Eckhart Tolle and UUism

Sunday June 20, 2010

 This presentation is based on the book A New Earth – Awakening to your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle.  I found many insights in the book on unhappiness and human condition.  It is said that if you want to learn something, then teach it.  Giving this presentation is part of my own awakening.  I hope you also find these ideas helpful.  Given the depth of the book, I will only discuss the major points.  I plan to facilitate monthly group for people to share how they are using the ideas in the book starting in September. 

 This presentation has five parts. 

I.  WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF UNHAPPINESS?

II.  WHAT IS THE EGO?

III.  HOW YOU CAN SHIFT YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS

IV.  SOME PRACTICES FOR BEGINNING YOUR AWAKENING and

V.  WHAT IS OUR ROLE FOR THE PLANET?

 I.  WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF UNHAPPINESS?

Unhappiness is a generic term for persistent negative emotions.  These emotions are different from primordial responses to immediate external situations.  Yes, there is pain and sadness in the world.  These are genuine emotions.  If you can accept what you are feeling at the moment, the feelings are temporary. 

 Persistent unhappiness is caused by believing in thoughts.  These thoughts come from a part of your mind, the part called the ego.   Emotions are egoistic when you identify with them -- when they become part of the “I” that you think of as you.  Unhappiness is believing that your life is an unhappy story.  The process of unconsciously living in the past perpetuates and amplifies the pain.

 Another source of unhappiness is worry or anxiety about the future.  You can let go of a deep-seated habit of seeking fulfillment in the future.  You cannot be fulfilled in the future.  It is always now.  We only experience reality in each moment, in each Now.  Oops, you missed it! 

 The future is only a fantasy.  Even if our expectations are met in some future now, the good feelings that our egos generate then are only fleeting.  If your expectations are not met, the ego generates negative emotions.  Fretting on the future keeps you away from the Now.

 Peacefulness, feeling connected to the universe and freedom from unhappiness are attainable right now by facing and accepting what is.  The deeper emotions from your natural awareness are always positive.  They are more stable than the occasional positive emotions from the ego. 

 Religious ideologies and theologies come from the egoistic mind.  They reinforce egoistic tendencies.  They divide rather than unify. 

 Yet offshoots of every major religion offer basically the same solution to human unhappiness.  The distinction with Tolle is that he provides better insights into the workings of the ego.  He shows that trying to be a better person does not work.  That is ego. 

 His insights are consistent with a growing scientific understanding of how the brain-mind system works.  This allows a clearer description of the steps to move beyond identification with the egoistic mind.  Enlightenment, salvation and reduction in suffering are possible through many small steps.

 The passage from Ecclesiastes that Margo read shows that people have long recognized that egoistic thoughts lead to unhappiness.  Instead, we can accept that each occurrence has a season, we can take pleasure in each moment and in our actions in the moment. 

 You cannot become successful, but you can be successful in each moment by being an accepting presence.  The peaceful feeling is the measure of success.  There can be a sense of quality, care and attention in everything we do.   This concept is also present in Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and Sufi teachings.   

II.  WHAT IS THE EGO?

The ego is the voice in your head and the emotions that come from believing what the voice says.  Most people think the voice is who they are.  It becomes their sense of identity.  They can be described as being possessed by their egoistic mind.  

The ego always wants because its existence depends on you to generate egoistic thoughts.  Only briefly is the ego satiated.  All things pass away so the ego is worried about its survival.  The ego causes the thought patterns that create misery through fear, greed and the desire for power.  

Once you fully accept that all forms are impermanent, you can feel peaceful.  Awareness of the present moment is not part of the ego.  If you are comfortable not knowing who you are, then you don’t need to be somebody.   

Egoistic thoughts block recognition that love is oneness with the world.  Awakening is learning to be the awareness the sees the ego maintaining its identity as separate from others and from the world.  

The ego can see the present moment in only three ways

1. As a means to an end
2. As an obstacle to getting what it wants or
3. As the enemy

The ego maintains its existence by your identification with what you own, with your body, with your mental capacities, with membership in a group or with your perception of your role in your family or society.  Ego identification creates attachment to things and obsessive consumption.  The most fundamental identification is with your own thoughts.   

The egoistic mind is a product of the past.  Our story-selves worry about whether we have been good or bad.  This self is a habitual role, it is not the inner self that is pure awareness.  

This moment right now is the only thing that actual exists.

