Self Created Pain

In every pain there is a lesson to learn
It puts us in our place
The Law that governs is not stern
Our own reality we face

Musing of the mind

The world is whatever it is. We do not accept things as they are because of our delusions. Suffering is an apt measure of delusion. The key to peace is accepting whatever is. And peace is what we are looking for.

Eckhart Tolle on the “mind” and “thoughts”.

“Thought cannot exist without consciousness but consciousness does not need thought.
Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it mostly for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness. When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. Thought alone when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness, quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.
All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came from a time of mental quietude.”

The above is what Eckhart Tolle says about thought and the mind in his book “The Power of Now” which I have been reading repeatedly  for the past few months. In other words, I don’t think I’ll be wrong if I say, all those thoughts which are not self-seeking or ego-feeding are valid and are more powerful than those which are selfish in a way which divide one from the other or create a distinction from others. Since all of us are connected at energy levels, those thoughts which unify are stronger than those which divide.

Almighty

Almighty

A knower says You reside within my heart
But to look within I fall short
The knower also says You are everywhere
It is with You my existence I share

You created this wonderful world
On this colorful canvas Your love unfurled
I’m grateful that I am a part of it
In body, mind, soul and spirit

Have You created me or I, You?
I have to find out what is true
You are not different from me
For myself that truth I have to see

My questions may sound very absurd
Someday I shall be answered
Churning within are these queries
How do I do away with all my worldly worries?

You, by varied names we call
Is the name important? Claims are tall
Behind all names there is only ONE
Revealed to the seeker when differences are shun

To You are given varied forms
To worship You are set certain norms
With empty rituals and customs, You, no one can fool
To reach You Love is the only tool

How do I address You? I am ignorant
Only You are that which is permanent
You have existed throughout eternity
Whatever the name, Lord, God or Almighty

-Pepal Tree
06.08.2009

My reflections on Edgar Cayce and Eckhart Tolle

A parallel between Edgar Cayce and Eckhart Tolle.

By the process of thinking we create our own reality. So, as Tolle says, if we stop thinking, that is, using the mind, or stilling the mind, we cease to create time. By accepting the present moment we cease to create the future. The future is actually psychological time. The present is what we had created earlier by unconscious thinking and by accepting it we stop creating time. By reacting to the present situation, we again create time. Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet as he is known, tells us that what we are experiencing in the present is our own making. We are experiencing the fruit of what we ourselves had set into motion at an earlier time. By accepting it, we cease to create fresh karma. By reacting to it, or with our non-acceptance, we put it off to a later date. This is creating our own reality. Our own time. The future. This is perhaps why we incarnate again and again until we accept what we ourselves have created. The key to end time is to accept the present moment. As Tolle says, the present moment is all we have. It is Life.

Peter Russell in his book "From Science to God"

The Golden Rule

As much as we want to feel unconditional love in ourselves, we also want others to feel that love toward us. None of us want to feel criticized, rejected, ignored or manipulated. We want to feel appreciated, honored, and cared for. This is true not only in our intimate relationships with our partners and family, but also in our relationships with those we work with, people we meet socially, and even strangers we encounter on the street or in an airplane. In all our relationships we want to feel respected.If love is what we all want, then love is what we should be giving each other. But that is not always easy. Too often we are so busy trying to get love for ourselves, or holding on to the love we have, we forget that other people want exactly the same. Before long we get caught in a vicious circle that denies us the very love we seek.

If we feel hurt over something someone says or does-whether they intend to hurt us, or whether it is all our own creation-our normal response is to defend by attacking in kind. Though not the wisest or most noble response, if we believe that our happiness depends on how others behave, this is how we tend to react. If the other person is trapped in the same mindset, they are likely to respond in a similar fashion and do or say something hurtful in return.

So the vicious circle is created. On the surface it may seem that a relationship is going well; both people appear friendly; there is no open hostility. But underneath a subtle game is being played. Each person, in attempting to get the other person to be more loving, is making the other feel hurt rather than loved. It is a tragic lose-lose game, which, if sustained, can ruin the best of relationships.

As easily as the circle is set up, it can be undone. The key is simple: Give love rather than withhold it. What this means in practice is that whatever we say, and however we say it, we want the other person to feel loved and cared for rather than attacked and hurt.

The Buddha called this “right speech”: If you cannot say something in such a way that the other person feels good on hearing it, then it is better to retain noble silence. This should not be interpreted as avoidance- “I don’t know how to say what I want to say without you getting upset, so I shall keep quite.” Expressing our thoughts and feelings is valuable, but we need to do so in ways that do not trigger the vicious circle. We should retain noble silence only so long as we need to-until we’ve worked out how to say what we have to say in a kind and loving manner.

Spiritual teachings often refer to this principle as the golden rule. Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your loss,” says Taoism. The Koran proclaims, “No one of you is a believer until he desires for himself.” And Christ said, “All things whatsoever that ye would that men should to you, do ye even so to them.”

The key is kindness, the intent to cause no harm to others. It springs from the recognition that the light of consciousness shining in us all is divine. We honor God in honoring each other, for each and every one of us is holy.

Unlike the God I rejected as a youth, God as the light of consciousness neither conflicts with my scientific leanings, nor does it run counter to my intuition and reason. Indeed, it pints toward an ultimate convergence of science and religion.

