Chapter 7: Finding Who You Truly Are

In Chapter 7 of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, author Eckhart Tolle suggests that people discover who they truly are after a process of discovering who they are not. Knowing who you are not typically happens after a loss, such as the death of a loved one, a loss in your social position, a divorce, or some other loss where there is great suffering. While you may feel that part or all of you has died along with your loss, acceptance of your loss will bring about peace.

Your loss is really a story that author Tolle refers to as a tapestry. When you accept your loss, (as opposed to resisting it by complaining or re-telling it over and over again, causing more suffering), you can begin to see the light behind that tapestry. In that light, there is an emptiness that is left by the loss of form. There is peace to be found in that space. In that space, you will discover who you truly are.

For many years, I believed that my identity was determined by the many roles I was playing in life: as a mother, a wife, an only child, and as a professional career woman. Then the suffering came. My marriage was falling apart so I overly emphasized my roles as a mother and as a successful career woman to compensate. Then my father was dying of cancer, which further intensified my role as an only child and the emotional issues I had with my mother. Soon I was laid off from my job and found myself eventually a thousand miles away from my children because that was where I finally found a job. Shortly thereafter, my father died. I was living in New York City and a witness to the terror attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. I spent two years struggling and fighting in a very contentious custody battle in the courts with my ex-husband, with the result being that I took on a new label: that of "non-custodial mom." The label made me ashamed for awhile as I cared about what others thought about me because of it.

All of this is to say that I suffered a great deal throughout an intensified two-year period. Looking back, I can now see that I made it worse by telling and re-telling “my story,” for feeling sorry for myself and my children for being a “non-custodial mom,” and for the things I did or didn’t do when I left Iowa for New York. There were many regrets, many tears, many prayers begging for forgiveness, yet no forgiveness for myself.

But somewhere in all of that suffering, I had an “aha” moment. I could see the light on the other side of the tapestry. I started to find peace there. I realized that no amount of being upset, sad, resentful or bitter about my situation was going to change things. I learned to accept my situation, slowly, but surely. As I did so, it got easier. I forgave myself. I forgave my ex-husband. I made amends with my mother just in time before she developed dementia.

Then one day I realized that I could be happy, irregardless of my situation. It has only gotten better and better since.

Eckhart Tolle has suggested that the way to know if we are developing spiritually is to see how we react to situations or deal with the troubling situations and emotions which arise in our lives. This is how I can see the progress I have made. While there is still much growing to do, I am happy in knowing that these roles do not define me. So I, too, know who I am not and I'm having fun discovering who I truly am.

The Pain-Body: What We Carry With Us (Chapter 5)

In Chapter 5 of “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” author Eckhart Tolle states, “The energy field of old but still very much alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body.” --page 142

Our pain-bodies are the energy of our past hurts: the bumps, bruises and scars of life that we never really dealt with fully in the moment. The result is that we carry that pain in an energy field within us.

We all experience pain in our lives and pain-bodies are both individualistic and collective. Whether that pain is from individual circumstances or part of a collective pain because of our identity with a particular group in history that has suffered, negative things do happen to people.

Some people and groups have heavy pain-bodies and it is precisely these people who have a better chance to awaken spiritually than people with lighter pain-bodies.

Most people probably do not want to recognize that there is something within them that seeks negativity, pain and drama. But the reality is that for many, negativity is an addiction. Pain-bodies feed on negative emotion.

No where are our pain-bodies more obvious than in our relationships. Often each partner will re-enact their drama frequently. The pain-body knows exactly which buttons to push in your partner, and it feeds on this drama in personal relationships.

So how do you recognize your pain-body? Becoming aware of your pain-body is the first step in diffusing it. However, it is not often easy to see the pain-body in ourselves, so it is often much easier to see the pain-body in another.

How do you strive to continually diffuse your pain-body? Author Tolle suggests that we must constantly strive to be present. Instead of being “caught up in the mental movie making” of our thoughts and emotions from the past or concerns for the future, he says that we can learn to not add to our pain-bodies by becoming as present as possible in all situations.

It doesn’t matter if these negative thoughts and emotions are from years ago or just minutes ago: continually practicing being present diminishes our pain-bodies because in doing so, “our very Presence then becomes our identity.”

Pain-bodies will fight hard to stay alive, so you may be thinking how could you let go of past hurts or collective suffering? Some may argue that we have to remember; that it is part of our collective identity as women or minorities, for example. Alternatively, individual pain-bodies may heavily identify with traumatic things that happened in our childhood. While there is nothing wrong with remembering, there is a difference if we define ourselves by our suffering. This is the pain-body feeding upon itself and in doing so, the energy of all that suffering becomes our identity. So the challenge is to move away from defining ourselves by our past and we do this by becoming present.

Consider this: “Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now: and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”--page 141