Stillness Speaks

I just finished a book "Stillness Speaks" by Eckhart Tolle and its an exellent work.

EXCERPTS:
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.

Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely.

Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.

Complaining and reactivity are favorite mind patterns through which the ego strengthens itself. For many people, a large part of their mental-emotional activity consists of complaining and reacting against this or that. By doing this, you make others or a situation "wrong" and yourself "right". Through being "right", you feel superior, and through feeling superior, you strengthen your sense of self. In reality, of course, you are only strengthening the illusion of ego.

Can you observe those patterns within yourself and recognize the complaining voice in the head for what it is?

Reincarnation doesn't help you if in your next reincarnation you still don't know who you are.

How short-lived every human experience is, how fleeting our lives. Is there anything that is not subject to birth and death, anything that is eternal?

Consider this: if there were only one color, let us say blue, and the entire world and everything it is were blue, then there would be no blue. There needs to be something that is not blue so that blue can be recognized; otherwise, it would not "stand out", would not exist.

In the same way, does it not require something that is not fleeting and impermanent for the fleetingness of all thing to be recognized? In other words: if everything, including yourself, were impermanent, would you even know it? Does the fact that you are aware of and can witness the short-lived nature of all forms, including your own, not mean that there is something in you that is not subject to decay?

When you are twenty, you are aware of your body as strong and vigorous; sixty years later, you are aware of your body as weakened and old. Your thinking too may have changed from when you were twenty, but the awareness that knows your body is young or old or that your thinking has changed has undergone no change. That awareness is the eternal in you - consciousness itself. It is the formless One Life. Can you lose It? No, because you are It.

Eckhart Tolle, from Stillness Speaks

If you are interested this book can be purchased online or in stores or ordered from the library.

Sounds like a great book

luda wrote:Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.

Amazing this line fits me so well, this is something i have come to realize, this practice i have been trying to catch my thoughts and bring them back into the now.

Usually when i find my thoughts wandering i will pull my attention back by chanting the mantra AUM wherever i am. This seems to bring me back to the moment.

the wind sweeps me and carries me along the flow, where it brings me that is where i shall dwell, until it sweeps me off once again.

luda wrote:Reincarnation doesn't help you if in your next reincarnation you still don't know who you are.

Couldn't be more true, i was thinking about this earlier. People say many times in their lives that they only live once so why shouldn't they have fun. Whether one believes in reincarnation or not wouldn't it be wise to try to Live for some higher purpose?. Why waste the time that is given. Make the best of the time Right Now. Be yourself or just be different, do what you have always felt compelled to do before all the material influence.

luda wrote:How short-lived every human experience is, how fleeting our lives. Is there anything that is not subject to birth and death, anything that is eternal?

Our skin suits will rot once it is shed from the soul/spirit it is used as a vehicle for us to Awaken Spiritually The only thing that is eternal is our souls/spirit which is energy/conciousness. Live your life for a greater cause.

luda wrote:Consider this: if there were only one color, let us say blue, and the entire world and everything it is were blue, then there would be no blue. There needs to be something that is not blue so that blue can be recognized; otherwise, it would not "stand out", would not exist.

Without suffering would there be compassion?

Thanks Luda

Many Blessings

sounds like and awesome book thanks for sharing