“In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real. “That’s dangerous,” says the ego. “You’ll get hurt. You’ll become vulnerable.” What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.”
REVIEW
Who would have thought? It's like I've been picking my nose and hibernating all these years, procrastinating instead of activating like hornets ready for an attack on humankind.
It seems I'm back. I know, it's only been a year but, wow! What an unbelievable year 2022 was.
First off, at the beginning of 2022 I had had enough; of the rat race, of writing, of graphic designing and of being alone, after a divorce, in a huge house with no one to keep me company but myself. Cry me a river. Seriously though, loneliness is a killer like no other. It slowly eats away at the core of one's existence until there's only crumbs of dust of one's former self.
I struggled to complete my novel "The Sky in His Eyes", and I was exhausted after spending six months researching then writing and rewriting, revising and editing a book that only received two reviews. My health went south. I even peed depression and believe me it isn't a good color.
Instead of cussing over my negative and depressed existence, I thought the best way to handle loneliness would be to explore it. And I sure did. I booked a lonely holiday in Cape Town where I have a couple of friends and at the airport I bought a book. YAY! I bought a book! A real book with pages and the smell of ink. Not just any book, and not the bible.
It's a book wrtitten by a remarkable man by the name of Eckhart Tolle called "The Power of Now". It has a red cover, unlike the one featured below, and the tagline reads: "Awakening to your life's purpose."
The first line of the book reads: "Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise; the first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun."
A beautiful first line, maybe not the best, but beautiful at any rate. I wish I could write such stunning first lines. You can use your imagination and see that flower opening up amidst a sea of green.
That first flower. It died soon after. Then centuries later, a critical threshold was reached and more flowers sprang up until our planet became what it is today and flowers have become an "essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species..."
Us.
What's my point, you ask.
Simple. Flowers had no direct connection to the survival of our species, but as we evolved, flowers became the first thing our species came to value. Inspiration. Beauty. Jesus said we should contemplate flowers and learn from them how to live. Buddha stared at a single flower the whole time whilst giving a sermon and the result was Zen. Tolle's point is this: seeing beauty in a flower awakens humans to the beauty of their own innermost being, their true nature.
I was hooked and, unlike a fish, I didn't struggle for release. I wanted more of Tolle's insights. And boy I got a shitload.
I won't go into the book too deeply because I hope you'll go out and buy it after knowing what it did for me. Suffice to say, I came to realize this; you cannot change the past, you can change the future, but it all happens in the now and that's when I met the I, the me, the isness of me.
2022 was a year of inner conflict for me. I learned to accept that and my awareness of myself and my surroundings shifted and with each shift, I felt that awareness deep down in my soul.
There is nothing more important in our lives than the now. Not the past, nor the future is as important. Our past made us who we are. Religion, politics, the stuff teacher taught and warned against, the stuff ma and pa taught and uncles and aunts and siblings and lovers. These teachings formed our ego, the personality. I won't tolerate rude behaviour, but that's because I was taught at a young age and throughout my existence that being a rude person is wrong. Rude people don't have that kind of thinking because they have a different ego, a different past.
Tomorrow's future hasn't happened.
“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.”
Ego exists also through a pain-body.
2022 was filled with such a lot of emotional pain for me and everytime I thought things like, oh why oh why did this happen to me, I fed my pain body and it loves negative thoughts. Thoughts feed our ego and pain body all the time non-stop.
And that's because we don't take time to stop and smell the roses.
We don't stop to appreciate the moment, the now.
We don't stop to affirm the now.
We don't stop to acknowledge our surroundings in the now.
During those three weeks in Cape Town I did not put that book down. I devoured every word. I came to appreciate my flaws. I got real with myself. Stopped blaming myself for a divorce that was mutual but left me emotionally dark. I came to appreciate my vulnerabilities. Started to experience joy, happiness and self worth. Now I appreciate my inner resistance to certain things like drug abuse, and challenges like writing another book. I am me as I am. I feel me and I see me and although I lost the love of my life, love is omnipresent. I am forgiveness. I trust.
I came to understand, through Tolle, that the subconscious mind brings up all beliefs, sub-beliefs, and microbeliefs. All of them are forms of resistance with negative feelings, wanting, expectations. And there is nothing wrong in that because our consciousness will bring up all our belief structures and allow us to feel it in our bodies emotionally.
I learnt that as much as I dislike self-doubt because it impedes on my growth into awareness, I also like self-doubt because it helps me trust my self-worth. That as much as I resist self-doubt because it makes me disrespect myself and others, it also helps me communicate better with people who have the same problems. Self-doubt hinders my ability to create, but it also forces me to go the extra mile while creating. That although self-doubt distances me from everyone and everything around me, I like self-doubt because it makes me re-evaluate things.
The most important thing I found with doubting myself is that although I close myself off from everything and everyone, self-doubt also brings with it the ability to close previous chapters of my life.
I learnt that not only does ego dislike suffering, it also produces suffering and we try to hide from the resultant feelings in our pain body, but we shouldn't hide. We should face the pain, let it come, then let it go and don't dwell on it.
"Go. Bring yourself into the Now, the present moment, where problems do not exist. It is here that you find your joy. And here that you will embrace your true self. Finally, it is here you discover that you are already complete and perfect." - https://themysticcat.com/online-shop/shop-all/bookshop/books/inspirational-self-empowerment/the-power-of-now-used/
If you've read this entire article, now is the time to breathe.
There you go. Eyes wide open.
Now Go Get Tolle's Book.
"I'm not perfect, but I'm worth it."
"Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming."
"Learn to listen to your partner in an open, non-defensive way."
"Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself."
"Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking — all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant."
"Giving space to others — and to yourself — is vital. Love cannot flourish without it."
"When you have removed the two factors that are destructive to relationships — when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions — and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship. "
"Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.”
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