-Peter Russell

As Peter Russell explains about atheism in his book "From Science to God"

No God

Along with the transition from polytheism to monotheism came the emergence of atheism, or “no God”. It might seem contradictory to have a religion without s god, but several major traditions have arisen around this time.


In India, in the sixth century B.C., a young prince named Mahavira became disenchanted with the traditional Vedic religion, which advocated the sacrifice of innocent animals, the performance of meaningless rituals, and the belief of fictitious man made gods. Renouncing the grand lifestyle of his palace, he wandered penniless for thirteen years seeking a better way. Then one day while absorbed in deep meditation, he experienced a unity with all creation and a liberation from worldly woes. He consequently proclaimed himself Jina, “the Conqueror” – the conqueror of the mind – and encouraged his followers, the Jains, to attain a similar liberation through righteous living, nonviolence, and harmlessness.


Shortly afterward, another Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, likewise left the luxury of his palace and set out to find a way to end suffering. Six years later, in deep meditation, he too attained liberation, and was called Buddha – “the Awakened One”. Buddha realized that suffering was self-created and unnecessary, and began teaching others how to wake up and find true freedom.


During the same period, two atheistic religions arose in China. Like Jina and Buddha, Lao-Tzu and Confucious both taught that people could discover truth and find inner peace without believing in any deity. They too, advocated lives of simplicity, virtue, honesty, and above all, kindness.


This fourth religious paradigm lacked some of the benefits provided by a benevolent deity. There is no longer a supernatural agent to intervene in human affairs; one’s destiny is now in ones own hands. But much of the rest remained. Love, kindness, and right living were important; salvation from the sufferings of the world was still possible. In a sense there was still even a devil, but now the devil was within oneself. The goal was to liberate the mind from its self-imposed limitations- from desires, attachments, delusions and a false sense of self.


- Peter Russell.

Intelligent Onion

 One layer upon another
Many are there altogether
A simple onion never struck me before
That it holds the secret of Life at its core

Equating each layer to all we possess
Vanity as gaudy as a concubines dress
As each layer is one by one stripped
With the sword of intellect, possessions be ripped

The core of the onion seems to be empty
Evident though from here sprouts plenty
Deceptive emptiness, within hidden a shoot
In “Nothingness” Life takes root

“Nothingness” is not empty, creation begins from here
It is not empty at all as it does appear
Timid hearted will not find out how, the Truth is for the bold
Even in the present moment, liberation exists behold

An onion when cut, brings forth tears
Upon Self Realization the effect is the same, say the seers.
Intelligent is the onion, on this we can ponder
In every bit of matter Truth is hidden. What a wonder!

- Pepal Tree

A simple way to understand what consciousness is as told by Peter Russell in his book "From Science to God".

What is consciousness? The word is not easy to define partly because we use it to cover a variety of meanings. We might say an awake person has consciousness, whereas someone who is asleep does not. Or, someone could be awake, but so absorbed in their thoughts that they have little consciousness of the world around them. We speak of having a political, social, or ecological consciousness. And we may say that human beings have consciousness while other creatures do not, meaning that humans think and are self aware.

The way I shall be using the word consciousness is not reference to a particular state of consciousness, or a particular way of thinking, but to the faculty of consciousness - the capacity for inner ecperience, whatever the nature or degree of experience.

The faculty of consciousness can be likened to the light from a film projector. The projector shines light onto a screen, modifying the light so as to produce any one of an infinity of images. These images are like the perceptions, sensations, dreams, memories, thoughts and feelings that we experience - what I call the "forms  of consciousness". The light itself, without which no images would be possible, corresponds to the faculty of consciousness.

We know all the images on the screen are composed of this light, but we are not usually aware of the light itself; our attention is caught up in the images that appear and the stories they tell. In much the same way, we know we are conscious, but we are usually aware of the many different perceptions, thoughts and feelings that appear in the mind. We are seldom aware of the consciousness itself.

As Eckhart Tolle says in "Power of Now"

This is one passage from Eckhart Tolle's book"power of Now" which I loved reading and appealed to me most.

If you are drawn to an enlightened teacher, it is because there is already enough presence in you to recognize presence in another. There were many people who did nor recognize Jesus or the Buddha, as there are and always have been many people who are drawn to false teachers. Egos are drawn to bigger egos Darkness cannot recognize light. Only light can recognize light. So don't believe that the light is outside you or that it can can come from only one particular form If only your master is an incarnation of God, then who are you? Any kind of exclusivityis identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no matter how well diguised.

Who Am I

Who Am I

I am not the name my parents gave me 

I am not a university degree 

I am not what I seem to be 

“Who Am I”, “Who Am I” 

 Whatever I posses will one day wither 

Yet I scurry about hither and thither 

I am that which is subtler than ether 

“Who Am I”, “Who Am I” 

 My physical body changes every twenty one days

 My mind tricks me in so many different ways 

Only my soul cries out constantly and says 

“Who Am I”, “Who Am I” 

 I do not have one identity 

Many roles I have played throughout eternity

I ask this always and hold on to my integrity 

“Who Am I”, “Who Am I” 

 There is no one but Me to answer this query 

It will be revealed to me when my ego I bury 

Reverberating until, with my Source I merge and marry 

“Who Am I”, “Who Am I”

Eons have passed, time is high 

My heart is heavy and deeply I sigh 

In the guise of happiness internally I cry

 “Who Am I”, “Who Am I”

- Pepal Tree