I create posts through the use of intuition and logic. Yet, if nothing comes through to be posted, nothing will be posted. This has been an amazing experience, and I’m glad so many have benefited! Thank you to everyone here for sharing in this journey with me!
There are some passages in The Power of Now that could be interpreted as being anomalous. One example: Suffering is said in the book to be a catalyst for awakening.
We all know from the Galactic Codex that suffering was never necessary for evolution and awakening.
It's really a matter of taking The Power of Now into context. The useful passages for lurker disentanglement can be compiled, and what is not useful can be discarded. Any material can be used in this kind of way.
(Disclaimer: These chosen excerpts from Eckhart Tolle do not apply to those who are in immediate physical danger. This is for those who have their basic survival needs met, who live day-to-day existence in ‘the matrix.’ Also, this will be my third and final post of material from this book. If people resonate, they may feel free to obtain and read The Power of Now.)
Observing without judgment allows you to step outside of reacting to situations in survival mode.
The present moment is your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of Being.
The mind in itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.
The mind cannot know a tree. It can only know facts or information about a tree. My mind cannot know you, but can only know labels, judgments, facts, and opinions about you. Being, however, knows directly.
There is a place for mind and mind-knowledge. It is in the practical realm of day-to-day living. However, when it takes over all aspects of your life, including your relationships with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, unchecked, may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.
Once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with the mind, which of course includes the emotions, you step out of it. You become present. When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.
The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in – something that is not of the mind – the witnessing presence.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time – the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
The more you are focused on time – past and future – the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.
Past and future have no reality of their own, just as the moon has no light of its own.
There is never a time when your life is not “this moment.” Is this not a fact? When you think of the past or future, you do so now.
You can refer to past and future for practical purposes, but have your main center of focus be the Now. Doing so makes your mind more sharp and focused when using it.
"Clock time" is time used to deal with practical aspects of life. "Psychological time" is time that is stained with harmful emotions and attitudes. Use clock time as needed, but don’t get ensnared within psychological time.
Clock time is not just making an appointment or planning a trip. It includes learning from the past so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over. Also, setting goals and working toward them. Also, predicting the future by means of patterns and laws – physical, mathematical, and so on. But even here within the sphere of practical living, where we cannot do without reference to past and future, the present moment remains the essential factor. Any lesson from the past becomes relevant and is applied now. Any planning as well as working toward achieving a particular goal is done now.
In the absence of psychological time, your sense of self is derived from Being, not from your personal past. The psychological need to become anything other than who you already are is no longer there. On the level of your life situation, you may indeed become wealthy, knowledgeable, successful, free of this or that, but in the deeper dimension of Being, you are complete and whole Now.
Being free of psychological time, you no longer pursue your goals with grim determination, driven by fear, anger, discontent, or the need to become someone. Nor will you remain inactive through fear of failure. When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you are free of 'becoming' as a psychological need, neither your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so there is freedom from fear. You don’t seek permanency where it cannot be found – in the world of form, of gain and loss, birth and death. You don’t demand that situations, conditions, places, or people should make you happy, and then suffer when they don’t live up to your expectations.
Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free Now.
The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future. Your degree of presence is what determines your quality of consciousness.
If there is no joy, ease, or lightness in what you are doing, it does not necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing. It may be sufficient to change the how. “How” is always more important than “what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it. Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents. This implies that you also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.
When you act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.
Your life situation exists in time. Your life is Now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real.
Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have any problem at this moment – not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now. Do you have a problem now? Find the life underneath your life situation.
There are no problems. There are only matters – to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the 'isness' of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with.
Should a matter arise that you need to deal with now, your action will be clear and incisive if it arises out of present-moment awareness. It is also more likely to be effective. It will not be a reaction coming from the past conditioning of your mind, but an intuitive response to the matter. In other instances, when the time-bound mind would have reacted, you will find it more effective to do nothing, and just stay centered in the Now.
When the compulsive striving away from the Now ceases, neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation.
Everything is honored, but nothing matters. Forms are born and die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms. You know that “nothing real can be threatened.” When this is your state of Being, how can you not succeed? You have succeeded already.
Some people get angry when they hear me say that problems are illusions. I am threatening to take away their sense of who they are. They have invested so much time in a false sense of self. For many years, they have unconsciously defined their whole identity in terms of their problems or their suffering. Who would they be without it?
