THE BEING OR THE PRESENCE -- PART 2

Then Tolle says – give up defining yourself to others. You won’t die. You will come to life, instead. And don’t be concerned how others define you. If they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. As soon as you are trying to be this or that, you are playing a role. “Just be yourself” is a good advice, says Tolle, but it can be misleading. The mind will come in and will develop some kind of strategy: “How can I be myself?” You can be anything you like within limits, but to be brief, Tolle suggests: If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what’s left is who you are – the Being behind the human, “a field of pure potentiality” (my quotes here imply that I heard this also from another prominent guro, Deepak Chopra) rather than something that is already defined. It’s the Being behind the human that is the Presence we feel when we are in deep meditation or preferably when meditation has become a flowing contemplation in our ordinary life and we see the sacred in everything we do as in washing dishes, clearing one's desk, or taking out the garbage, preparing dinner even if you are just phoning Jollibee to deliver the fried chicken because you are tired of your own cooking (give me an emoticon image), hehehe
or when meeting any living form, especially to me, flowers and butterflies, kittens and puppies, and smile in sweet silence.

Then Tolle continues: In a wider sense of the word, the ego itself is pathological no matter what forms it takes. The Greek in ancient times used it to describe a condition of disease which is derived from pathos which means suffering. The Hindu sages call it dukkha, a word which sounds like a Tagalog or Pilipino word referring to a state of poverty consciousness in people who nurture anger and resentment towards a certain unsatisfactory situation, and so they submit to suffering as if fated. To me, it’s not far-fetched to suggest that dukkha is a position of the ego when it cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation of and reaction to that situation. You might say,
“What a dreadful day,” without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction to it, and the emotion that is created by that reaction. In Shakespeare’s words: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” What is more, Tolle says, suffering or negativity is often misperceived by the ego as pleasure because up to a point the ego strengthens itself through it.


THE PATHOLOGICAL EGO

When possessed by such negative states as anger or resentment – you would see that your ego is enormously strengthened in its position of “rightness” by increasing your sense of separateness or by emphasizing the “otherness” of others, and creating a seemingly unassailable fortress-like mental position of your being “right.” And both extremes of feelings can create this seemingly unassailable mental position when they are suffering from negativities such as anger and resentment. If you are able to observe the pathological changes that take place inside your body when possessed by such negative states, how they adversely affect the functions of the heart, the digestive and immune system, and other bodily functions, it would be enormously clear that such states are indeed pathological, are forms of karmic suffering and not pleasure. A well- known study has been made by the medical world that the cause of cancer is largely due to embedded emotional negative states. It appears that healthy cells can get very sick under such an unhappy psychological climate.


Whenever you are in a negative state, Tolle explains, there is something in you that wants the negativity that perceives it as pleasurable, or believes it will give you what you want. Otherwise, who would want to hang on to negativity, make themselves and others miserable, and create disease in the body?

If in the midst of negativity you are able to realize “At this moment I am creating suffering for myself “it will be enough to raise you above the limitations of conditional egoic states and reactions you will be amazed at the infinite possibilities that open up to you when you have awareness – other vastly more intelligent ways of handling any situation come to you particularly if you happen to be the top leader of the republic, and you want to raise the GDP of its economic growth to prove you are truly competent in your job.

You will be able to release your unhappiness the moment you realize it as unintelligent. Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever but it is not intelligent. You may think you are talented and clever, but cleverness is not intelligent, as it is selfish. It pursues its own goals by self-interest, and it is extremely short-sighted. Based on his cosmically-inspired deep insights and multi-dimensional study of human nature, Eckhart Tolle considers most politicians and business people clever. Even street-smart. Very few among them are intelligent.
Whatever is attained through cleverness is short-lived and always turns to be very self-defeating, he declares. Cleverness divides people; intelligence includes.


NEW EARTH, NEW HEAVEN

A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all, concludes Tolle in his book, A New Earth. What did Jesus tell his disciples? “Heaven is right here in the midst of you.” Jesus makes a prediction in the Sermon on the Mount that a few people understood up till now. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land.” In the modern version of the Bible, “meek” is translated as humble. What does it mean that the meek or humble shall inherit the land?

The meek are the egoless. They are those who have Awakened to their essential true nature in consciousness, and recognize that essence in all “others,” all life-forms. They have made the important journey of transcending Ego to attain Essence. The Being, the Presence behind the human form. These awakened ones live in a surrendered state and Now feel their oneness with the whole of humanity and the Source, the Presence. They embody the awakened consciousness that is changing the old ways of the world in order for them to become new. This is what Jesus meant by “they shall inherit the earth, the New Earth.”



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