Dear Steven Pinker: on language, concepts and beyond.

Dear Steven Pinker

Thanks for a very enjoyable lecture.  (17mins 41 secs)

You clearly know more about language than I will ever want to know!  

My problem is with what I sense is an assumption beneath the lecture.

To me the assumption feels something like this.  Human ‘internality’ is mind. Mind is concepts.  Concepts are very closely related to items of language.  

An alternative is this – internality is conciousness and movements in consciousness.  Perhaps ‘heart-mind’, ‘xin’ in Chinese is a better label – so that we don’t pin feelings to inferiority and inferiority to particular groups. e.g. women or ‘new men’.  

Heart-mind itself can be seen much deeper than concepts or feelings – the stillness beyond the agitation of the mind as in Tolle’s  ‘Stillness Speaks‘

Perhaps then we could say that ultimately language is the means by which we (might/could/should) come to understand that human reality is beyond language?

New slant on having, knowing, being and doing

It’s always great when a new idea bursts in your mind – or simply a new slant that puts in focused place long-held but vaguer ideas.

 

This for me was such an idea;

 

‘What you do is what you you’ve got’.

 

It came from here;

 

 

 

With Eckhart Tolle however I would say that having, knowing, being and doing have more than complex interactions, they have the context of silence – from which their truths arise.

 

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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human -

through our caring our creativity and our criticality –

developed via service to the communities to which we belong.

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the

PhD. Summaries are HERE

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On this site there are 1000+ ideas that you can put to work straight away.

“Why not use the SEARCH, CATGORIES or INDEX to find the ideas for you?”

What’s the difference between spirituality and religion?

What's the difference between spirituality and religion?

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How do you answer the question above?

Below is how far I have got with this issue.

Spirituality is how we relate to the unknown and unknowable – to Ultimate reality – and the meaning and motivation we derive therefrom.

Our worldview, as a consequence, is how we ‘read’ the world. Our worldview includes that of which are conscious, plus that which derives from enculturation.  Becoming more fully conscious of Oneness, and acting accordingly, is our purpose.

Religion is the agreed set of relationships, teachings and customs held in common with any religious group of which one has membership.

Progress in spirituality is measured by regularly bringing oneself to account – in relation to the standards of your spirituality, world-view and religious group/s (if any).

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Etymological issues:

The English word “religion” is derived from the Middle English “religioun” which came from the Old French “religion.” It may have been originally derived from the Latin word “religo” which means “good faith,” “ritual,” and other similar meanings. Or it may have come from the Latin “religãre” which means “to tie fast.”

Doing your own research:

A very good starting point is provided by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.  See HERE

The definitions I like best from this source are;

George Hegel: “the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind.”

Paul Tillich: “Religious is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern”

Others are;

The Religious Tolerance group tell us that David Carpenter has collected and published a list of definitions of religion, including:

Anthony Wallace: “a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man or nature.”

Hall, Pilgrim, and Cavanagh: “Religion is the varied, symbolic expression of, and appropriate response to that which people deliberately affirm as being of unrestricted value for them.”

Karl Marx: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Don Swenson defines religion in terms of the sacred: “Religion is the individual and social experience of the sacred that is manifested in mythologies, ritual, ethos, and integrated into a collective or organization.”

Paul Connelly also defines religion in terms of the sacred and the spiritual: “Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of  the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses.”

He defines sacred as: “The sacred is a mysterious manifestation of power and presence that is experienced as both primordial & transformative, inspiring awe & rapt attention. This is usually an event that represents a break or discontinuity from the ordinary, forcing a re-establishment or recalibration of perspective on the part of the experiencer, but it may also be something seemingly ordinary, repeated exposure to which gradually produces a perception of mysteriously cumulative significance out of proportion to the significance originally invested in it.”

He further defines the spiritual as: “The spiritual is a perception of the commonality of mindfulness in the world that shifts the boundaries between self and other, producing a sense of the union of purposes of self and other in confronting the existential questions of life, and providing a mediation of the challenge-response interaction between self and other, one and many, that underlies existential questions.”

My final question – “Why are there so many religious intolerance groups?”

To read the full article by the Religious Tolerance group go HERE

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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –

through our caring our creativity and our criticality –

developed via service to the communities to which we belong.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the

PhD. Summaries are HERE

An open letter to all who recognize Oneness

 

Dear Fellow Travellers

 

1) Like your lives my life, (in a modest way), has (for the last 45 years), been dedicated to;

 

‘the advancement of education in the consideration of the basic unity of all religions, in particular by the provision of courses to provide an understanding of the relationship of man to the universe, the earth, the environment and the society he lives in, to Reality and to God.’

 

and right now the global and local opportunities, and dangers, strike me as unparalleled.

 

2) The great challenge seems to me to concern ‘the how’ of getting wider acceptance of Oneness and oneness as in Perennial Philosophy and the The Golden Rule – raised consciousness that will positively affect decision-making in all of the vital arenas of human concern.

 

3) A great shift in consciousness is taking place.

 

The great shift in consciousness is evidenced by two events.

Firstly in just the last few years what was esoteric is now open and freely available to to all.

 

Secondly millions are responding – in some way shape or form.

 

I have in mind especially the work of Ken Wilber, Karen Armstrong and most recently Eckhart Tolle.

 

Tolle’s writing is highly accessible – in the UK most Sun and Daily Mirror readers could handle it.

 

Of course functional literacy and level of consciousness and not directly correlated! But eleven million had by Week 3 tuned in to Tolle’s course run by Oprah Winfrey – see HERE

 

….. Oprah went further with Eckhart Tolle than she has ever gone with a previous author picked for her book club. She chose to present, with Tolle, a 10-week series of “webinars” – online seminars – with one chapter of the book (which she puts on the bedside table of all of her guest rooms) discussed each week. In the first webinar, transmitted on 3 March, Tolle led Winfrey and the millions of viewers who logged on in several different countries in silent meditation; viewers were then encouraged to submit questions to Tolle via Skype. By the third week, 11 million people were logging on.

 

This surely has no parallel in the whole of humankind’s spiritual history. The course is HERE

 

Not only are ‘the books open’ but there is more than Maslow’s 2% willing a new earth.

