inner body is essentially immutable during our lifespan. We just need to be in tune with it. As our outer body fails us and ages, our inner body remains a constant. However, the inner and outer bodies are related. When we listen to our inner body fully and surrender to it rather than resist it, we actually slow down the aging process and increase our immune system. When we are at peace with ourselves and we feel it, we are in tune with the present moment and our outer body benefits from this deep surrender.
Surrender is the opposite of resistance. Resistance is a manifestation of the mind, i.e., when our mind controls our thoughts and our behavior. Acceptance of our condition is a requisite step. That does not mean we should permit an unfavorable situation to continue. However, if we accept it as a fact then we can free ourselves of any labels of negativity or positivity. We surrender ourselves without resistance and listen to our inner body that gives us true peace. We find inner joy when we are at peace and not in a state of drama, or fevered anxiety. Drama comes from being enslaved to the egoic mind. Surrendering to our inner body and being attuned fully to the present moment frees us and gives us focus and alertness to true consciousness. Don’t believe me?Try it. Get into the moment. Get in tune with yourself.
I really got a lot out of this book and it helped me truly try to enter the moment of now and to relinquish the egoic fears of the future or to be miserable with any past transgressions. Instead, living in the moment and being in tune with my inner body I achieve a deep sense of peace.
The Power of Now Part 4 of 5: The Joy of Being
January 29, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
As we escape our ego and pain, we move into the moment of now. We enter an unbridled and unfiltered joy that can be profound and liberating. Too often we look at the what instead of the how. We focus on the end product or result rather than focusing on what we are experiencing now: the how, the process, the action. When we get lost into the moment we begin to release the fears of the past and the future and move ourselves fully into the current state.
If we think of how animals behave, they live fully in the moment. Look at a dog or a cat. Are they reflecting on their past grievances or worried about tomorrow? No, they are fully and completely absorbed in their present state. Even when an animal fights another animal, that skirmish is fleeting and does not linger after the event. The animal continues on its way. In fact, the only time that animals have shown the same negative energies that humans possess is when the animal lives in close proximity to humans who are similarly so inclined. We should learn from animals and how they are simply happy being. Perhaps if we spend time with an animal and look deeply into his/her eyes, we can see what living in the moment truly feels like.
When adversity should arise, our response to that adversity reflects where our current state of being truly is centered. When an individual defames or expresses hatred toward us, we let it pass right through us. We do not even acknowledge or respond to it because it is something that would appeal to the egoic mind and the related pain-body. When we truly live in the present devoid of ego and body, we do not suffer the slings and arrows of a perceived enemy because we perceive no enemies. We are free from that individual’s venom. We are in a different plane of existence being fully ensconced in the present moment. When adversity strikes you and you remain deeply calm and at peace, you have entered a deeper state of consciousness. You have entered the now. It is a great place to be.
The Power of Now Part 3 of 5: Clock Time vs. Psychological Time
January 28, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
This is perhaps one of my favorite ideas that Tolle presents. Sometimes if we live so far into the current moment, we fear that we are not planning for the future or have goals that we want to set. Tolle distinguishes between clock time meaning we put a certain event on our calendars or plan to do work tomorrow for a certain project. But setting that time down for clock time should not force us into constantly thinking and worrying about that event, which becomes what he calls psychological time.
Psychological time is how we live with our egoic mind/pain-body in the past (regret, sadness, hate) and our future (fear, anxiety) rather than being fully alive in the current time, right now. It is living our life unconsciously as he says. We are living far from a level of consciousness and peace when we fail to leave our mind and live right now. By living psychologically at another time, we subscribe to many of the negative emotions that grip us, all driven by the egoic mind.
Clock time is not bad if put into context, and it doesn’t have to do just with future events. When we learn from our past mistakes not to repeat them, then we are using clock time. However, when we sit in deep regret about our past and it begins to color our current perception so that in fact we are living in the past then we are beholden to psychological time.
Living deeply within the framework of the current time allows you to be free of the egoic mind and the related pain-body. If you truly sense everything around you: the food you taste, the person you are with, the work you are doing, the music that surrounds you, the breath that you take, you are treating time as one of the most precious of commodities. We oftentimes think time is so precious so that we must not waste it by planning so and so. However, by engulfing ourselves in the future, we fail to live in the current and so we therefore waste the most precious of all time, which is now.
Is it not true that the only real time is the now? Have you ever experienced the past or the future? Only in your mind perhaps but not in reality. We can only experience the now. There is no other time than the present so if we waste that precious time by living in the past or the future, we are truly wasting the most precious part of time, which is the now.
By the way, I was chosen surgeon of the month by the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery. For those who are interested, here is the link to the article. Also, in the next few days, my webmaster is creating several indices for those who would like to easily access past blogs. This was an excellent request by one of the readers of this blog last week. Check out the top menu bar of this blog, and you will already see an index by category. I have asked him to make an index by date and other functional improvements as well.
The Power of Now Part 2 of 5: Escape Your Pain
January 27, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
After understanding that our egoic minds that rule our every moment is the source of our problems, we must then understand the effect that manifests through what Tolle calls the “pain-body”. He conceives of emotions as being a bodily response to our egoic mind (sounds a bit like Ruiz, huh?). When our mind thinks a certain thought, our emotion is a bodily response to that thought. For example, anger is a consequence of our egoic mind thinking that we have been hurt or how we can then return the favor. Our bodily literally shakes when we allow the mind to transform into the body. If we are not associated with our mind but leave our mind and our related ego, then we enter a deep consciousness that we discussed yesterday that permits us to then separate us from emotions that may ruin us. In short, our egoic mind drives our pain-body.
The reason that Tolle talks specifically about one emotion, pain, is that he would like us to escape the deepest negativity which is intimately tied with mind and body. He says that in Buddhist thought, enlightenment is simply defined as “the end of suffering”. Understanding that the further that we enter a deep state of consciousness, i.e., by entering deeply into the now and by not engaging in fruitless mind activity, we begin to relinquish the pain-body.
Our egoic minds drive us by fear. Ultimately, the fear is of our own self-destruction, the most unstated fear is our own death. For example, we insist on winning an argument and to defeat the other person. We fear failure. We do not allow us to be vanquished. Our egoic mind drives all of this emotion and compels us into a state of constant fear. By living fully in the moment and experiencing the now, we can begin to let go of the fears of the past and the future that drive us. Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” What he was essentially saying is when you let go of hate and your own ego, you have no enemies. You no longer see enemies all around you because you cannot be hurt in that you have freed yourself from the ego and thereby extinguished the pain-body.
Tomorrow we will talk more specifically of how to understand “now” in terms of a universal concept, time. That is my favorite idea that Tolle has presented.