Question from a blog reader:
Do you remember the comment that Eckhart Tolle made to
himself that triggered his awakening? "I
can no longer live with myself", or words to that effect. Well I haven't
hit bottom, but sometimes I feel as
if I'm descending (in the past I've had a few mini awakenings, or "peak
experiences"; but they were
short lived, & recently I feel that I'm regressing, e.g . too much anger,
irritability, judgement withdrawal,
etc. Like Eckhart, I don't like living myself. I’m not suicidal—but I don't
want to add any more negative karma.
My Answer: You might want to reexamine that passage
from Eckhart's book. When he said, "I can no longer live with
myself," what triggered his awakening was the sudden, powerful insight
into the false duality and absurdity of that very thought! (WHO could
no longer tolerate WHOM?) He instantly saw that he was one and whole and
NOT two incompatible "selves."
This brings to mind an exchange between Ramana
Maharshi and a visitor:
Visitor: "How do I rise from my lower
self and attain to my higher self?"
Ramana: "How many selves are there? Is
not the Self only One?"
And it reminds me of another line, by Rumi:
"Suffering is its own cure."
Make peace with samsara.[1]
Make friends with all your parts. In this life, only awareness avails. War
doesn't work. Combating any aspect of the body-mind (getting angry about your
anger; feeling irritable about your irritability, judging yourself for being
judgmental, etc.) is not helpful. Trying to get free is
entrapping.
Live with confidence in natural, spontaneous liberation. Simply allow experience (the body-mind) to be just as it is in
the moment. Surrender and relax into the body-mind as it is presently
appearing. Do not generate stress through opposition to experience, or the
body-mind, or ego. Let the body-mind flow on as it will.
First, surrender all stressful intentions to
control, manipulate, change, escape, diminish, maintain, expand, or otherwise
confront the experiential states of the body-mind. Let physical states come and
stay or go; let mental states come and stay or go; let emotional states come
and stay or go. Just be aware of whatever is arising, and thereby, SURRENDER --- not by an
effort to relax, but by allowing experience to be whatever it is. Surrender
by being surrender—spacious and non-reactive like the sky.
Then, via this equanimity, feel into Whole Life and be transformed from the
heart by that Feeling-Remembrance.
It is harmful, not helpful, to punish
yourself. Don’t un-love yourself with anger and disdain, and don’t depress
yourself by clinging to “wrongdoings” (“rubbing your nose in
it”). Allow the Radiant Life Power, rather than self-possessed effort and
self-war, to be the Way whereby the body-mind is spontaneously changed.
Consider this: You already depend utterly on
what is more vast than what you call "I". We may as well use
religious terms here: You depend entirely upon Grace. Okay, then let Grace have
its way with you! Abandon the struggle. Let the same power that grows your
cells and beats your heart be itself in you, and through you, and as you. (As
Krishna instructed Arjuna: "Abandon all dharmas and resort alone to
Me.")
Oh, and by the way: It took me 22 years of
active seeking/struggling to finally abandon my own self-effort and
self-wrestling. So, it's not easy to be easy!
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