 

The question is how can their energy be harnessed and focused for the common good – or do we have to wait until the first nuclear war, simply because those who ‘know’ can’t find ways and means to influence those who actually ‘do the doing’ and make our world as it is.

 

4) We need to be thinking ‘outside of the box’. The old ways may not be sufficient. Keeping the candles of light and hope and truth is something that the precious few have done down through the ages, but now the challenge is to shift up to a larger stage.

 

For example inter-faith dialogue may well be effete (and for some cunning PR) compared to the people who really operate at the ‘hot interfaces’ – e. g. diplomats and business-people.

 

5) Absorbing and responding to this fact seems to me to be the challenge that might bring forth balm for suffering being borne by untold millions.

 

A sufficient proportion of America has said ‘Yes we can’ but even more critical than the decisions Obama will be making over the next 4 or 8 years is how can the light of Oneness be brought into the darkened hearts of religious haters and racists. That Oneness is the Tipping Point. The

‘tipping-point’ is realization of that Oneness – and it needs more than abstract assent.

 

6) My personal experience has led me to realize that individuals need something real and living and breathing through which to connect with ‘foreign’ wisdom traditions.

 

I believed in the oneness of religions long before I came across

a) Jane Clark’s article on Ibn al-Arabi – which created for me a living connection to Islam – and

b) the Bhagavad Gita Chanted in English HERE using a text of the Bhagavad Gita in English HERE

NB Try listening to the chanting whilst reading the text – wonderful! – transporting!

These gave me a living connection to Hinduism.

 

7) Starting points:

 

Perhaps looking very closely and deeply at ‘reverse fundamentalism’ is the way to generate programmes of positive action.

 

Karen Armstrong as you probably know is being given the opportunity to raise up the principle of the Golden Rule via her ‘Charter for Compassion’ campaign see HERE

 

Perhaps making celebratory programmes free to all on the internet…..

 

Perhaps Golden Rule materials free online for Heads and school…….

 

Perennial philosophy and the ‘federal’ Golden Rule – the ‘world language’ to be taught, in addition to their own religions, so that all can communicate with those of other faiths ……

 

What do you think?

 

We who have striven to keep the candles alight have to contribute to ways and means of reaching a sufficiently wider audience to get established some of the foundations for a new earth.

 

All blessings on the further development of your work.

 

Roger

Ten ways to bridge and transcend racial and religious hatred

 

 

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The campaign Charter for Compassion are asking for contributions for the final charter.  Here is my first draft contribution;

Compassion and Peace: ten ways to bridge and transcend racial and religious hatred

 

1 See the Golden Rule as the equivalent to a language in addition to your own – “My ‘mother tongue’ is Islam/Christianity/Buddhism etc but I also speak ‘the Golden Rule’ – so that I can be a sister/brother to peoples of all religions and none.

 

2 Implore people like Barack Obama to spend money on deepening cultural understanding – say 10% of the military budget switched to Arabic/Islamic, Chinese and Russian studies. Generate an ‘open data-base’ of experience learned.

 

3 Encourage all countries to massively increase exchange programmes.  Send everyone with a ‘We’ve got these problems how are my host country dealing with them’ pack – and require a thorrough de-briefing upon return to home country – we must see that the most important problems are held in common, and that we must pool answers.

 

4 Use the knowledge as a data-base for university and school respect for other cultures courses – instead of allowing our societies to continue falsely claiming that the mad fundamentalist minority = the reality of the whole communuity.

 

5 Get celebrity goodwill ambassadors for the GR – include business people , they have more interchange with ‘foreigners’ than any other group.  Get pop groups talking and singing about it.

 

Get Barack Obama talking about it – and Nels Mandela, and Archbishop Tutu etc.

 

6 Start teaching the Golden Rule – one school at a time – everywhere.

 

7 Generate badges, widgets and bling for websites, windows, clothing that conveys messages such as – ‘I speak oneness and diversity’. ‘We support the GR’, etc (Get some adverstising agencies working on it).

 

8 Support studies of fundamentalism – focus on ways and means antidotes and prophylactics.  The best writers on fundamentalism may not be in obvious academic fields – the best I have found is 

 

9 Look for ‘out of the box’ solutions such as brilliant comedians such as Omid Djalili and Shazia Mirza.

If you don’t like strong comedy don’t go – but I suspect that Omid, and the others have ‘lanced more religious boils’ for the general population than all of the politicians and academics put put together!

 

10 Support ways and means for deeper applications of the Golden Rule – we need courses from nursery to university epecially based on the brilliant writings and work of a) Eckhart Tolle, b) Ken Wilber and c) Karen Armstrong.

Eckhart Tolle article HERE

Happiness as nowness: 31 inspirational quotations for December

 

Do photographs live in the now? If so how - where and when and with whom?

My chosen favorite quotations for December and mainly about enlightenment, ‘now’ and the importance of living in the now.  They are not by Eckhart Tolle – but by an extraordinary variety of writers, even though Tolle is the outstanding teacher about now-ness.   My thanks espcially to two of the very best sources of quotations online WisdomQuotes and the Quote Garden

 

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RUMI

1 Into my heart’s night / Along a narrow way / I groped; and lo! the light,……. – Rubaiyat of Rumi

 

ANON

2 Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. – Anon (?)

 

VIKTOR FRANKL

3 “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl

 

W.B. YEATS

4 “Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.” – W.B. Yeats

 

MARK TWAIN

5 ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ Mark Twain

 

BUDDHA

6 “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” (Buddha)

 

SENECA

7 “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” (Seneca)

 

KEVIN KELLY

8 There is only One machine.

The web is its OS.

All screens look into the One.

No bits will live outside the web.

To share is to gain.

Let the One read it.

The One is us.

Kevin Kelly (see YouTube)

 

KAREN ARMSTRONG

9 “Like poetry, religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible.” – Karen Armstrong

 

M SCOTT PECK

10 Love = “The willingness to extend myself for the spiritual growth of myself or another”. (From “The Road Less Travelled”).

 

ANON and ECKHART TOLLE

11 The voice of God is silence

 

ANON and GHANDI

12  He/She/It has no religion.

 

ANAIS NIN:

13 The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

 

ANAIS NIN:

14 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

 

ANNE FRANK:

15 How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

 

ARTHUR MILLER:

16 The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.

 

BRENDA PETERSON:

17 The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.

 

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:

18 Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.

