Two for dinner?
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the misty, raw, ‘miserable’ island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Saturday morning–the 6th day of June, 2015–a ‘good day for ducks’ as the saying goes here in old school New England. Coming to you LIVE, like our friends above, from the Hyannis/Hyannis Port Waterfront(s); just happy to be here quite frankly…
Following up on yesterday’s philosophical point regarding mankind’s central ‘problem’, i.e. ego, one could point to Descaretes for the ‘original sin’, or error, really one and the same... For it was this 17th Century philosopher–many consider to be the ‘father’ of modern day philosophy–answering a fundamental question, “…is there anything I can know for certain?” Offering the world, “…I think, therefore I am”. He realized the fact that he was always thinking, and that was beyond doubt. He equated this ‘thinking’ with Being. Eckart Tolle noting; identity.
I am=thinking.
Three hundred years later came along Jean-Paul Sarte who said, “…the consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks”. What does he mean by this? Tolle states, “…When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. And it is that awareness that says “I am”. If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. You would be as identified with every thought as the dreamer is with every image in the dream. Many people still live like that (see FOX “news” anchor Bill O’Reilly for another ‘talking point memo’! Good Lord!), like sleepwalkers, trapped in old dysfunctional mind-sets that continuously re-create the same nightmarish reality, (see FOX owner Rupert, ‘arrggh matie’, Murdoch for more details!). When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream. Another dimension of consciousness has come in.”
Tolle continues, “There are many accounts of people who experienced that emerging new dimension of consciousness as a result of tragic loss at some point in their lives. Some lost all of their possessions, others their children or spouse, their social position, reputation, or physical abilities. In some cases, through disaster or war, they lost all of these simultaneously and found themselves with “nothing”. We may call this a limit-situation. Whatever they had identified with, whatever gave them their sense of self, had been taken away. Then suddenly and inexplicably, the anguish or intense fear they initially felt gave way to a sacred sense of Presence, a deep peace and serenity and complete freedom from fear. This phenomenon must have been familiar to St. Paul, who used the expression “the peace of God that passeth all understanding”. It is indeed a peace that doesn’t seem to make sense, and the people who experience it asked themselves: In the face of this, how can it be that I feel such peace?”
“…The answer is simple, once you realize what the ego is and how it works. When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since the ego is identified with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, or I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form. Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.”
–Eckart Tolle
“Yeah…, did you get that memo?” credit the film “Office Space”, circa 2010)
Have a nice week end folks!
PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