The past is a construct of the egoistic mind.

The future is a fantasy of the egoistic mind.

Only a presence in the now can free you of the ego. 

You can only be present right now, not yesterday, not tomorrow.  

What you perceive, think or feel are not who you are.  What remains, what lies underneath, is the consciousness within which perceptions come and go.  When you are aware that you are thinking, there is an awareness outside of thought   

III.  HOW YOU CAN SHIFT YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS

To end the pattern of unhappiness requires a fundamental choice:  Do I want peace more than I what my ego tells me I want?  

Do you want peace or drama?  There is something inside you that wants drama.  When you let something disturb your inner peace, you are saying that the something is more important than feeling peaceful and fulfilled.   

Freedom from ego identification brings creativity and love, even if only momentarily.  The process of dis-identification can be sudden or gradual.  Sometimes people come to the realization that they are not their thoughts by losing everything or being near death.  At the time of a loss there comes the opportunity to ask “Has the essence of who I am been diminished?”  The answer of course is “No.”   

But you don’t have to wait for a momentous event to experience peace and serenity.  These moments are fleeting but can become more common.  Yielding means inner acceptance to what is.  You are open to life without labeling events as good or bad.   

If you are identified with something, the threat of loss will make you upset or anxious.  Noticing this is the beginning of awareness:  Over time you will begin to sense that your essential identity is consciousness itself.  You essential identity is all pervasive, beyond form, and loving.   

What is it about a rural night sky or looking at the ocean that is so transcendental?  Perhaps we sense our own depth as akin to the vastness of space or the ocean.  A starry sky shows that our egoistic desires and unhappiness are trivial.  When we let go of ego, all that is left is a deep loving connection with the universe.  The same transcendental experience is available any moment that you are ready to accept it.   

True happiness, the joy of Being, can be found in simple, seeming unremarkable things:  The sound of a bird’s song, the trickle of a brook, by watching a child at play.  This is because happiness is not caused by external things or events.  When the ego is momentarily suspended, pure consciousness emerges.  

The primary purpose of your life is not on the outer level, on the level of forms.  Your state of your inner consciousness is more important than what you do or accomplish.  Doing flows out of being.   

You can honor and enjoy the things of the world without letting your ego define their significance.  If you can do this, you can participate in the dance of the universe without attachment to outcomes.  This can be a life without suffering or struggle.   

Over time you can become aware of egoistic thoughts.  You can recognize that these thoughts are not you.  Thinking gradually becomes the servant of your awareness, not the master.  You will see yourself getting irritated by something trivial and then just smile.  Everything is trivial compared to feeling connected to the universe and the people around you.   

When the egoistic thoughts or feelings arise, just breathe, just relax and the thoughts or feelings will pass.   

This is an exercise in inner body awareness which is a key to dis-identification.

Being aware of your breathing takes attention away from thinking and creates space for pure consciousness.  Breathing is the one body function that can be either autonomic or consciously controlled.  It is where the conscious and subconscious minds overlap  

As thoughts emerge just let them float by like drifting clouds, without judgment.  .  

Please close your eyes.  Take two or three conscious breaths.  [PAUSE]  Now see if you detect a subtle sense of aliveness that pervades your entire inner body.  [PAUSE]  Can you feel your body from within, so to speak?  Sense briefly specific parts of you body.  Feel you hands, then your arms, feet, and legs. [PAUSE]  Can you feel you abdomen, chest, neck and head?  What about your lips?  Is there life in them?  [PAUSE]  Now become aware of your inner body as a  whole.  [PAUSE]  You can come back to this feeling anytime you are feeling anxious or irritated.  [PAUSE]  Once you can feel your body, open your eyes, look around, and continue to feel your body at the same time.  In the future you may not need to close your eyes to feel your inner body.  

You can continue this practice as I continue to talk.   

Use this sense of inner space whenever you can remember to do it.  Yes, you can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.  When waiting for a stoplight, when pausing to look at a tree or someone you’re with, you can feel the aliveness within your body at the same time.  This kind of practice helps your consciousness stay in the now.   

IV.  SOME PRACTICES FOR BEGINNING YOUR AWAKENING

Over the next weeks and months watch for how your egoistic mind  frame or phrase a problem.  It is not correctly to say that you think.  Thinking is what happens to you.  You don’t say “I digest.”  So just sit back and watch the workings of your egoistic mind.  The stronger the ego is at a particular moment, the more you will perceive others are the source of your unhappiness.  