 

CORITA KENT:

19 Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:

20 Light tomorrow with today!

 

GWENDOLYN BROOKS:

21 Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. 

And be it gash or gold it will not come 

Again in this identical guise.

 

HENRY FORD:

22 History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.

 

HUGH PRATHER:

23 To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

 

THICH NHAT HANH:

24 Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life..

 

JOANNA RUSS:

25 Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.

 

KALIDASA:

26 Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!

Look to this Day!

For it is Life, the very Life of Life.

In its brief course lie all the 

Verities and Realities of your Existence.

The Bliss of Growth,

The Glory of Action,

The Splendor of Beauty;

For Yesterday is but a Dream,

And To-morrow is only a Vision;

But To-day well lived makes 

Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,

And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.

Look well therefore to this Day!

Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

 

MARGARET BONNANO:

27 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.

 

MATTHEW ARNOLD:

28 Is it so small a thing 

To have enjoy’d the sun, 

To have lived light in the spring, 

To have loved, to have thought, to have done…

 

PEMA CHODRON:

29 Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.

 

ROBERT FROST:

30 Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:

31 The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.

Beautiful summary of Perennial Philosophy

All spiritual teachings are about one thing - what it is to be fully and positively human - the rest is a matter of cultural clothing. RP

 

Students of Perennial Philosophy, the core mystical teachings that are the same in all religions and forgotten by many or most adherents, might agree that two verses from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita constitute a simple, beautiful and perfect summary of the Perennial Philosophy teachings;

“Like two birds of golden plumage, inseparable companions, the

individual self and the immortal Self are perched on the branches of the

selfsame tree. The former tastes of the sweet and bitter fruits of the

tree; the latter, tasting of neither, calmly observes.

“The individual self, deluded by forgetfulness of his identity with the

divine Self, bewildered by his ego, grieves and is sad. But when he

recognizes the worshipful Lord as his own true Self, and beholds his

glory, he grieves no more.”2

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Compare these verses with the contemporary re-presentation of the Perennial Philosophy in The New Earth or Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle – different language and cultural clothing but the same message!

Inevitably the ethical implication of Perennial Philosophy is ‘ The Golden Rule -

EXAMPLES:-

BAHA’I:
“Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not.” Baha’u'llah.

BUDDHISM:
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion – Dalai Lama

CHRISTIAN:
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
Luke 10:25-28

ISLAM:
In his Last Sermon, the Prophet Muhammad cautioned believers: “Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.”

TAOISM:
“Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.” T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien.

see HERE for more examples.

Enjoy these – and dive deep!

Bhagavad Gita Chanted in English HERE

Text of the Bhagavad Gita in English HERE

NB Try listening to the chanting whilst reading the text – wonderful! – transporting!

Commentary ‘The Battlefield of the Mind‘ on the Bhagavad Gita, by  Swami Nirmalananda Giri, HERE

NB Please use the SEARCH on this site to find more about Perennial Philosophy and all of the other subjects mentioned.

 

 

 

 

Reflections inspired by Eckhart Tolle: 1

Could we experience stillness, oneness and Self without brain, mind and concepts!

Perhaps arguing with Mr Tolle might be more accurate, great teacher though he is!

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. Stillness Speaks p.3

IMHO

1) It makes sense to distinguish between self and Self.

Self is Source/Wholenesss/Ultimate Reality/God etc, but unless you admit the usefulness of self as well no communication or pleasure or learning or anything is possible.  So its not yourself its your (true) Self – that gives meaning, purpose and en-formed identity.  If there is only Self talking to Self ad infinitum it is just God having perpetual inner dialogue.

2) The World is anything, at any moment, that stops us being in touch with Self.

4) I am as well as I AM – and that was God’s will.  The duality is the key dynamic in His ‘Great Big Teaching Machine’ – i.e. embodied reality – in this world – with others.  The ultimate extended metaphor of physical reality is another way to refer to His ‘Great Big Teaching Machine’.

5) ‘Name’ and ‘form’ is the means by which we come to discover namelessness and formlessness.

Federalism of spirit – or will there have to be another 1000 Mumbai massacres?

The branches of a tree don't make war on each other!

I added this post to an earlier piece but I think it is worth posting and developing because it contains an idea that is new to me!  The difference is that I place it here in the discussion concerning the recent massacre in Mumbai.

The suggestion is that the idea of federalism – politically it works well in many countries – could and should be popularized as a key to the peoples of the world relating more successfully at the religious ideological level.  Perhaps this could be termed ‘Federalism of spirit’ – the harmony that cherishes diversity.

How can we prevent massive amplification of hatred?  What would be a starting point forward?    The teaching of the Golden Rule in all schools would be a great step forward – (SEARCH articles on the Golden Rule on this site).  But I’m suggesting that we teach, step-by-step, a Universalist world-view in addition to whatever is the majority religion.   Just as I am British, Chinese or Kenyan I am also first and foremost a human being.  Similarly I am proudly and faithfully a Christian/Moslem/Buddhist, or whatever, but I can also be a Universalist through recognizing;

1) The Golden Rule,

2) the essential Oneness of the mystical core of religions – Perennial Philosophy – and that

3) we are simply all emanations of one Source.

The deal at the moment for many is this – if I have a strong faith I am compelled  because of ‘exclusivity of truth’  to hate all deemed to be ‘other’.  If we all were Universalists as well as being of a particular tradition we could dialogue more profitably instead of killing each other.  Federalism works – even without oceans of blood as precursors.

Of course there are other elements and needs in the mix – the  need for greater political justice, the prevention of plain old crime etc. but shifting the world’s mind-set through teaching the Universal alongside the particular would improve matters enormously.

Eckhart Tolle is probably the most accessible proponent of Perennial Philosophy – the United nations should emply him and Karen Armstrong as Goodwill Ambassadors!

Perennial Philosophy, or mysticism, in one sentence

 

Perennial Philosophy, or mysticism, in one sentence

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“We can be happy, and serve others well,

if we realize our true Self

by detaching ourselves from the egotistic lower self -

through our step-by-step becoming aware

of the stillness beneath the noise.”

