Life has a way of bringing us exactly the experiences that are needed to awaken us (even if they are not the ones we might choose) and we can notice the same process in our collective experiences as participants in our governments and economies.

If you have looked deeply into this for yourself, or if you happen to have read my book Life Beyond Belief you are quite familiar with how the circumstances of our everyday lives support awakening out of our ideas, and into the reality of what is happening beyond our thoughts about it.

One of the collective experiences of our time is in the political arena, whether it be between different political parties or different countries. In politics in America for instance, although we of course remain individuals, many of us classify ourselves as being Republicans or Democrats. This is one more label (not so unlike calling ourselves Israelis or Palestinians) with which we categorize our thinking. Whichever particular category we choose represents particular sets of ideas about how things like governments and economies work. In the present climate of economic downturn, bank failure and unemployment, the outstanding characteristics of these categories are differing ideas about what we should do to set things right.

If we look into both sets of ideas, we can notice that although these categories of thinking are different one from another and go on to discount each others points of view, they also have something in common. Both political categories are the same in that they each consist of ideas only (or call them ideologies) and people who internally categorize themselves in this way are constructing their own mentally derived realities based on those ideas. They are seeing the world through an ideological filter.

So here we are. The economy is messed up and it continues to go in an uncomfortable direction. Its easy to see that we could become fearful over this and polarize further into our ideological corners. That is one invitation life makes--and perhaps we need to further explore our fears before we are ready for another option. If we have looked into it deeply however, we know better than to act out of our fears. We know where that takes us. We know the end result. We see it in all the wars going on in the world. We see it in the ideological gridlock on Capital Hill. Life is showing us something here.

Here in the 21st century, we have somehow now developed a capacity to respond to life in a different way--a way that is not an externalization of our fears, such as war, hatred and self-righteousness have been in the past. We find that there is another possible response now. We no longer are tied into being a Democrat who resists Republicans or visa versa. We are becoming aware of who we are (before thought arises) and are moving beyond this old ideological narrowness into a deeper and more satisfying human experience.

We can begin to see a third optional response to our circumstances being demonstrated by the world around us, in nature and in whatever particular circumstances we find ourselves in. Of course I write this without knowing what is happening in the life of each reader, but I write it nonetheless out of a trust in how life works. Life gives us each exactly what we are ready to see in each moment. I look around and I see morning coming. I see the morning light meeting the darkness without hatred or resistance. I see the pull of gravity pressing downward on the upward growth of my houseplants and the trees outside my window without rancor. I notice the ideas passing through my mind, flowing like water, doing what they do, going where they go, without having to be either right or wrong; without needing to make others right or wrong.

Without categorizing, ideas flow with grace and openness. Life is at ease with itself. Difficulty and opportunity, dark and light, gravity and growth are two sides of the same coin. Discomfort simply guides the attention to what we need to notice in each moment. All is well each moment, and yet action is unhampered. In fact action is freed. The freedom from inner categories, the embracing of seeming opposites in ourselves, seems to imbue our actions with an impact beyond what was previously possible. We fulfill our parts in the collective experience with the vitality of life flowing through us, moving us in unique and perhaps unexpected ways.

Alice Gardner 3/1/2009

www.wideawakeliving.com
Author of "Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice"

Changing the Focus of our Lives to the Present Moment

On the second web-cast of Oprah Winfrey’s phenomenally large online class with Eckhart Tolle, the stand-out for me was when Eckhart talked about making the present moment the focal point of our lives. Eckhart has a wonderful way of saying inspiring things using such plain language that we can all get it, no matter what our spiritual or religious background might be.  We can see into the meaning of his simple words, and connect with the reality that they are pointing to.

