Carrying the Past

The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks.
Tanzan and Ekido were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was rearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side.
The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn't restrain himself any longer. "Why did you carry that girl across the road?"he asked. "We monks are not supposed to do things like that."
"I put the girl down hours ago," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

Many of us are still carrying the weight of the past. Embracing Silence is a place to practice "Letting Go" of the past to experience the lightness and freedom that exist right here, right now, in the present moment.

Join us this Thursday as we support each other in practicing Presence and Breaking Free of the pain body, or the "living past in you" as Tolle calls it.

www.meetup.com/BellevueTolleGroup

Breaking Free

The beginning of freedom from the Pain-Body lies first of all in the realization that you have a pain-body. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the pain-body in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you.

It is your conscious Presence that breaks the identification with the pain-body. When you don't identify with it, the pain-body can no longer control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore by feeding on your thoughts. The pain body in most cases does not dissolve immediately, but once you have severed the link between it and your thinking, the pain-body begins to lose energy. Your thinking ceases to be clouded b emotion; your present perceptions are no longer distorted by the past. The energy that was trapped in the pain-body then changes its vibrational frequency and is transmuted into Presence. In this way, the pin-body becomes fuel for consciousness. The is why many of of the wisest, most enlightened men and women on our planet once had a heavy pain-body (A New Earth pg 162.)

Join us on December 4th at Bellevue Unity Church, and December 18 at Seattle Unity Church where we will be discussing this further. For more information about these meetings go to

www.meetup.com/bellevuetollegroup

www.meetup.com/seattletollegroup

Love and Light to you All,

Adam

A New Perspective

The whole is made up of existence and Being, the manifested and the unmanifested, the world and God. So when you become aligned with the whole, you become a conscious part of the interconnectedness of the whole and its purpose: the emergence of consciousness into this world. As a result, spontaneous helpful occurrences, chance encounters, coincidences, and synchronistic events happen much more frequently. Carl Jung called synchronicity an "a causal connecting principle." This means there is no causal connection between synchronicity events on our surface level of reality. It is an outer manifestation of an underlying intelligence behind the world of appearances and a deeper connectedness that our mind cannot understand. But we can be conscious participants in the unfolding of that intelligence, the flowering of consciousness.

Nature exists in a state of unconscious oneness with the whole. This, for example, is why virtually no wild animals were killed in the tsunami disaster of 2004. Being more in touch with the totality than humans, they could sense the tsunami's approach long before it could be seen or heard and so had time to withdraw to higher terrain. ( A New Earth Pg 277.)

To quiet the mind or "Be Still and Know that I am God." means to tune in to the totality. It allows the individual consciousness to merge with all consciousness. The part becomes an instrument of the whole. Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." God is said to be all and in all, therefore, this is the experience of being one with all there is.

A Dialogue on Inner Purpose

Below is a dialogue on Inner Purpose taken from Eckhart Tolle's most recent book, A New Earth. We will be discussing this on Thursday November 13th and 20th at Seattle Unity, and Bellevue Unity Churches at 7:00 P.M.


I don't know what it is, but I want some change in my life. I want expansion; I want to be doing something meaningful and, yes, I want prosperity and the freedom that comes with it. I want to do something significant, something that makes a difference in the world. But if you asked me what exactly I want, I would have to say that I don't know. Can you help me find my life purpose?



Your purpose is to sit here and talk to me, because that is where you are and that is what you are doing. Until you get up and do something else. Then, that becomes your purpose.



So my purpose is to sit in my office for the next thirty years until I retire or get laid off?



You are not in your office now, so that's not your purpose. When you do sit in your office and do whatever you do, then that is your purpose. Not for the next thirty years but for now.



I think there is some misunderstanding here. For you, purpose means what you are doing now; for me it means having an overall aim in life, something big and significant that gives meaning to what I do, something that makes a difference. Shuffling papers in the office is not it. I know that.



As long as you are unaware of Being, you will seek meaning only within the dimension of doing and of future, that is to say, the dimension of time. And whatever meaning or fulfillment you find will dissolve or turn out to have a deception. Invariably, it will be destroyed by time. Any meaning we find on that level is true only relatively and temporarily.



For example, if caring for your children gives meaning to your life, what happens to that meaning when they don't need you and perhaps don't even listen to you anymore? If helping others gives meaning to your life, you depend on others being worse off than yourself so that your life can continue to be meaningful and you can feel good about yourself. If the desire to excel, win, or succeed at this or that activity provides you with meaning, what if you never win or your winning streak comes to an end one day, as it will? You would then have to look to your imagination or memories--a very unsatisfactory place to bring some meager meaning into your life. "Making it" in whatever field is only meaningful as long as there are thousands or millions of others who don't make it, so you need other human beings to "fail" so that your life can have meaning.



I am not saying here that helping others, caring for your children, or striving for excellence in whatever field are not worthwhile things to do. For many people, they are an important part of their outer purpose, but outer purpose alone is always relative, unstable, and impermanent. This does not mean that you should not be engaged in those activities. It means you should connect them to your inner, primary purpose, so that a deeper meaning flows into what you do. (A New Earth pg 261, 262)

Tolle's Teachings Are Not Interesting

As this months meetings approach, I am inspired to offer more regarding the nature of Tolle's teachings...


"This book’s main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken. In that sense, this book is not “interesting.” Interesting means you can keep your distance, play around with ideas and concepts in your mind, agree or disagree. This book is about you. It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready. Not everyone is ready yet, but many are, and with each person who awakens, the momentum in the collective consciousness grows, and it becomes easier for others" (A New Earth pg 5.)

This is the awakening we are all taking part in. Just the fact that you're reading this is evidence enough that you are one of the "Presence Carriers." While there is great power in this, there is also great responsibility to be there for a sleeping world.

One of the greatest ways of sharpening this quality within yourself, is to share it with others. Join us this month as we continue to Practice the Art of Presence

~Adam