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This is the mystical core of all of the great world wisdom traditions.

If you don’t have the time to delve deeply into one or all of the religions read Eckhart Tolle’s The New Earth and do this course presented by Oprah Winfrey - HERE

Roger’s ver as at Nov 30th 2008

What’s your version?

Set your goals to motivate your success – through ’singing’ your ‘uni-verse’

In my work as a life-coach I lead people to develop and focus their life-force so that they can get from where they are at, to where they want to be.

Getting in tune with your self and your life’s purpose is central to such achievement and success.

Getting in tune with you self and your life’s purpose is a matter of harmonization – of vision, goals, plans and action  and of head, heart and circumstances.

To ’sing one’s song’ is a metaphor for finding and staying tuned with your life’s purpose.

Harmonization is also a matter of getting in touch with our inner wisdom.  Chinese wisdom places great emphasis on harmony.  Inner and outer harmony are both important.

Outer harmony depends on inner harmony.
Inner harmony depends on being, doing and having in relation to our life purpose – i.e. getting alignment.

We need to get alignment between head and heart, and between the activities of our inner and outer lives. Then we get ‘flow’ – when we are able to function in energized harmony – like an athlete ‘in the zone’.

Episodes of silence are vital.

If we are in a situation we don’t see as getting us toward our dream then ’see it differently’ – that is see it as a stepping stone, as opposed to a mill-stone!

Decide on your life’s purpose – don’t worry it will evolve via experience – and further reflection.

Locating, tuning and singing your ’song’ also requires a sufficiency of silence and experiences of living in the now – see my Eckhart Tolle articles and better still read and listen to Eckhart Tolle.

Just DECIDE and START!   (‘Ready. Fire. Aim!)

Set your goals – and work your goals day by day.  How? – here’s one way great way.

For every day draw 4 circles.

1st circle =   My Lifelong Dream,

2nd circle  = My Year,

3rd circle  =  My month,

4th circle =   My day.

Keep the 4 circles of your personal universe in harmony via working to your daily goal-setting.

The ‘universe’ as Wayne Dyer reminds us means ‘one song’.

Live your life singing your single, harmonised, song and you will succeed.

Harmony here is what enables us to be focused, and motivated.

Plan and work every day to achieve toward your monthly goals – etc.

Periodically adjust them all according to each other, so you have the motivation of always operating in a single, harmonized universe.

Keep the dream sharply visualized.

Don’t be afraid of adjustments – think of life as a ship’s journey – course corrections are inevitable and necessary.

Occasionally remind yourself of these two quotations;

1 “If you don’t think about the future, you won’t have one.” Henry Ford

2 “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke’s statement takes us even deeper by telling us that we create our future by what we are.

Balance doing, knowing and having with being.  The current master of ‘being’ is – Eckhart Tolle.

If you don’t plan your journey don’t be surprised if you end up somewhere you don’t want to be!

Have fun singing your song – literally as well as metaphorically.

Keep the dream – even if a ‘credit crunch’ means you have to do stuff that is a temporary delay.

Sometimes just surviving is the biggest step you can make that particular day – but that day in the future will be seen as being just as important – because you didn’t give up!

Survival is sometimes progress.

Sometimes survival is the best singing of your song possible on that particular day.  It’s still worth celebrating – you can’t sing at your own wake!

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I once used What’ll we do with a drunken sailor as a class song but be careful, a full rendition of all verses would remove all desire to go on living!  Others might be shocked as to how brutal was the British Navy of that time.

What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
Earl-aye in the morning?

Chorus:
Way hay and up she rises
Patent blocks o’ diff’rent sizes,
Way hay and up she rises
Earl-aye in the morning

1. Sling him in the long boat till he’s sober,
2. Keep him there and make ‘im bale ‘er.
3. Pull out the plug and wet him all over,
4. Take ‘im and shake ‘im, try an’ wake ‘im.
5. Trice him up in a runnin’ bowline.
6. Give ‘im a taste of the bosun’s rope-end.
7. Give ‘im a dose of salt and water.
8. Stick on ‘is back a mustard plaster.
9. Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
10. Send him up the crow’s nest till he falls down,
11. Tie him to the taffrail when she’s yardarm under,
12. Put him in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on him.
13. Soak ‘im in oil till he sprouts flippers.
14. Put him in the guard room till he’s sober.
15. Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter*).
16. Take the Baby and call it Bo’sun.
17. Turn him over and drive him windward.
18. Put him in the scuffs until the horse bites on him.
19. Heave him by the leg and with a rung console him.
20. That’s what we’ll do with the drunken sailor. Source

You won’t believe the background to this song see WikiPedia HERE

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NB This article was inspired by Steve Chandler’s brilliant ‘100 Ways to Motivate Yourself’, one of my Top 10 Personal Development texts.

‘God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere’:Definitions of God and Religion

Oh no this won’t do Mr M.!

Spiritual maturity, as related to religion, is a function of two things.

Firstly the degree toward which the ‘believer’ manages to de-anthropomorphise God, and gain a grown-up understanding of Ultimate Reality.

Secondly the ability to feel and think and do without attachment to ‘thumb-sucking’ supports – they vary with each individual.

The pay-off?  We consequently learn to live with justice as the conditioning influence of all we see, think and do – we come to see through his own eyes and not through the eyes of another.

God of course by definition is undefinable.

Here is one definition that defies that indefinablity AND manage to capture the essence of the combined immanence and transcendence of the theological position known as panentheism;

“God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.”

Anonymous, ‘The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers‘ (12thC)

Here are some other attempts -less satisfactory;

To define God is to limit Him. Still it seems inevitable that man should do that in order to get some edge to which his mind may cling. – Heywood Broun

When I was fifteen years old or so I came up with a definition of God to which, in my old age, I come back more and more, I would call it an operational definition. It reads as follows: God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies. – Viktor Frankl

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, Ah! – Joseph Campbell

We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him. - Joseph Joubert

God… a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive. – Ayn Rand

A stimulating, and largely satisfactory phenomenological definition of God is;

The philosopher Michel Henry defines God in a phenomenological point of view. He says: “God is Life, he is the essence of Life, or, if we prefer, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what is God, we know it not by the effect of a learning or of some knowledge, we don’t know it by the thought, on the background of the truth of the world ; we know it and we can know it only in and by the Life itself. We can know it only in God.” (I Am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity).

