Tag Archives for thinking and reality

Tolle Inspiration on Awakening

astronomy dark dawn dusk

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What does it really mean for human beings at their current evolutionary stage to “become more conscious” or to “awaken”?  If I had to put it in a nutshell, I would define it as “disidentification from thinking.”  When you realize that the voice in your head, your incessant compulsive thinking, is not who you are, then you have begun to awaken. 

A new dimension of consciousness has arisen, which we could call awareness, presence, or wakefulness.  You haven’t fallen below thought; you have risen above it.  Now you can use thought instead of being used by it.  Your sense of self shifts from identification with your mental positions and narratives to the alive presence within you, which is consciousness itself.  

You realize the being behind the human, so to speak.  Something that transcends your conditioned personality begins to emerge.  You realize your essential identity as unconditioned consciousness itself, and you can verify within yourself the truth of Jesus’s words:  “You are the light of the world.”

~ Eckhart Tolle

Happiness and the Movies

night television tv video

Photo by Tookapic on Pexels.com

“Looking for happiness in the body, mind or world is like looking for the screen in a movie. The screen doesn’t appear in the movie, and yet, at the same time, all that is seen in the movie is the screen. In the same way that the screen ‘hides’ in plain view, so happiness ‘hides’ in all experience.”

~ Rupert Spira

The wisdom of Rupert Spira touches me and gives me time to pause. When I hear him talk in conversations on YouTube, I have a sense of knowing and his words make sense. Taken out of context it’s harder to grasp the deeper meaning with an ordinary mind and limitations of language….

Happiness is there for all of us, at any moment, when we open up our awareness of it. Otherwise we just get caught up in the story that’s being projected.

… Or perhaps its too early in the morning to decipher what is on the screen.

I would love to hear your perspective.

How we See Things

getting clear

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

~ Carl Jung

We see things through our own filters all the time. These filters come from our senses and how we interpret them, via our thoughts and feelings, and our individual and cultural beliefs.

Take a moment and reflect on a time when you felt really loved, and how the world becomes a loving place…

Notice too when there is sadness, and the world is pretty miserable…

It’s the same world out there, we just see it through different glasses. It’s our relationship with the world around us that is constantly changing as our thoughts and mood shift.

We have the power to shift our world, and see more clearly, by bringing more and more awareness to our thoughts and feelings and how they impact our view of the world.

As an observer of your self and the world around you, you can decide how to look at it.

Whether you perceive life as a greek tragedy, a comedy, a never ending sit-com or a BBC documentary, is your choice.

* From Head to Heart

hands on heart

I am reading John J Prendergast’s book “In Touch”. Its one of those books that I want to devour, yet I must slow down in order to savor every piece of it. It is that good.

Here is a passage worth sharing.

This is for everyone who believes that life is lived from the neck up.

“Much of what we call the spiritual journey involves a shift of attention from the head to the heart. Although they are only a short distance from each other, they are a world apart in terms of experiencing life…

We live in our heads when we are lost in our thoughts. It is easy to do…

Thinking in itself is not the problem. We often need to think – the clearer the better. The problem arises when we believe our thoughts and identify with our thinking. We let our thoughts define us and, by extension, everyone and everything else.
When we believe our judgmental thoughts we are in prison.
When we confuse thinking with reality, we suffer…

As we learn to see our thoughts as thoughts instead of reality, attention naturally drops from the head to the heart. Whenever attention is brought to the heart, the heart becomes increasingly more familiar and less foreign. In time we sense it is our new home.”

Pause and take a moment to place your hands in the center above your heart. Notice the sense of comfort and perhaps even a feeling of coming home.

There is much love and truth here.

As you go through your day, become curious about your thinking. Get to know your thoughts and recognize them with fresh eyes. Then come home to your heart.

Namaste

 

 

* Haiku – thoughts

find your middle ground

~

Realize deeply

You are not the thoughts you hear

Find Your Middle Ground

~

If you are new to this site, welcome!

To explore more about finding your middle ground please click here

* Pondering – Problems and Mind

 

problems in the mind

 

“All supposed problems are of the mind.
What is mind?
Mind is a collection of thoughts.
Where are the problems when they are not thought about?”

