T.N.G. SIGNS OF THE TIMES - N.M. April 8, 2005 (#143)

Greetings from Russell's Remnant: www.oocities.org/dkone_us

The following comments were taken from The Power of NOW by Eckhart Tolle. The Tuesday Night Group’s Teacher, Dr. Russell Whitesell opened one of his first lectures with the following statement, “The mind is the slayer of the real.” That idea comes from The Yoga Sutra’s of Patanjali which is an ancient Hindu text that instructs one in the yoga of mind or Raja Yoga. Mr. Tolle’s book is a modern approach to the task of overcoming the mind which is the “Slayer of the Real.” The following ideas come from that book and are offered only as an introduction to Mr. Tolle’s very fine, but complex book.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

Mind-created duality is the root cause of all problems and conflict in your life.

The mind habitually denies or resists the Now because it cannot function and remain in control without time.

The Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of the mind.

The truth is that the moment thought comes in, all you have is a memory of it.

Thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but it causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in your mind.

If you found yourself in paradise, it wouldn’t be long before your mind would say “yes, but …”

Don’t get stuck on the level of words.

All problems are illusions of the mind.

The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the “problem”.

The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor’s edge of Now. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.

The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. The more you identify with your mind, the more your suffer.

Problems are mind-made and need time to survive. They cannot survive in the actuality of the Now.

Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.

Feeling sorry for yourself and telling others your story will keep you stuck in suffering.

The Sufi - “Past and future veil God from our sight; burn up both of them with fire.”

Meister Eckhart - “Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time.”

Time is the cause of your suffering or your problems.

Truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there. You “get” there by realizing that you are there already. You find God the moment you realize that you don’t need to seek God.

Enlightenment means choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is. When you live in complete acceptance of what is – which is the only sane way to live – there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore. There is only the higher good.

Whether your thoughts and emotions about this situation are justified or not makes no difference. The fact is that you are resisting what is.

To complain is always non-acceptance of what is -  you make yourself into a victim.

Waiting is a state of mind. It means that you want the future; you don’t want the present.

When you accept what is, every piece of meat – every moment – is the best. That is enlightenment.

Let everything pass through you. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness.

If you can never accept what is, by implication you will not be able to accept anybody the way they are.

When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life. An argument implies identification with your mind and a mental position. The result is that the polar opposites become mutually energized.

The moment you start to argue, you have identified with a mental position and are now defending not only that position but also your sense of self.

Judgment is either to confuse someone’s unconscious behavior with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake that for who they are.

The only place where true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now.

Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

You can’t think about presence, and the mind can’t understand it. Understanding presence is being present.

If you find your here and now intolerable, remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. Then accept the consequences.

If you cannot surrender, take action immediately: speak up or do something to bring about a change in the situation – or remove yourself from it.

The present moment is all you ever have.

Narrow your attention down to the present moment without mentally labeling it in any way.

It is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that is the main determinant of what kind of future you will experience, so surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change.

If you attack the image, it attacks you back. If you accept the image, no matter what it is, if you become friendly toward it, it cannot not become friendly toward you.

If you abide in the state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering, no more unhappiness.

All conditions are highly unstable and in constant flux.

To become conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey. A very effective way of doing this is simply to take the focus of your attention away from thinking and direct it into the body.

The more consciousness you direct into the inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes. At this higher energy level, negativity cannot affect you anymore, and you tend to attract new circumstances that reflect this higher frequency.

The more consciousness you bring into the body, the stronger the immune system becomes. The body loves your attention. It is also a potent form of self-healing. Most illnesses creep in when you are not present in the body.

Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? Say “yes” to life – and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.

Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment – allow it to be as it is – then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.

Who you are is always a more vital teaching and a more powerful transformer of the world than what you say, and more essential even that what you do.

If you find your life situation unsatisfactory or even intolerable, it is only by surrendering first that you can break the unconscious resistance pattern that perpetuates that situation.

When you enter the timeless dimension of the present, change often comes about in strange ways without the need for a great deal of doing on your part. Life becomes helpful and cooperative.

*****

Ecclesiastes 1:2 (KJV) Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Dr. Russell Whitesell’s comment on Eccl 1:2. “ God's Will will be done, not ours. Let go and let God. Let

the great law handle everything.”

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