This Life is not biological life defined by objective and exterior properties, nor an abstract and empty philosophical concept, but the absolute phenomenological life, a radically immanent life which possesses in it the power of showing itself in itself without distance, a life which reveals permanently itself. A manifestation of oneself and a self-revelation which doesn’t consist in the fact of seeing outside of oneself or of perceiving the exterior world, but in the fact of feeling and of feeling oneself, of experiencing in oneself its own inner and affective reality.

As Michel Henry says also in this same book, “God is that pure Revelation that reveals nothing other than itself. God reveals Himself. The Revelation of God is his self-revelation”. God is in himself revelation, he is the primordial Revelation that tears everything from nothingness, a revelation which is the pathetic self-revelation and the absolute self-enjoyment of Life. As John says, God is love, because Life loves itself in an infinite and eternal love. See HERE for more

The Baha’i view is also panentheistic;

In the Bahá’í Faith, God is described as a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. The connection between God and the world is that of the creator to his creation. God is understood to be independent of his creation, and that creation is dependent and contingent on God. God, however, is not seen to be part of creation as he cannot be divided and does not descend to the condition of his creatures. Instead, in the Bahá’í understanding, the world of creation emanates from God, in that all things have been realized by him and have attained to existence. Creation is seen as the expression of God’s will in the contingent world and every created thing is seen as a sign of God’s sovereignty, and leading to knowledge of him; the signs of God are most particularly revealed in human beings.

The above two are more less long-winded – why not just say with the blessed Anonymous from the 12thC “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.”

Each of us, each and every part of Creation is a ’sunbeam’ shining out of the Whole.  All is Spirit.  Spirit with a capital ‘S’ is the Whole, the ultimate Oneness, Mystery, ultimate Reality……God (not anthropomorphised) if you prefer.

All that isn’t Spirit per se is spirit-as-emanation, emanation set aside in each case for a special purpose.  The rock is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the rockness of a rock.  The tree is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the treeness of a tree.  The human being is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the positive and noble humanness of a human being.

What would be a starting point forward?    The teaching of the Golden Rule in all schools would be a great step forward – SEARCH articles on the Golden Rule on this site.  But the Universalist world view, including the panentheistic perspective enables something much more importanta federalist position.  Just as I am British, Chinese or Kenyan I am also first and foremost a human being.  Similarly I am proudly and faithfully Christian/Moslem/Buddhist or whatever but I am also a Universalist through recognizing

1) The Golden Rule,

2) the essential Oneness of the mystical core of religions and that

3) we are all emanations of one Source.

Probably no idea has more power to overcome the seemingly endless capacity for suffering and creating suffering than this; ‘There are many paths to the summit but only one summit’.

Revised Dec 01 2008

Is Eckhart Tolle the new Freud? – and what about ‘Applied Tolle’

I think that Eckhart Tolle is a great spiritual teacher.

Following Oprah putting up on her website his New Earth  as a free online course – see HERE – Tolle has reached millions.

In writing about him and his teachings my purpose is not to do anything but appreciate and applaud him – and suggest that a few ‘tweaks’ might make his teaching accessible and palatable to even more people.

Why?

Well his ‘experience’ and his life-time of ‘wrestling’ with that experience culminating in his 3 key books, audio talks and the Oprah course give us a whole range of insights – enough to change the world if they get taken up by enough people – but you must admit it has been a very un-typical life. And does that un-typical life restrict at all the take-up of his insights?

What, for example, would be different if he had spent those 30 years raising children or working in schools helping raise other people’s children? The emphases, the suppositions, the challenges in and from his teaching would be different. If you are a 35year old dad or mum with partner, 3 kids, and an uncertain future, the issues and their management are bound to be different.

He is compassionate and empathetic but I fear that the same criticism will be leveled against him as was leveled against Freud i.e. that he generalized on too narrow an ‘experience base’

Most people don’t get to spend 30 years processing their stuff, including 4 year-long episodes of sitting on a park bench. Many people from enduring commitments are lucky to find 40secs. I know the world is insane, but kids have to fed and chauffeured, and guided , and…….

A harsh critic (not me) might say, “Freud generalized from experience largely confined to neurotic, middle-class Austrian women, and Tolle generalizes from a life of solitary, self-indulgent, self-obsession.”

His style does come down on the side I am talking about – compassion for ordinary people who are struggling to do their best in situations that they can’t walk away from – but I suspect that an even wider sphere of influence is needed than his present ‘constituency’. The breadth of constituency is also connected to another issue and that is the need for ‘applied Tolle’.

We need his wisdom to be as accessible and palatable right now.

The applied Tolle will take a little longer – but we can’t wait for a generation of PhDs, and PhDs have an average readership of 1.7 people!

We do however need right now the beginnings of Tolle applied to a whole range of areas including education, psychology, inter-faith understanding, therapies, politics.

Back to the Eckhart Tolle discussion – intellectuality & the mind are as spiritual as prayer & meditation

In the context of discussion with contributor ‘Patrick’ I offer a contribution to the issues I raised concerning the brilliant Eckhart Tolle. I do this via a beautiful poem that describes, with exquisite simplicity, the mystical experience of non-duality, or oneness. The poem is by the renowned Chinese poet Li Po;

The birds have vanished into the sky,

and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountains and me,

until only the mountains remain.

Li Po (701-762)

IMHO

1 Clearly for Li Po there was, to start with, on that occasion, duality.

2 I’m assuming that Li Po returned from non-duality, back in to duality – unless he sat there until his bones turned to dust.  I assume he returned in order to do the laundry, chop wood, carry water.  Of course he would now do them on the bed-rock of enhanced consciousness derived from his mystical/aesthetic experience of non-duality.  Both wings of being human would be beating – as he scrubbed and carried and chopped. Enlightenment is now – if we let it.

In this world – the contingent world, the world of duality, the ‘Kingdom of Names’ – the complementarity of duality and non-duality is the key. Duality is not a curse, or a failing. When in dynamic inter-relation with non-dual experience it is heaven and perfection. Without non-dual experience it is hell, including the hell of relativity. The purpose of life is not just transcendence and timelessness – it is also immanence and being in time, moment by moment. Complementarity is the key.