“The most efficient means to
destroy any problem is to
ignore the problem.
In the absence of the energy
required to sustain it,
it withers and dies.”

“When clarity is present there are no problems.
Why rely on the mind to provide the solution?
It is the mind that birthed the problem.”

Wu Hsin

These quotes from Wu Hsin really got me pondering today. I noticed how my initial thought was to dismiss the second perspective. After all, ignoring problems will not bring about solutions … It also brought up a core belief of mine that not addressing problems leads to passivity, inaction and fatalism. Now there’s a judgment for you…

It seems to be human nature to find problems and then we are driven to fix them. It is the cornerstone of most western cultures. Is this simply a habit of our thinking?

On the other hand, why would we want to efficiently destroy a problem. A problem is an obstacle that our thinking has created. Is the answer in its destruction? As the Zen proverb goes “The Obstacle is the Way”.

There is an opportunity for new kind of mindful awareness when we come across problems.

As long as we are externally focused we will come across problems and have a need to try to resolve them. When we turn our attention inwards to find clarity in the presence within, thoughts fade away.

What if we were to take Wu Hsin’s approach?

How would the world around us be different … and how we would be in it?

Just pondering 💛

* Everything is Neutral

The world we live in is one of energy and elements.

In this world everything is neutral.

It is our thinking that creates the idea of good and bad.

quote from William Shakespeare

Our thinking creates distinctions such as  “me” “us” and ‘them”. Our thinking creates attachment to things that give us pleasure and aversion to things that bring discomfort and fear.

We have such an amazing capacity in our minds to filter out things and to imagine others.

As human beings we create our own reality.

We make judgments about what is good and bad, right and wrong.

… Take away the thinking mind and everything becomes neutral.

So let go.

Come into the present moment.

And tune into the natural flow of life.

go with the flow Peggy Collins

Photograph by Peggy Collins

There will always be highs and lows in life because of how our thinking perceives the world.

Our role is to go with the flow, acknowledge the reality that we are creating and be open to something more than our thinking.

When we let go of our thinking and witness the neutrality, we become open to experience a sense of connection, love and peace that is beyond what we have known before.

Thank you for being on this journey together.

Namaste

 

* Finding your Middle Ground – What Gets in the Way?

I write about finding that place of connection, contentment and peace in the highs and lows of life. I call it your Middle Ground. When you can spend time in this space and connect inwards,  life comes into balance.   My journey, and this blog, is to explore finding how to come from this place all the time….. This morning I woke up asking myself “What gets in the way?”.

negative emotionsThere are several things that come to mind – the busyness and speed of our lives; how we are caught up in external expectations and the stress from work, economic circumstances and family relationships…..all the things we have no control over but we feel are controlling us.

However, the bottom line is that it is our mind and our thoughts that gets in the way. Our thinking creates our reality. Its how we interpret what is happening that makes us feel stressed and anxious.

Just because we aren’t in control, or aren’t getting what we want, it doesn’t make it bad.

What if everything was neutral?

Right now its snowing heavily – this is the umpteenth snow storm this winter! I could make a judgement here and start ranting about how unfair it is. How the roads aren’t cleared quickly enough. I could complain about the number of snow days at school and how children are going to be left behind. I could moan about the driveway that we will need to clear if we are going to be able to get out. I could start to panic about global warming!

I could post this and ask people to join in with how awful this …. and create more judgments, negativity and charged emotions.

Our thinking creates our reality, and it impacts others too, especially when we tap into our human fears and basic needs to be in control, be heard and belong.

Do we want to contribute to peace and good will in the world or encourage the opposite? Our thinking, our words and our actions will determine this.

The neutral fact is that it is snowing.Teddy in snow

I could also create positive feelings and energy around it, by saying how beautiful it looks. Its a fairy wonderland out there. How often do we get to simply be with mother nature in her winter finest? Its a lesson on letting go and enjoying having no place to go. Its the opportunity to open a good book and snuggle in. The pups adore going out in it. They play and burrow and try to catch the snow flakes. Children are excited because this is the perfect snowman making kind of snow. Each snow flake is huge and wondrous!

When we are able to step back and be the observer rather than the judge, we are able to create our own reality … and in doing so impact those around us, and the world….

Its time to start shoveling. I recognize that I am pretty neutral about it now!