We heard in his earlier book “The Power of Now” about the importance of the present moment—about how the past and the future are not real in the same way that this present moment is real—past and future are just ideas that are programmed into our minds.  This must have resonated with many of us, because the Power of Now has been on the best seller lists for so long. Now Eckhart has written A New Earth and it has already sold 3.5 million copies, even before Oprah started this class. We must have an abiding interest in this message! And we want to know—after exploring our interest and enjoying these wonderful books, is there a way that we can actually experience this reality that Eckhart is talking about in the midst of the commotion of our busy daily lives?

What would it really mean to change the focal point of our lives to the present moment, and to stay living in the world? If we are willing to really have that happen for us, what would it mean for our lives?  The content in each of our lives is different obviously, so the exact details of what would change would be as unique as we each are as people.  On the other hand, there are universal patterns about this inner shift that Eckhart is referring to.  One of these is expressed so succinctly by the description he uses of having a space develop between our sense of self and our thought processes. This space occurs and expands as we disidentify with our thought processes, and relate to them instead as a wonderful tool that we (an identity outside of them) use. In our lives up to this point, we have been fused with these thoughts that go through our minds, as if our ideas about ourselves are actually equivalent to who we are. When we stay in the present moment and notice that our thoughts are arising and are something quite separate from who we are, then a space is appearing. At first it may seem vague and fleeting, but over time if we keep giving this our attention, the space seems to widen and become permanent and “normal”. We notice our thoughts as if from a slight distance, as only being thoughts and not having anything to do with who we are.  We no longer look to our thinking processes to provide us with crucial information about who we are, and so are freed in a wonderful way from reliance on our thoughts, feelings or circumstances conforming to our preferences.  They no longer affect us in the same way.

This lack of reference to thinking for clues about our identity, doesn’t leave much possibility for using the past and future as focal points for our daily living. Past and future turn out to not exist outside of our thought processes.  We can watch our thoughts creating both. Meanwhile it is all happening in a present moment that seems to be pregnant with possibility and vitality.  When we stay with it enough to recognize the incredible beauty of the life force expressing itself around us in a myriad of forms, it can feel quite overwhelmingly and radiantly beautiful, no matter what the content of it is.

If what we are going to do today or how we are going to behave in a particular situation has been a compulsive recreating of the past (making today be much like yesterday and projecting that into tomorrow) we become freed from that.  Although such freedom from the past is generally felt to be wonderful, what is sacrificed to get there is the knowing of what will be happening in the future.  To the mind, this tends to be a profoundly unacceptable situation because of its need to control life, and mind may be making noisy complaints about that. The noise, however, is occurring on the sidelines of awareness once we are experiencing the space that we have been referring to. It is just mind doing what minds do, making noise and being a tool that is trying unsuccessfully to retain control over its rightful master, you.  It no longer is needed for that particular job. You already know who you are.

As we allow the present moment to be the focal point of our lives, we are freed from the domination by our thoughts that has been the normal human condition for thousands of years. We are freed to live our lives without compulsive referencing to ideas about what is possible and the world opens up to us. We use the mind to reference practical things—we don’t want to forget our phone number, or forget how to cook dinner. Mind is the most amazing and practical tool when it comes into its rightful place of serving something beyond itself. And when it is not needed, it can rest. What is here in this focal point of the present moment then, is the simple yet vitally alive world that surrounds and includes us. We feel the wind in our hair again. We see the incredible vitality in the world around us—we see God (or call it Life, or Love) peeking at us out of everything. We experience the joy that every birdcall has all along been offering us.  The veil of thinking has been lifted off of the world, and life as it is, including our own, can now be experienced.

Experiencing the world in this way is such an overwhelmingly wonderful experience that once it is felt, it forever remains as a motivation for the sometimes time-consuming process of learning to live it in the midst of everyday life. At first it may be that even little disturbances like a harsh word or a traffic jam with jump-start mind into such compelling noise that the experiencing of the present moment may not be possible until that event is long passed.  But gradually over time, with steady attention to who we really are, we are able to stay conscious in the little things and only more charged and potent events can throw us. Gradually we come to live our whole lives in this new world. We have changed the focal point of our lives to the present moment, and our world reflects back to us the incredible gift of the Life that we have been given and that we are.