In addition to using the Violet Flame to disentangle and transmute the lurker, Eckhart Tolle has a description of what he calls the “pain-body.” My intuition guided me to interchange “pain-body” with “lurker-body.” Readers may also do so, as the description of the pain-body may be similar to the lurker-body.
(These chosen excerpts from Eckhart Tolle do not apply to those who are in immediate physical danger. This is for those who have their basic survival needs met, who live day-to-day existence in ‘the matrix.’)
There are two levels to your pain: The pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body.
Every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This, of course, includes the pain you suffered as a child, caused by the unconsciousness of the world into which you were born. This is what is called your “pain-body.”
A pain-body may be dormant 90 percent of the time. In a deeply unhappy person though, it may be active up to 100 percent of the time. Anything can trigger it, particularly if it resonates with a pain pattern from your past. When it is ready to awaken from its dormant stage, even a thought or an innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.
Some pain-bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless. Example: A child who won’t stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters – true demons. Some are physically violent; many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people around you or close to you, while others may attack you. Some pain-bodies drive their hosts to suicide.
When you thought you knew a person and then you are suddenly confronted with this alien, nasty creature for the first time, you are in for quite a shock. However, it’s more important to observe it in yourself than in someone else. Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form – it may be the awakening pain-body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.
Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.
Once the pain-body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isn’t really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will find that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others. If you were truly conscious of it, the pattern would dissolve, for to want more pain is insanity, and nobody is consciously insane.
Unconscious identification with your pain-body is what nourishes it, as well as your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. But if you don’t face it, if you don’t bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. The pain-body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your presence. When you observe your pain-body with presence, feeling its energy field within you, and taking your attention into it, the identification is broken. You become the observer instead of the pain so that it can no longer pretend to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself through you. Doing this is accessing the Power of Now.
Unconsciousness creates the pain-body, and the light of consciousness transmutes it. St. Paul expressed this universal principle beautifully: “Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.”
Trying to fight the pain-body only creates further pain. Watching it is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.
You need to be present enough to be able to watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking. The moment your thinking is aligned with the energy field of the pain-body, you are identified with it and again feeding it with your thoughts. The pain-body has momentum, so it will not dissolve immediately, but with time.
Let me summarize the process. Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain, but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of your own conscious presence. Then, see what happens.
If you are able to stay alert and present and watch whatever you feel within, rather than be taken over by it, it affords an opportunity for the most powerful spiritual practice. A rapid transmutation of all past pain becomes possible.
For many, it may not be easy to dis-identify and be the watcher of the pain-body. Resistance may be encountered. If so, observe the resistance within yourself. Observe the attachment to your pain. Be very alert. Observe the peculiar pleasure you may derive from being unhappy. Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it. The resistance will cease if you make it conscious. You can then take your attention into the pain-body, stay present as the witness, and initiate its transmutation.
(I've decided that it will immensely help me to deal with the lurker situation by doing notes and summaries for The Power of Now. Also, I've found that limiting my viewing of world news and intel sites to 1-2 times per day greatly helps me to be more balanced. I'm feeling very strong guidance to detach from such events and news. Others may do so as well, or not, as they see fit.)
When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it cannot be understood mentally.
Prior to I am this or I am that, is I Am.
Don’t be used by the mind. Instead, be the user of the mind.
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. When you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness is activated. Beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – all of this arises from beyond the thinking mind.
If the voice in the head starts chattering, listen to it. Be there as the witnessing presence.
There is the voice in the head, and there is your presence that listens to it. This sense of your own presence is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.
When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought, but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. You feel your I Am Presence – your deeper self, behind the thought. The thought then loses power over you because you are no longer energizing it through identification with it. You can experience liberating gaps of “no-mind.” You can access the joy of Being. This is one of many ways to access your true self beyond the mind.
Become intensely conscious of the present moment.
Take a routine activity and give it your full attention, so that it becomes an end in itself.
Focus on your breath, even if only for one or two breaths.
Learn to dis-identify from your mind.
One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means your sense of self no longer depends on the mind.
Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
You can use your mind for practical purposes, but you can be free from involuntary internal dialogue. There can be inner stillness.
