Everyday Bliss For Women In Leadership

It’s a beautiful and longer clip of Tolle teaching the basic premise that your perception of Reality™ is not in fact Reality™ itself.  Luxuriate in Presence as you watch….

…Or, "Pain-bodies On Parade"…

Here is the first of several report posts on Eckhart Tolle’s teachings in San Rafael, CA. This first one concerns environment.

I am not a fully enlightened being. Let me preface the below by saying this, and that I regard what appear to be other people as parts of myself and myself as part of them. Everything around me is a constant and consistent teaching in surrendering to life as it arises, letting forms come and go as they will and being in Bliss with what is. Last week was a powerful, deep teaching in this, and a poignant part of it was my environment. 

That said…

Part of my spiritual teachings were in a genre known as Feri, taught by a man who considered himself a Hawai’ian huna priest. (here’s a link to a great mind-map of the Huna way) Hawai’ian locals, he taught, call while people "ha’ole" meaning "without the breath of God" due to the caucasian lack of skin color…at least as the indigenous Hawai’ians saw it.  Imagine, a whole race of ghost-like people come to your bright and sunny shores where all around you have a nice healthy tan - you’d think they didn’t have any God inside them too. And when the visitors acted like untutored children and desecrated sacred sites without thought or apology, well, call that corroborating evidence.

In the Hawai’i of today as in the California spiritual community, the word ha’ole has come to mean "those who don’t get it and are acting like imbeciles". It was unfortunate that more than a fair sprinkling of these met Eckhart Tolle in San Rafael this past week.

Tolle’s teachings were as always, inspiring, as always, relevant to a wide bandwidth of people. But since the Oprahfication of his message, the tourist element has been brought into play. Mind you, I’m as big a fan of Oprah bringing A New Earth to the world as anyone else. I think it’s a beautiful undertaking and may well be the best thing she has done yet to further the cause of peace and enlightenment in the world. Brava Oprah, for what you’re doing. You go, girl.

However, association with "Oprah, the brand" is known to produce a predictable array of side-effects. Mass runs on products Oprah endorses. Sudden over-subscription to the trainings and workshops of those she favors. Instant celebrity status conferred upon those fortunate enough to be interviewed by her. These are all to be expected. …

Hey there fellow Stillness fans. It’s not like Words can really capture an occasion like hearing Eckhart Tolle lecture, but I’ll try. I’m leaving in a few minutes for San Rafael, where we’ll hear Eckhart tonight from 8 - 9:30pm and Saturday from 1:30 - 4:30pm at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium. If you’re there and find me, we’ll meditate together.

At right is a picture I found on Tolle’s website of him looking even more puckish than usual with a calico mittie. He often speaks of animals, cats in particular, as being more aware than we are. He once said the most accomplished Zen master he ever knew was a cat, so it’s not suprising to see him with one. What mutual delight on the faces of these two friends.

Here’s what the event says about itself: "…Now you are invited to experience this visionary teacher in a live, face-to-face encounter. Here is a rare opportunity to be drawn into the "spaciousness that words can only point to" by the vibrant, conscious presence of Eckhart Tolle himself."

I’ve heard about the effects of an evolved spiritual teacher conferring shaktipat, spontaneous awakening and initiation, by merely sitting in the teacher’s presence. Where I have seen most reference to this is in what is said about the spiritual teacher Amma - the Hugging Saint as she is called. I have heard this said of Tolle as we. Without anticipation, am looking forward to feeling what a room full of people being in presence together will feel like.

It’s extraordinary how I’ve come to this feeling of not looking forward, yet taking all the actions I need to take to be there. An immense clearing occured this week that lasted four days. Before the clearing the mind was busybusybusy with monkey brained chatterings. As I reach today and am marvelling at how resilient the pain-body can be, yet also how easy to take out, once you know what it’s doing, a flushing of inattentiveness seems to have happened.

Presence is one of many states that I move in and out of as I continue coming to awareness of my own pain-body. To be constantly in that state must be truly miraculous. I will get back to you later on being in the presence of one who is there most of the time is like. 

One of the most important of the Bliss Keys that I’ve discovered is:

The German metaphysicist Eckhart Tolle speaks about our collected personal negative experiences - fear, anger, pain, sadness, guilt and the like, operating as a form of consciousness inside of us. He calls this collection of experience the "painbody". As humans, we are somewhat addicted to paying attention to negativity. When we constantly attend to our painbody, it prevents us from being fully Present. Added to our own personal negativity, we also have that of our immediate family lines and also, of the culture we we’re born into and the one in which we currently live. Sum all that up and the energy the painbody consumes can be a hellishly powerful force.

The painbody feeds upon negative input, and its existence is the reason we can sometimes experience very miserable lives.

Those joining me in the 12 Keys to Bliss Program will learn more about the Painbody, how it operates and how to move past it. You can still join us! Click here for more info  (opens in a new window)

Tolle and other spiritual authors point to the quality of having a fairly large painbody (most Westerners do) as being "compacted" or "compressed". This always makes me think of those trash compacter machines back in the 1980’s. Remember those? They took a whole houseful of trash and compacted it into a cube less than a quarter of its original size.

Imagine being only a quarter of YOUR original size. I’m barely 5"5" in stocking feet. If I were a quarter of my size, I would be less than a foot and a half tall (or, from 162.5cm to 43 cm for the decimal crowd).

Are there days when you FEEL as small as this? As if the weight of the world were bowing you down to the ground? This is the PHYSICAL SENSATION of Compaction - give thanks for this feeling! It is a powerful tool that will lead you towards Bliss.

How? By showing you the opposite of what you really want. Simply flip this state on its back and take a look at the flipside. This is what you DO want. Straighten your shoulders, elongate your upper spine and allow it to pull your entire body upward as you think about what you do want. Engage your abdominal muscles until you feel how strong you really are.

Think about it…