Eckhart Tolle Discussion Community

I remember Adyashanti describing something like this in the awakening process where one just asks "What am I doing?" It's a great question. My question was "what's going on here??" It really wasn't about "me." While I was intrigued by "Zen Enlightenment" when I first ran across it in the early writ...

When I was an active Christian, I used to ask the question: "If you were in a knife fight with Satan and he suddenly disappeared and left his knife behind, could you toss it in your knife drawer and use it when needed?" Imagine if Hitler's set of pointers had no author, but were just carved on a cav...

And the most primary thought is the "I" thought...the first step away from awakening.

Andy

I visited Antelope during Osho's "reign." Went to the "Zorba the Buddha" restaurant. And watched this 6-part series. A very good friend practiced law with Phillip Toelkes, the lawyer who narrates most of it. My visit was perfunctory - I was with my uncle. The Rahjneeshees were all about themselves, ...

I think that psychotherapy can actually be quite harmful to people who are seeking a deeper truth (and who cannot benefit from psychotherapy), because the lack of improvement over time, despite the therapy, can reinforce the feeling that they are beyond help/hope, cause mounting frustration, eventu...

Jukai - I completely resonate with your experience - had the same response to ET - first few pages were a huge blast of relief and a big trigger for me. But, of course, both you and I had, at that point, recognized that our search was not for a "cure" for a mental disorder, but rather an answer to a...

Niki - The DSM-V is the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders." My essential point was about unrealistic expectations from spiritual teachers. I'm glad you have found Gabor Mate - my wife speaks highly of him - addiction and trauma are his special...

Niki - Many people who approach spiritual awakening do so out of a secret or not-so-secret desire to rid themselves of disorders of the ego (by this I mean all the material in DSM-V, and other obsessions, neuroses, syndromes, etc. that fall under the broad definition of "significantly debilitating m...

I'd like to think that was a Freudian slip, but it's probably just a typo...I may use it more intentionally in the future, however! The whole issue of drugs and the mind and awakening is large. Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins led a NSF or FDA-grant sponsored program using psilocybin...but I genera...

Welcome Niki! Sorry to be a bit late returning to this revived thread. Your SRIN (Self-referential internal narrative) is bumping along at full tilt. "SRIN" is Gary Weber's phrase to describe his thought-storm before awakening. One of his techniques to shut it down was "Self-inquiry" - a direct path...

Relatively conventional self-help books and videos can help here. Even after awakening, there are psychological challenges in our personalities, mainly a result of deep conditioning. I like the work of Brene Brown in this general topic of self-worth.

Andy

Snowy - We are touching on another problem here, that is the use of the English language to define these subtle "state/no states." But to fully comprehend the Sanskrit, there is a big cultural milieu that is required. My sense of "stillness," however, probably does have some measurable similarity to...

I can fall asleep, yes. Just this morning, during a meditation, an image of a room full of people arose. That was a memory from last night, when I was in such a room. Then the room began to rotate and move. That was the "dream center energy" taking the memory and beginning a "story." I was aware eno...

Welcome TA - I had a similar experience about ten years ago...fortunately kiki was around to hold my hand even then! I spent the next three years deeply enmeshed here, thousands of posts, reading hundreds of books...(pestering old professors and friends at first). Ego pretty much vanished for a few ...

Meditation is immensely powerful. Effective meditation can begin to re-wire a brain so that obsessions fall away. And that experience can be utterly life-changing. Awakening happens also - usually years after a steady meditation practice or yoga or chanting, etc. But simply the discovery of the powe...