You can oscillate between thought and no-mind. The greatest genius is accessed beyond the mind. All true artists, whether they realize 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 greatest scientists say their greatest insights came at a time of mental quietude. The greatest innovators agree that “Thinking plays a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself.” The majority of scientists lack creativity not because they don’t know how to think, but because they don’t know how to stop thinking!
The workings of the body are far greater than the mind. When the mind reconnects with this, it becomes a wonderful tool, serving something greater than itself.
Mind also includes emotions and mental-emotional patterns. Emotions are the body interacting with the mind.
Destructive thoughts and emotions feed one another as a viscous cycle.
People who carry a high amount of anger in them without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked verbally or even physically by other people, often for no apparent reason. Their emotion of anger activates anger in others.
Feel your body from within to get in touch with your emotions. Thoughts can lie but the body tells the truth – not the truth of who you are, but the truth of the state of your mind-body.
As with thoughts, emotions can be watched with presence. If there are not emotions present, take attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway into Being.
Emotions are dualistic, as pain vs. pleasure. Beyond this duality, joy can be felt as a Good that requires no opposite.
People create the layer of their reality with their mental outlook.
It’s a closed feedback loop: Reality is created as a reflection of an individual’s thoughtforms, and those thoughtforms are greatly determined by the reflection itself.
When people look into a mirror, they don’t look inside themselves. They are mesmerized by their own copy. It doesn’t occur to them that they can change the original. Because we obsessively focus on the reflection, we don’t get what we want. People are usually absorbed by thoughts of what they want to be different. We think about the things we do not want.
What happens when a person feels hate: They pour their entire heart and mind into the feeling. The sharp image is perfectly reflected in the mirror, filling the layer of that person’s world. What someone hates is what they will encounter in abundance. This causes more irritability, which in turn embellishes the intensity of the feeling. Mentally, a person reaches a point of being ready to tell everyone to get lost. “Bugger off!” The mirror then returns this like a boomerang. You told everyone to get lost, and they did the same to you. This causes the number of problems to escalate.
If you stand in front of a mirror and shout, “Go to hell, the lot of you!,” the reflection you will see in the mirror is yourself going to hell along with the rest of your world.
If a person is sharply averse to those who drink alcohol, they will encounter people drinking at every turn. A wife who is married to an alcoholic husband: The more averse the wife is to drinking, the more the husband will turn to the bottle. Insistence will be made by the wife, “You will never give it up!” This becomes a layer that goes into the husband’s world, making the alcoholism worse.
The pessimist gets a certain pleasure from reveling in their sorry lot. “The world is so bad, it cannot get any worse. It’s going to hell and taking me along with it.” The pathological habit of getting a kick out of negativity develops alongside a tendency to bear grudges. “I’m such a nice person. You just don’t value me. Soon I’ll be dead, and you’ll be sorry.” The picture of fatal misery is not only reflected in the mirror, but is firmly consolidated. The bitter individual orders a script for failure and then celebrates.
All the mirror is does is deliver orders. “I need to lose weight.” The mirror agrees. “I’m worthless.” The mirror agrees. “I’m valued.” The mirror agrees.
It is because of their own negative attitude that people paint the layers of their world black. Any attitude that is fueled passionately by the heart and with the conviction of the mind will be reflected in reality. Moreover, the attitude will be replicated to perfection irrespective of what a person is actually trying to express – attraction or aversion.
End the chase after your own reflection. Drag your gaze away from the mirror, and let go of the inner intention of trying to shift the world in the direction you want it to go. If you do this, something incredible will happen – the world will come to meet you.
The greater your feelings, the more powerful the attachment to the mirror. Whether you like the reflection or not, you are still focusing on it. People’s thoughts keep them tied to reality. This reality could be gloomy or joyous.
When letting go, solutions can present themselves.
To transform reality, break the circle. There is nothing outer intention cannot do. There are alternatives on the other side of the mirror that the human mind cannot conceive.
Switch your attention from the reflection to the image. In other words, take control of your thoughts. Think about what you want instead of what you’re trying to avoid. Rather than habitually expressing dissatisfaction at what you see in the mirror, begin to create an image of what you would like to see – this is the way out of the mirror maze. No more running. Stand still, and watch your reality come to you. You’ll encounter a different wind – the wind of outer intention.
Cease the futile chase after your own reflection. Let go of the world, and let it turn by itself in accordance with your thoughts. The circle spins by itself, driven by the power of outer intention.