© 2008 Alice Gardner

www.wideawakeliving.com
Author of "Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice"

 

 

When I was a youngster, John F. Kennedy said “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.  This inspired a generation into a more creative approach to life—a movement from an attitude of entitlement into one of service to something greater than our own personal well being. On last Monday night, in a web-cast with Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle (which has, 6 days later, already been listened to by 1.5 million people) we were asked to expand this inspiration beyond nationalism, beyond looking out for the good of our country above other countries. This naturally follows in a world where one of the main forms of conflict is between countries. Our world is now being brought together through technology and communications, and by individuals noticing a unity in which we are all connected.  In this web-cast, and in his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle specifically is suggesting “Rather than asking, ‘What do I want from Life?’, a more powerful question to ask is, ‘Life, what do you want from me?’”

It is a crucial time in the human history where we are confronting a world situation that has the possibility of causing at least mass destruction if not self-annihilation in the long run.  It seems that maybe life is experimenting in the way it is developing the human race. It seems that for some reason it has been important that life include the amazing cognitive abilities that humans have developed and continue to develop, as a part of itself.  The risks of this experiment are the intractable issues that we see all around us in the modern world. Our cognitive abilities are running amok in a sense. Our ability to conceptualize, to have thoughts and ideas as we know them, has created in each of us a false sense of self as being someone separate from all other lives.  This in turn creates self-centered behaviors that happen, often out of fear, and without reference to what is good for the whole. If each of us stays simply looking out for our separate personal selves in the way that we have been doing for thousands of years (relating to life as the mind-constructed version of ourselves), we may not have much of a future any more. 

The world situation and all the intractable problems that modern society is presenting us with are a wonderful pointer towards the possibility and necessity of awakening out of this bundle of ideas about who we are and into living a life that is an expression of what Life wants, not what we personally want.  This is also so beautifully expressed in the Christian tradition as “letting go and letting God”.  Whether we use Christian or other religious terminology or not, this shift is an essential step that needs to be taken, if we value our survival as a species and the survival of our beautiful and precious planet.  Religions have been pointing to this for a long time, and it is our generation for whom it is now becoming the critical issue behind all of the other issues that plague our world and disturb our personal lives by doing so.  In these circumstances life seems to be saying to us, “awaken now”. This is the time to come finally into the fruit of the religious teachings of the many traditions, and to stand in the radiance of the one life that shines through them all and through each of us.

© 2008 Alice Gardner

www.wideawakeliving.com
Author of "Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice"

Is everyone aware that Oprah is hosting Eckhart Tolle for a ten week read-through of Eckhart's new book, A New Earth. It starts tomorrow night, March 3rd, 6 pm Pacific time, 9 pm eastern time. You can see it later if you miss it on Monday nights. Go to www.oprah.com/anewearth to register. It's free. You have to join Oprah's book club first, and then it allows you to register for this. If you are on a mac, don't use Safari, use Firefox instead. Oprah's discussion boards are very overwhelming, so if you would like a more peaceful place to talk about the experience with others online, come to www.wideawakeliving/wp/ which is the blog at Wide Awake Living website, and share with us there how it all is for you.

Eckhart has been a very important and inspiring teacher for me, and for many others. His huge popularity has made him a bit reclusive, and this is a great way for him to reach out and touch many lives at once. Over 400,000 people have already signed up and there is room for more!
See you there,
Alice Gardner
Author of "Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice"
www.wideawakeliving.com

I have posted below the book that I have recently written and am self-publishing through Awake Publications. There is a lot of information about the book at www.awakepublications.com and I would like to invite any of my zaadz friends to visit there and check it out.  I also have a sister website at www.wideawakeliving.com where you can subscribe to a free montly newsletter of support and inspiration for spiritual awakening, and also read a lot of my shorter writings and see my nature photography etc.
Blessings,
Alice (my real name which of course was taken when I joined Zaadz)