3 The non-duality or mystic state is the same as the state of creativity (or the truly aesthetic experience).  We are ‘taken out of ourselves’ as we say in modern parlance.  Art  and ‘religion’ are not similar, they are the same – as Coomaraswami says.  It is the forgetting of self, a loss of ego boundaries, a letting go and letting God etc.  But the artist as well as the mystic comes out of the non-dual state back into the dual state. – and s/he becomes someone who lives with what s/he has created. What s/he has produced might even be a bit of a shock – a bit like the dumb panda who jumps when she sees that something is moving on the floor beneath her i.e the cub to which she has just given birth.  The artist becomes nurturer/appreciator/critic – more or less. They in duality are the left-brain evaluator (criticality mode) to complement their non-dual right-brain creativity mode. Complementarity is the key. One mode, and only one mode is in the foreground at any one time. Duration is from milliseconds to hours in the case of non-duality.

4 The question is are both states normal, desirable and, if the term is acceptable, God-given, i.e. both part of the life’s teaching-machine from which we are supposed to learn.  Or is one state bad, immature, to be got rid of, so that we can be non-dual 24/7?

5 Intellectuality is not the same as intellectualism, just as individuality is not the same as individualism.  In both cases the first is normal, healthy, proper, desirable.  In both cases the second is excessive, unbalanced, undesirable and pathological.  The same difference incidentally exists between sexuality and sexual-obsession. Tolle IMHO makes the mistake of not distinguishing between ego and the egotistic. He also can give the impression that he is trying to invalidate mind per se instead of distinguishing between true mind and the neurotic egotistical mind, trapped as it is by attachment.

Awareness, raised consciousness, is true mind. True mind is ‘xin’ heart-mind, interiority bathed in the light of the intellect and the warmth of true love, without attachment to forms – derived from the complementarity of the modes of duality and non-duality. ‘Without attachment to forms’ doesn’t mean without love of forms. Forms are the means (the only means) by which we can come to understand the essentiality of formlessness.

True love as Tolle says is realization of oneness – complementary to which is the glory of diversity.

God loves our celebrating diversity with Him as much as wanting us to realize oneness.

The one who is awakened is a one as well as a not-one – the Buddha was not non-Buddha – at least as a gateway, a pointer.

Spirituality or transcendence or consciousness is not increased by a diminution of intelligence, or more correctly a diminution of intellectuality. The intellect as enlightened heart-mind is the human spirit. Enlightenment comes from realization of the true Self, as opposed to self, that is the eternal. Unlimited Whole, the Silent One, God the Father, God without Name, the Nameless One etc.

Complementarity is the key. Yin is lovely only in the balanced presence of yang – and vice-versa.

6 ‘Before all else, God created the mind.’ (Koranic tradition)  The intellect is the supreme gift of God to man, the pinnacle of the way in which we are made in His image – providing we realize that all rivers flow back to the one Ocean, from which those parts also have their origin. Complementarity is the key.

7 The fear and misunderstanding of the term ego. The ego is simply the part of the self – the dimension or mode – that deals with immediate reality. As such it is neutral – like the heart or lungs or kidney. Whether it is healthy or diseased – now that is a different matter. The ego is as much part of the enlightened one as with the crass self-obsessive.

God celebrates His Creativity in the uniqueness of me, as well as in His Creation of our species.

We believe what we believe – some we choose to believe, some is ingrained.

The happiest of worlds is one where we can believe different things without feeling an obligation to kill each other! Complementarity is the key.

The ultimate sickness is to know who you are through knowing who you hate.

Enough

Namaste!

The web is only 5,000 days old – Kevin Kelly on predicting the next 5,000 days

The Web is only 5,000 days old.  Kevin Kelly’s reading of the next 5,000 days he summarizes as;

There is only One machine.
The web is its OS.
All screens look into the One.
No bits will live outside the web.
To share is to gain.
Let the One read it.
The One is us. Kevin Kelly

Curiously mystical?  I wonder what the connection here is with Eckhart Tolle?

Kelly of course discussing the web in terms of it becoming our ‘global brain’, but doesn’t mention that this phenomenon was coined by Peter Russell in 1984 – now that was a truly inspired prediction!

Is Eckhart Tolle anti-intellectual?

A thoughtful respondent stimulated me in to raising a few more issues re Eckhart Tolle, so here they are.

Is Eckhart Tolle in his teachings anti-intellectual – or at least might he be playing into the hands of anti-intellectualists?

My perspective is from within a Perennial Philosophy and Universalist world-view, as is Wilber and Tolle.

So, in my understanding:-

You said:

‘Tolle does not speak of ‘non-duality as everything’. But he speaks of duality and our relationship to it often.’

The ‘it’ that relates to the non-duality I am arguing is part of the design – not just a deficiency on our part!

Does he celebrate duality as one of the two wings of being human, in this world with others. Or does he say, or imply, that the non-dual is not just desirable but the only goal – to such an extent that a newcomer might think, “I’m not good, I’m not normal, I’m not a true Tolle-ist (God forbid – but I bet it happens) unless I experience complete non-duality 24/7.”

I guess my question is, “Would God’s Creativity have failed if for all humans there was 24/7 non-duality?”

I want to argue that non-duality is the goal and indispensable to unity, peace, stability, conflict-resolution, an end to suffering etc. BUT being in duality is also normal, beautiful, testing, the source of compassion and empathy etc. It is more than just the darkness to the realization of the beauty of light.

I don’t underestimate the collective pain-body and collective insanity that continues to rule our world.

Duality is THE means of all growth and development – up to the need to realize non-duality. It’s the name of the game in this world. My understanding is that babies don’t immediately realize that they are separate beings from their mothers – although the birthing process and daily experiences get that process going pretty quickly!

My point is that although duality is not the goal – it is the means, and a means without which we would neither realize the essentiality of non-duality nor would we have the means to accomplish the realization of it.  We have to feel separate to realize at-one-ness. If this is the case then both non-duality and duality are part of the game – and part of God’s great teaching ‘machine’.

