A NEW EARTH: AWAKENING TO YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE

The Pain-Body

Eckhart Tolle defines the pain-body as the stored memories and emotions of people and events in the past. Logically, we know that it is our perception of people and events which creates our experience of reality. As we create a cache of negative memories and attached emotions, we store toxic energy in the very cells of our body.

Each time a new event triggers the stored memory, that event is interpreted in relation to the memory and added to the cache. Is it any wonder that our energy drags and our immune system gives way to disease? Have you ever blurted out in sheer frustration: You make me sick! Ummm, how does that make your stomach feel, your heart?

Our bodies do not interpret incoming data from the mind and emotions--it reacts! If I have a nightmare in which I perceive myself as being attacked, my body jerks me awake in total panic with elevated heart rate and gasping breath. If I see a frightening image on-screen, my body reacts to my perceptions as if I am the one in danger. Real or imagined, my body reacts.

An instinctive response is the body's
direct response to some external situation.
An emotion, on the other hand is the
body's response to a thought.

Self-image and unconscious assumptions are anchored in the pain-body according to Tolle. If I see myself as inadequate, unloved and undeserving of any good, my body and my life will reflect that belief. If I look for trouble, I will find it, trigger it or attract it.

The good news is that we don't have to feed and preserve the negative baggage. When we awaken to the true self and the Presence and Power of God indwelling, we can do a mental and emotional house cleaning to eliminate the stored pain. Tolle says that when we do this,

Our very Presence the becomes
our identity, rather than our thoughts
and emotions.

Leave the past behind and shake off the very dust from your feet...

Rev. Claudia Naylor

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A NEW EARTH: AWAKENING TO YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE

Role Playing

Most of us actually play multiple roles: parent, child, brother, sister or spouse. Added to our familial roles are those of employment and those in community. The roles we play set the parameters by which we define our relationships--friendly, adversarial, loving, defensive, etc. Each role carries its own personal baggage. Eckhart Tolle wrote that

Authentic human interactions
become impossible when you lose
yourself in a role.

One of the most common ways group sessions/meetings begin is with a 'warm-up'--tell us your name and what you do. As we listen, we use the information provided by each individual to 'fit' them into our world. We understand them in the context of their perceived role and how it relates to our role(s). The way in which I present myself to the group reflects my own sense of self.

What really matters is not what
function you fulfill in this world, but whether
you identify with your function to such an extent that
it takes over and becomes a role
that you play.

If I want to experience life without being locked into a role set in concrete, then I must be willing to step back from the known and allow myself to Be fully in the Now moment. Not by resisting or denying, but by recognizing the extent to which I let people and events dictate my experience through emotional and/or self-image triggers.

Then there is Being.
It is found in the still, alert presence of
Consciousness itself, the Consciousness that you are.
Human and Being are not separate
but interwoven.

Try an experiment while walking alone: Feel yourself inside your body, walking. Be aware of looking outward through your eyes. What you see is less important right now than that you are totally aware of yourself present in yourself in the moment

Rev. Claudia Naylor.

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A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Core of Ego

Eckhart Tolle emphasizes the role of what he calls the voice in the head in controlling and directing our lives and the choices we make. In other words, our current choices are dictated by past experiences and memories, rather than the opportunities of the moment.

The central core of all your mind activity consists

of certain repetitive and persistent thoughts, emotions,

and reactive patterns that you identify with

most strongly.

When I play the blame game, I get hooked into a role which places the responsibility for misadventure and suffering on someone else, then I get to dodge my own responsibility and/or guilt for the outcomes in my life. Instead of learning and growing, I get to play the righteous victim.

Non-resistance is the path of peace, of strength. When I refuse to take another's aggressive behavior personally, I go beyond the ego, freeing myself from the collective dysfunctionality as well. I can then respond to inappropriate behavior in a more appropriate manner if a response is needed.

There is the situation and here is

the anger I feel about it, and then I realize

there are other ways of approaching the situation,

other ways of seeing it and dealing

with it.

Rev. Claudia Naylor

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A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Ego: The Current State of Humanity

Eckhart Tolle defines the ego as a false sense of self, based on mental concepts, which identifies itself with forms, ie, that which is seen. The ego is ever looking back, placing blame, and looking forward toward the acquisition of those things which will 'fulfill' it's desires. Because current possessions fail to provide the lasting happiness ego demands, it has no interest in being present in the Now moment.

The true self, the I Am of Christ Consciousness, has a free playing field in the Now and is free to experience the essential self without labels and pre-judgements. Instead of greeting friends and acquaintances with a lot of mental baggage, we meet them in the Now, free to discover what each of us has become. Tolle wrote:

When you don't cover up the world

with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous

returns to your life that was lost a long

time ago.

Tolle related judging a fellow commuter as crazy because she always talked out loud to herself, complaining and fussing as she went along her way. He, of course, was running a silent commentary about her insanity when he suddenly realized that the only difference between them was that he kept his thoughts to himself instead of talking out loud to himself as she did. I know I have done the same thing all too often--even though I am not verbally venting on the world, those same trash thoughts are chasing themselves around inside my head.

When we shift our attention from what is wrong when we are ill or injured to an external object, such as a flower, we can find and feel the wholeness and beauty in that flower and allow that feeling to wash over us. By connecting to and contemplating the aliveness of the flower, we can shift our awareness into the Now and draw strength and hope into ourselves. This 'transfusion' of aliveness helps us to reconnect with our true self, the eternal I.

Life will give you whatever experience

is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.

How do you know this is the experience you need?

Because this is the experience you are having

at this moment.

Rev. Claudia Naylor

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A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

The Flowering of Human Consciousness

In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle opens with a section called Evocation. Using the imagery of an unfolding flower as the awakening in consciousness of beauty and enlightenment, he sets the stage for a new understanding of life and living. This first chapter is highly conceptual in nature and lays the foundations for inner exploration.

Most of us have felt that stirring of deep inner joy when we allow ourselves to open up to the glory of the mountains and oceans, streams and forests. I can remember my Dad referring to Sugar Loaf Mountain in North Carolina as "God's country" when I was a child. For me, the ocean brings that same sense of awe he felt then.

Tolle believes that we must get the ego out of the driver's seat in consciousness and find the place of stillness and no-mind within us. In quoting the Bible,

Be still and know that I am God
Ps 46:10

he equates the stillness with no-mind or the formless, and God with the essence of Being which we find within when we stop dashing about, seeking God everywhere else.

Rev. Claudia Naylor

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