Change a negative attitude into a positive attitude. Dissatisfaction, reluctance, disapproval, hate, lack in belief in success, etc – all these emotions have to be shoved into a rubbish sack and disposed of at the dump. Your thoughts should be attuned to what you want and like. Then, only pleasant things will be reflected in the mirror.
What is better? To be the victim of circumstances, or to determine your own fate as you see fit?
You can use music and other positive influences to enhance your mood and positively change your attitude.
If you remain resolute and are not distracted, sooner or later, the mirror will have to reflect the images you create with your thoughts.
When looking in a mirror, search only for the wanted traits in yourself, and simultaneously create a picture in your thoughts of a desired image. If you practice this technique regularly, your jaw will drop from surprise.
Create the relationship first, and then glance in the mirror. Don’t do this the other way around. This make take some getting used to, but the game is worth the candle. A job worth doing is worth doing well. Now reality will not control you. You will control reality. Very gradually, the reflection will be transformed into a positive one. The layer of your world will be so filled with good things that you will not have to convince yourself to have fun.
If you would like to believe this but do not, belief is not required. You don’t need to believe. Just practice the recommended technique, and you will see the consequences for yourself.
There are no miracles here. This does require work though. It’s just that it’s work with the head instead of the hands.
There’s nothing new about the idea that the world is a reflection of our thoughts. Everyone understands this idea implicitly, but at the same time it remains vague and ambiguous, so there is not much practical benefit from such knowledge. Few people have the time to work toward spiritual enlightenment, comprehend the secrets of the forces of nature, or develop their own. Now though, you have a specific technique at your disposal.
The idea is deeply rooted in our consciousness that reality is either instantly obedient as if we are holding a stick to it, or that reality cannot be controlled at all. We tend to believe that if a desire is not fulfilled right at this moment, it’s not possible for it to be realized at all. People then resign themselves to believe that all they can do is dream, and that magic is something inaccessible or transcendental. It’s believed that the world of fantasy is ‘out there’ and only in our imagination, while ‘real life’ is here. It’s believed that real life cannot be escaped or changed.
Magicians and people with extrasensory abilities live in a special separate world while we ‘ordinary people,’ with our ‘ordinary problems,’ are left to trudge through this ‘grave reality.’
In truth, there is no such thing as magic. There is just knowledge of the principles of the dual mirror. This knowledge is not hard to access. It’s actually so transparent and unsophisticated that it could never be known as magical. Everything that has greatness is inconceivably simple, having no need of decoration and secrecy. In contrast, it is always the things that are empty and useless that are hidden under a veil of magnitude and mystery.
Once magic has been integrated into the mundane and relieved of its fairy tale attributes, it ceases to be associated with the realms of the mystical and the secret, losing its mystery. When magic takes its place in everyday life, everyday reality ceases to be everyday reality, and is transformed into an unknown reality which can be controlled as an awakening dream as long as the mirror principles are observed.
When the mind sees no immediate results, it believes that the action taken is ineffective or incorrect. The mirror then reflects the same. This can sabotage manifestation. Wanting to have something instantaneously creates excess potential, which distorts the mirror.
Desire is essential, because without desire there would be no striving, but doubt and fear of failure results in longing. This is why importance has to be consciously reduced. Desire only becomes a problem when fear and doubt cause you to try to take the world ‘by the neck.’
Many people often think, “I want to, but I’m afraid it won’t work.”
Carrying the self-imposed responsibility of success or failure is a heavy load, and causes people to place harsh conditions for themselves and the world around them. They make excessive demands of themselves, and have high expectations of life. As a result, the mirror is distorted threefold: “I want. I fear. I can’t let go.”
Demanding and requesting do not yield positive results. All you have to do is make an order and allow the world to carry it out for you. People often don’t permit the world to do so because of their demands, requests, fears, and doubts. In response, the world also demands, requests, fears, and doubts, perfectly reflecting their conditions, for the world is just a mirror.
Let the world go, allowing it to be a comfortable place for you. Allow yourself to be happy, and trust the world. It knows how to take care of everything.
What if one hits rock bottom, and all remnants of dignity and self-respect are completely destroyed? What if one has failed, and the realization of this is inescapable?
No matter what happens, there is something within that can never fail. Here's a refresher that alludes to what I mean:
The above video may help to reduce possession issues.
The purification has begun.