So in my view we come to realize that we need (at least in this world) two wings – not one wing and a useless stump! To change metaphors – the purpose of life is for the drop to lose itself in the Ocean – not all the time but sufficiently deeply and sufficiently often to become the conditioning bedrock for all of our living within duality. The dynamic is where knowledge comes from – and duality is not just a design fault or sin!

I have the same problem with an even greater ‘genius’ Ken Wilber. God speaks via duality as well as non-duality, He speaks via subjectivity as well as objectivity AND He speaks via mind and reason as well as their opposites.

A separate, but vitally connected subject concerns the nature of the pain-body and how it relates to mind and thought. The great Tolle also gives the impression that the mind is virtually the same as the pain-body. I would say the the ‘egoic-mind’ = the pain-body – or more accurately the pain-body is the habituated shadow-self created in us via our egoic responses.

He should be ‘condemning’ the egoic-mind not the mind! The mind free of the egoic pain-body = a ray of the Holy Spirit. I don’t think because I’m sinful, I think because I am made in the image of God! Tolle is at risk of giving the mind and thinking a really bad name, whereas they are, when free from the egoic pain-body, first in Creation – the very purpose of Creation.

I have the same problem with (possibly) an even greater ‘genius’ Abraham Joshua Heschel.

You said:
‘When a person is not in the now, it is natural to ask where they should be, because there is an inner sensing that they are not where they belong.’

The ache you refer to is when we haven’t realized that we already have enlightenment, and that it is simply a matter of ‘letting go and let God’. When we have had experiences of non-duality, and re-cognize them and re-alize them, the wood chopping is in the enlightenment and the enlightenment is in the wood chopping!

You said:
‘When you are not in the now, God continues on. Your presence in the now, or not, has no effect on God.’

Yup! The sun shines whether I choose to face it and reflect it or not.

You said:
‘Duality is not ‘not non-being’. Duality is the natural state of the world of form. Seeking an understanding of ‘non-duality’ is not the only thing to do in life, but understanding ‘non-duality’ gives one a profound foundation for all of living.’

Yup! – Beautifully put.

You said:
‘All knowledge comes from consciousness, and you are consciousness. So when you behold, or categorize, the inter-play between duality and non-duality, you, that is consciousness, has created knowledge.’

Ah but what is ‘you’?

For me your term ‘inter-play’ is the key – it indicates the dynamic between experiences of duality and of singleness: me-not me, me and ‘the greater whole of which I and all other phenomena are emanations’ etc.

The explanation that works for me goes like this. I ask of my Spirit a question. My Spirit answers, and lo the light breaks forth. The ‘I’ of course is the egoic self and the Self, ultimately, is God within. But it is more then the pain to which I am addicted – it is God’s Creativity via difference (diversity) – complementary to His/Her/It’s creativity via sameness.

Ultimately I suppose I’m arguing that to deny God’s Creativity in His creation of difference is to deny some aspect of Him/Her/It that cannot be denied. I, and you and him and her and them, are important outside of  complete self-abnegation in non-duality!  Hooray – vivre la difference – I want dia-logos from you as well as silence, I gratefully acknowledge the dia-logos within me as well as the speechless silence of complete self-abnegation!

The ‘me’ is vital – along with experiences of non-duality – for God to perpetually continue His Creation-emanation. The film projected needs a screen. Every lily of the field is different or unique as well as belonging to the same species.

If you accept the temporary naming of the un-nameable both are part of God’s teaching machine. Difference as well as sameness reveals. The uniqueness as well as the sameness of each of us ‘reveals’ – to us and to others. It is ‘me and non-duality’ that gives rise to development in consciousness, which gives rise to the kind of knowing to which you refer.

This ‘knowing-that-comes-through-raised-consciousness’, comes to us as a ‘gift’ without book-learning and academic study. It is the majority of what we know.

An Islamic (hence Arabic terms) and Bahá’í distinction helps (me) here;

SOURCE: Two words for knowledge, but very different kinds of knowledge. Ilm can be acquired by education and training and through the exercise of reason. Irfan is higher knowledge, or gnosis, that can only be acquired by, first, education, and then contemplation under the guidance of a master. The guidance would include spiritual training in zikr, music (sama) and meditation. Ilm is expected to lead to the sober contemplation of God as both Creator and Judge—his awesome power– whereas irfan may lead to ecstasy as a person is simply overwhelmed by God’s immense beauty and falls in love with that Beauty.  SOURCE

The sheer weight of emphases in Tolle might give the impression that mind and thinking = bad. Whereas although the soul is infinite because it is ultimately God, and the mind is finite, the two are essential – from our perspective. Religions can suffer from anti-intellectualism as well as what a friend calls ‘adminology’ in which the essential heart is set aside in favour of jurisprudence and nit-picking.

I am wondering if Tolle, understandably, started from the (to me erroneous) Western view that separates heart and mind, as opposed to the Chinese view of heart-mind – ‘xin’.

I don’t think Tolle is anti-intellectual but I wish he would celebrate a bit more the other wing of being human – duality, without which non-duality would not be.

******

May the Nameless One, who some call God,  finish raising up the Self-actualized 2% , the yeast for the bread of humanity!

Maybe He/She/It already has and they are just really badly organized!

“How does the energy generated by Tolle actually get transformed into social action and social transformation?”

Now that’s a really challenging question!

Photo source: Microsoft Clipart

Don’t forget the chocolate Mr Eckhart Tolle – enlightenment and wood-chopping, awe and concepts, the Whole and the parts.l

Light is light in whatever lamp it shines

“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.” – A J Heschel

Yesterday I wrote a short open letter of questions to Eckhart Tolle.

I also wrote a short introduction to the Dictionary of Concepts in development on a sister site allied to this one.  The latter in part answers the questions.   The introduction to the Dictionary reads;

Everything here on this site, and its allied sites, is about how we have to balance the myriad parts of life, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Whole – from which everything emanates, including us.

The 1000+ ways or categories are also concepts, and HERE the concepts are gathered as a Dictionary

But our interest in concepts needs to be balanced with interest in the Whole from which all things emanate and take form, and to which they return – in the formless and infinite.