Even as you are become aware, you egoistic mind will still run games.  Don’t make yourself right and others wrong, this too is egoistic.  

To uphold the I-thought, the ego needs the opposite thought of “the other,” of the enemy.  The egoistic compulsion of complaining about others comes from this.  Every complaint is a little story that you believe.  Applying negative labels to people or situations is part of this pattern.  A grievance is a past event kept alive by compulsive thinking.  The only purpose of a grievance is to strengthen a sense of self.  This is ego.  Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that a grievance has no purpose  

Can you sense something in you that would rather be right than be at Peace  To say “Believe me, I know.”  or “Why don’t you believe me?”  is to be captive to egoistic thoughts.  The truth will eventually prove itself.  It needs no defense.  If you are vigorously defending an idea, you have become identified with the idea or cause.  In Zen they say: “Don’t’ seek the truth.  Just cease to cherish your opinions.”  

An alert accepting presence is the prerequisite for authentic relationships

To be the authentic you requires no belief or action.  It only requires an accepting awareness because an accepting awareness is your true self.   

Playing a role, as father, husband, etc. is not an authentic relationship.  When you play a role, you are unconscious.  The more identified you are with a role, the more unconscious you are. The roles you play are from the ego.  The ego always wants something, it doesn’t really care about others.  It doesn’t even care about you or your happiness.   

An inauthentic relationship is from the ego.  The ego is never satisfied.   

There are three primary states of an egoistic relationship:

1. wanting,
2. thwarted wanting (resentment, blaming, etc.) and
3. indifference.

This is the reason there are so many divorces.  

Even as you become more aware, at times you may have to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people.  You do not have to view them as evil or as the enemy, that is your ego talking.  It is not egoistic to ask the waiter to warm up soup that was served cold. Complaining about the waiter or the restaurant is egoistic.   

The ego patterns that you find most disturbing in others are likely the patterns that you don’t accept in yourself.  Don’t become ego-identified with your own dis-identification.  [pause]  If you think you are a better person than anyone, that is your ego talking.   

Non-reaction to the ego in others is a way of going beyond your own ego.  Just remember if you have an egoistic thought, it is not your essential self.  The same is true of others. 

New awarenesses can also bring uncertainty and feelings of insecurity.  With the ego no longer running the show, you may ask, “What should I do?”  Letting go of the need for certainty is part of letting go of egoistic thinking.  If you accept uncertainty, then fear transforms into increased aliveness, alertness and creativity.   

V.  WHAT IS OUR ROLE FOR THE PLANET?

Our role is to help protect the planet from our collective egos.  Our dysfunctional egoistic minds threaten the survival of the planet.  Only your presence in the Now can overcome obsessive consumption.   

Only by generating an accepting awareness can an increasing number of people save the planet.  Do not let your ego make you afraid to being special, of being different.  You are already different!  You are already enlightened.   Enlightened people do not need to belong to a group to define others as the enemy.   

One of the ways the ego seeks to survive is by having you identify with a group.  Collectives formed of unconscious egos will seek conflict.  The identity of the group depends on its otherness from other groups.  Ego-driven conflicts of us-against-them are more destructive than individual egos protecting themselves.  

Overcoming identification with religious theologies or nationalism is a basic premise of Tolle and Unitarian Universalism.  UUs can help spread the message of Eckhart Tolle and other enlightened people.  We can talk with others about these ideas.  Others don’t have to become UUs to be OK.  We can practice these ideas.  It will become increasingly clear that this is the way to overcome unhappiness.  As more people move beyond egoistic thoughts and emotions, enlightenment can become infectious.    

An accepting awareness does not mean being incapable of taking action or initiating change.  When the motivation comes from a level deeper than what the ego wants, the action will be calm and powerful.  Sorry, even though you are enlightened, you will still have to work at your job and do grocery lists.   

When action is possible or needed, your actions align with the being peaceful.  Saint Augustine said “Love and do what you will.”  For many people, increased awareness only changes the way they do things.  An external observer might not see much change, just less anxiety, stress and struggle in the doing.   

There are only three modes of awakened doing: 

1. Doing with acceptance;
2. Enjoying what you are doing; and
3. Enthusiastic doing. 

Because your true life’s purpose is being an accepting awareness, even if action is not possible, you can still be at peace.