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Hello Everyone,
I was once again astonished by Monday's night class on the ego. After ten years of attending almost every teaching session of Eckhart's, I was yet again surprised by his explanation of the ego, what it is and how it operates. His words help us understand the workings of the egoic mind, so that it can no longer trick us into identifying with it. As you may know for yourself, the ego is clever and cunning. A considerable degree of awareness is required so that we can recognize the ego, not only in others but also in ourselves. The awareness of course does not consist of words, but emanates from the stillness behind the words. Eckhart's answer to Oprah's question at the beginning of the evening, "If we are not our thoughts, then who are we?" was: "There is no conceptual answer to who we are beyond our thoughts...we are the formless consciousness..."
That awareness of the formless consciousness is what we may call ‘awareness being aware of itself.' In other words, we are now not only conscious of thoughts and sense perceptions, but we are also conscious of being conscious. We then sense the great mystery within and live life unencumbered by definitions. That is what Eckhart calls, "formless consciousness," and that is true inner peace.
This may appear esoteric or confusing only if you try to understand it through the thinking mind; which is of course impossible. This is why the essence of Zen is realized, as they say, through "No mind." Only through stillness, the gap between thoughts, can you discover the eternal formless dimension - God within. Every thought that you completely believe in (i.e. identify with) will lead you away from that dimension of depth within yourself. As Eckhart says, "existence means to stand out." Every thought form "stands out," calls for attention, says, ‘look at me!' And of course, the temptation is to give our whole attention to the form. When our attention is fixated only on the form and none on the formless dimension of consciousness, we loose touch with being, our true essence. For those who are comfortable with theistic terms, we could say that we have separated ourselves from God or have "placed other gods before God." The moment separation from God happens, unhappiness and suffering arise.
Unhappiness keeps you asleep, spiritually speaking, but eventually a point is reached where it has the opposite effect: it will begin to wake you up. Any form of suffering will either draw you more deeply into unconsciousness or it will make you conscious.
Smtan04 wrote, "Eckhart suggested that we make friends with the present moment.
What if you are being physically assaulted or violated? For example, a woman at a domestic violence shelter asked me, ‘How can I be friends with the present moment the very moment I am being raped or abused by my partner?'"
In other words: how can we make friends with the present moment in the midst of violence? The expression making friends with the present moment means to come into alignment internally with the now instead of putting up psychological resistance, which the thinking mind does habitually. It often happens that, if the present moment is truly threatening, the thinking mind actually ceases by itself and something else takes over: either an instinctive reaction (fight or flight) or even a state of heightened alertness (presence) that causes you to take appropriate action. For example, there are many reports by people who experienced this in war situations, or just before an accident was about to occur. So I would say, in any true emergency situation one of three things will happen: instinct takes over, presence takes over, or you are paralyzed by fear. If you practice being present in everyday life (make friends with the present moment), it is more likely that presence will take over in an emergency. It is also likely that you will find yourself walking out of situations or relationships that are potentially violent.
Occasionally, people have had an out of the body experience during a violent act. They experienced watching their bodies being attacked, but felt detached from what was happening. That is to say, they felt that their essence was not the body. Sometimes, this resulted in a shift in consciousness and disidentification from the physical form (body) as well as the psychological form (ego).
Crdodson remarks, "Practicing presence is helpful, but often an incredible emotional pain washes over me. I can step out of it, but it returns..."
If you are aware of the painbody (old accumulated emotional wounds) as it is coming on, you are not completely unconscious. The painbody cannot survive for long in the light of intense presence. It undergoes a transmutation. This is the meaning of the term "refiner's fire" and "transmuting base metal into gold." On the other hand, if there is no awareness of the painbody, you become identified with it, that is to say unconscious, spiritually speaking. Some years ago, occasionally I would have a painbody attack. Although I had some awareness of it approaching; it wasn't enough to transmute the old emotion. Then Eckhart would tell me, "The only thing left to do is to ride it out." And sure enough, the painbody went back into its dormant state; until the next time. As awareness increases, the painbody begins to dissolve. There is no way we can know when this will happen, just as we don't know when we will fully awaken. As the saying goes, ‘the apple falls from the tree when it's ready.' Have faith. Trust in the process. The evolution of human consciousness is happening whether we peacefully go along with it, or even if we resist it. In the latter case, suffering becomes your teacher. Some people have to be dragged into the kingdom of heaven kicking and screaming.
What happened to Joycebro65 was very important. She became aware of a negative thought and didn't believe in it. She didn't go there, didn't get drawn in by the thought. What really matters is this arising of awareness. Congratulations. I am very happy for you. Whether or not you chose this is of secondary importance and is only a question of perspective. Eckhart said something like this: when it looks to you as if you are choosing to be present, what is happening is that presence has chosen to manifest through you. And yet the perspective that you can choose to be present is more helpful than the one that says, ‘there is nothing that I can do.'
Tkdonovan writes about feelings of guilt. "If you've done things in your life that you knew at the time you had the power to do differently and have caused others pain, how do you just erase those guilty emotions?.... Are you supposed to go make amends when you awaken? Or do you just forgive yourself and move on?"
The cause of suffering that humans inflict on each other (and on themselves) is unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is identification with form (ego) and an illusory sense of separation from others and even from yourself. Whatever you did or failed to do in the past was a reflection of your degree of unconsciousness. The ego loves guilt because it gives you a strong sense of identity. But an identity derived from unconscious actions in the past is illusory. We could say that forgiveness is to recognize evil for what it is: a reflection of human unconsciousness. When you recognize this, you forgive, that is to say, as Eckhart puts it, "You don't make an identity for yourself (guilt) or others (blame) out of the dysfunction of the ego. And so compassion arises and you forgive yourself and others. Jesus words on the cross say it all: "Forgive them for they know not what they do." Eckhart says that if Jesus had spoken these words in our time he would have said, "...for they are unconscious." And then instead of contributing to the unconscious suffering, you heal people in situations by your very presence.
In closing I would like to leave you with some words that Eckhart said at last Monday's session with Oprah... "The Now is the hidden exit out of the ego."
Be well...be in peace,
Kim Eng
© 2008, Kim Eng
. A side effect is that I lost interest in my work. I enjoy so much more sitting in silence with people and see the miracle at work. Now I'm faced with a new challenge. I can't do my work anymore. If I concentrate very hard on complicated issues (mind based structures) I get serious headache with can last for weeks.
in knowing that he does.
I beginning to understand the whole idea of being present, but i have a question.... I have 2 children...a 3 year old and a 10 month old. When they get sick, for example, and get fevers and you just see them hurting and not feeling well, how do you go about not feeling so hurt by seeing them sick. Sometimes when they are sick, I wish i could take away their pain, but ofcourse that is impossible. So how do I go about accepting the present moment and still be happy without feeling so unhappy because they are "suffering"?