The Whole is nameless because it cannot be conceptualized.  In terms of our experience we can briefly lose ourselves in the non-duality of the infinite Whole.  This is beyond the logic-chopping of religions (and the illogic-chopping!) .  ‘God has no religion’.  God is no-thing.  We can only point – and be silent.  Silence is the language of God.

On the site there is a place you can go, to take you beyond concepts HERE.  Let the few words dissolve as you realize the oneness of the light, and the silence that, embraces others all around the globe, who also rest right now, in the now, and the silence – and let go their egoic forms.

The greatest need humanity has is for all peoples to realize that they are the cells of a single body. That realization comes as we learn to live in the now, and the silence beyond all concepts – that is to feel the Whole.  This has been the mystic teaching, the perennial philosophy, to be found at the heart of all of the world’s wisdom traditions – but so often obscured by the dust of human egotism.

But for those who love chocolate, and beautiful landscapes, and sailing and beautiful bodies we have, during our time in this world, to fly with the wing of ‘duality’ - as well as our experiences of non-duality.  After enlightenment the comes the water carrying and wood chopping.  After the water carrying and wood chopping – enlightenment.  The two are complementaries – at least in this world.  Hooray!   Hallelujah!  Amen!  Om!  Pass the chocolate!

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GIF by candleworld

Questions for Eckhart Tolle

Dear Mr Tolle

You speak as though non-duality is everything, instead of one wing of the bird of being.

.

When I’m not in the silence of now where should I be?

.

When I’m not in the silence of now is God being less Creative?

.

If duality is not non-being what are the standards, whilst in duality – surely they are more than seeking non-duality?

.

Am I wrong in thinking that knowledge flows from the dynamic inter-play between duality and non-duality?

.

—–0—–

The Credit Crunch and Managing Motivation: goal-set to motivate your success through ’singing’ your ‘uni-verse’

In my work as a life-coach I energize people to get from where they are at, to where they want to be.

Getting in tune with your self and your life’s purpose is central to such achievement and success.  Getting in tune with you self and your life’s purpose is a matter of harmonization.

Chinese wisdom places great emphasis on harmony.  Inner and outer harmony are both important.

Outer harmony depends on inner harmony.

Inner harmony depends on being, doing and having in relation to our life purpose – i.e. getting alignment.

We need to get alignment between head and heart, and between the activities of our inner and outer lives. Then we get ‘flow’ – when we are able to function in energized harmony – like an athlete ‘in the zone’. Episodes of silence are vital.

If we are in a situation we don’t see as getting us toward our dream then ’see it differently’ – that is see it as a stepping stone, as opposed to a mill-stone!

Decide on your life’s purpose – don’t worry it will evolve via experience – and further reflection.

Just DECIDE and START!   (‘Ready. Fire. Aim!)

Set your goals – and work your goals day by day.  How? – here’s one way great way.

For every day draw 4 circles.
1st circle =   My Lifelong Dream,
2nd circle  = My Year,
3rd circle  =  My month,
4th circle =   My day.

Keep the 4 circles of your personal universe in harmony via working to your daily goal-setting.

The ‘universe’ as Wayne Dyer reminds us means ‘one song’.

Live your life singing your single, harmonised, song and you will succeed.

Harmony here is what enables us to be focused, and motivated.

Plan and work every day to achieve toward your monthly goals – etc.

Periodically adjust them all according to each other, so you have the motivation of always operating in a single, harmonized universe.

Keep the dream sharply visualized.

Don’t be afraid of adjustments – think of life as a ship’s journey – course corrections are inevitable and necessary.

Occasionally remind yourself of these two quotations;

1 “If you don’t think about the future, you won’t have one.” Henry Ford

2 “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”  – Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke’s statement takes us even deeper by telling us that we create our future by what we are.  The current master of ‘being’ is Eckhart Tolle.

Have fun singing your song.  Keep the dream – even if a ‘credit crunch’ means you have to do stuff that is a temporary delay.

Sometimes just surviving is the biggest step you can make that particular day – but that day in the future will be seen as being just as important – because you didn’t give up!

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NB This article was inspired by Steve Chandler’s brilliant ‘100 Ways to Motivate Yourself’, one of my Top 10 Personal Development texts.

Twenty things to remember about Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle

Ten things to remember about Eckhart Tolle.

What isn’t Eckhart Tolle saying and doing?

He has impacted on my life as he has on millions of others.  In addition to his general spiritual illumination of our lives and of reality I am interested in how he can illumine specialist areas of life including teaching, parenting and management.  However this first post is an attempt to separate what he is doing and saying from what he isn’t.  Why?  Well take a look at the cistern of hate and mis-representation that has poured out from ‘Christians’ and others on YouTube and elsewhere.

1 He is not a religionist.

2 He has not started a religion.

3 He is not speaking from the point of view of inter-faith but meta-faith or pan-faith and beyond.

4 He doesn’t speak from within a religion, or about others’ religious beliefs.

5 He avoids religion, and thereby teaches the purest heart of religion.

6 His life has been in three stages.

7 Before the age of 29, there was extensive ‘dark-night-of-the soul’ experience.

8 At the age of 29 he had a transformative experience.

9 The subsequent 35 years, his life’s work, has simply been a commentary on that transformative experience.

10 The 35 years is itself split into two phases, the first of which was 30 years processing the experience – via reflection, study and articulation.

11 The writing of his few books, has been over the last half decade, and the meteoric rise in their and his popularity over just the last year or two.

12 He is a Universalist, and one who most of the time avoids the trigger words that set off fundamentalists and ‘exclusivists’ and other professional haters. (That hasn’t stopped a rag-bag of fundamentalists and ‘exclusivists’ and other professional haters from attacking him, especially since Oprah gave him a platform!)

13 He is existentialist by tone and direction.

14 He is not a theologian (thank God), but he is closest theologically to panENtheism.

15 He avoids scholarship (thank God) as one of many ego-traps that potentially ensnare any of us.

16 He is quintessentially the doer as opposed to the talker – but via talking about non-talking and non-duality!

17 He is quintessentially a Universalist.

18 He is directly in the tradition(s) of all of the great mystics.

19

20

I haven’t decided on the 18th and 19th – which ones would you add to the list?

The WikiPedia entry on Tolle is a good place to start if you want to know more about him.

Photo source Flickr