“Meditations on Eckhart Tolle” Today’s quote: “Listen to people’s stories, and you’ll find that they could all be entitled “Why I cannot be at peace now.” The ego doesn’t know that your only opportunity for being at peace IS. now.”

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Lets look at what we mean by “listen” and “Now”. Listen Now and you will be at peace. What is listening, I mean really listening? When you are listening, which is silent stillness, you are Now listening. Listening means not actively choosing what to listen to. If you are in a group of people, and someone is talking down someone, giving reason why that person annoys them, listening has to dimensions. The listening we think is listening is listening to the person tell their story. But this listening is selective, active listening.

Imagine sitting on the front porch and you can listen to the whole sound space of the front porch, the cars, different birds, the whole space of sound without picking out one and focusing on that, like a particular bird song. You will notice the when you select one bird song the other sounds fall into background. When we select something to listen to our awareness changes.

The ground of our awareness is Awareness-as the world, and out of that awareness that is not differentiating any objects rises differentiating awareness, and what I focus on then comes into existence as an object to my subject, which is my point of view. Me as a point of view rises when I select an object to listen to.

But when I listen without “listening” everything rises simultaneously as Now. This totality before I choose something to focus on is what Tolle calls the Now. When I choose something to focus my attention on, the Ego as a point of view that is sustained in time as ME rises, and because this ME is separate from the Totality of Now, there is conflict and I don’t feel at peace.

The Now IS peace, so it is out of peace that I rise can create my sense of lost peace—I create time and now I want peace in the future, when I can remove the irritant that I am now focusing on. It’s like a choose to think of a thorn, stab myself with the thorn I’m thinking about and yearn for the future when I will be free from this thorn….

When we really Listen, we can see this.

When Ram Das says “Be Here Now.” What does he mean? We think we are here now. But “being” here is not being here in the way we think it means. Being is the ocean, we are a waves focusing on other waves. One can say in this analogy that I as the subject is the crest of the wave and what I choose to look at is the valley of the wave. Subject ME as the top of the wave is separate from the bottom of the wave. The Up is now separate from the Down. The ONE is cut in two by my observation of objects. That is not Being Here. That is divided Here into the observer and the observed. And this is necessary to catch a bus, but we believe this type of awareness is the only awareness, the awareness we need to discover peace. We throw this “being in the moment” around without really looking deeper…what is the look that doesn’t look?

This is an interesting topic if you are interested in how creativity happens or doesn’t happen and the truth is that the only way out of a fix is through creativity. We have to create our way out of grid-lock. Grid-lock, whether it is in politics, society, or your personal live, is the amplification of a feed-back loop of polarity, like when you stick a mike next to an amplifier. Sound get locked into an auroborus, snake eating its own tail, and cannot get out because the energy is self feeing itself in an escalation that cannot stop itself.

We have a current whirlpool developing in society right now when you have Alt Left demonstration against speech they don’t like, and you have the Alt-Right deomostating against the speech they don’t like. This is becoming a feed back loop, a polarity self feeding itself and growing. Like a fight in the school yard, the energy feeds itself and draws everyone into it, each being drawn into it under the hope of ending it. So each end of the polarity tries the end the pain of the grid-lock by feeding the grid-lock. Sound familiar?

What Tolle is saying is that there is no real difference, only a matter of degree, between the speech in your living room and the speech in the society when you have a feed-back look rise to give existence to the separate ends of the polarity. A tennis match is a polarity in which two One’s, each end of the court, battle for there to be only ONE, and when there is ONE there is the Peace of Now. Now is ONE, so in a polarized situation where there is no creativity, and no listening, you have each end of the polarity fight for their to be only ONE. This is like a positive and negative end of a batter fighting so there is only positive and non negative. The irony is that when one side of a polarity wins, they are destroyed as well. The battery won’t work.

What we look at in this talk is how this polarity rises out of the peace of Now in the first place. The basic polarity is I-IT— I as an observer (subject) and IT as an object focused on. The Peace of Now is then the Observer and the Observed are One. We go to movies to know this Peace of Now. In the movie you are not a separate observer. You are the movie. You are you as the movie. Only when someone starts talking next to you do you reemerge as an I and IT, and you are irritated with that IT who is talking and pulling you back into your separate sense of self, out of the bliss of being-in-the-movie.

Here the rule: Identity needs conflict in order to exist. When you identity with a political view, you now belong to a political tribe, and that tribe exists through raising conflict with its opposite tribe. Identity politics is tribal warfare, but not as a game, but as a life and death struggle. Politics used to be a game with rules, like a tennis match. Now it is a blood sport. identity is now absolute instead of relative. The absolutes are in the saddle and ride our mind.

The Peace of Now already always exists as transcendent to or prior to our rising polarity of I-IT. From the view of I-IT the Now is transcendent of experience. Experience is I-IT. I am having an experience of IT. I-IT rise together like two ends of a horn. And this horn is always a dilemma. Now is seeing the whole bull simultaneously, both ends of the horn at once, instead of selectively, one horn and then the other as either/or. As the Zen Koan would phrase it: if you choose one horn you don’t see the whole bull; if you choose the other horn, you don’t see the whole bull. Now choose, which is it?

In the news today, a matador got gored to death by tripping on his cape. We are always being gored by the horns of the dilemma because we can’t see the whole bull, of the Now that is not divided by selective either/or.

Our media world look like a calm sea with increasing and decreasing whirlpools of polarities. Some big ones have disappeared like the one in Northern Ireland. but there are new ones growing all the time. Black Lived Matters is one, the polarity of Black versus the Police, and those who identify with each side of the horn. Trump, of course, creates polarities as a mode of operation, intentionally stirring one up so that he can through conflict keep his base identity tribe energized. If they stop feeding the whirlpool, the polarity will dissolve.

This was MLK non-violence philosophy: stop feeding the polarity, but don’t withdraw from it. Off yourself to the jaws of the polarity without resistance, but don’t withdraw. So you stay in engaged without feeding the whirlpool, by not identify with one of the horns. This reveals the other side of the horn of dilemma as the aggressor. Exposed the whirlpool can’t sustain itself. Awareness does not feed the feed-back loop because it does not feed the loop with its identity as one side of the loop.

Following this thread of Insight, I want to see into how we can create our way out of a polarity, or grid-lock of the two horns of the bull. Face with a polarity of opposites, we are conditioned to choose one or the other horns, and then get gored by the horn we don’t choose. Choice must choose something. Choice cannot choose everything. There is no end to everything. We can’t choose unless we draw a line and say this and not that. When when it comes to the field of choice itself, we can’t choose the field. We can only choose something on the field, the foreground and not the background that is the whole field out of which the foreground rises. So choices is limited to choosing what we select to choose. Awareness is not choice. One can’t choose to be aware, because then you divide awareness into the awareness I choose against that which I don’t choose. Choice divides, and Awareness cannot be divided. Awareness is always already Now. So Now cannot be divided, until our selecting, choosing consciousness pick out something to identify with. When we choose something to be conscious of, we identify with it, either as a friend or a foe. And that is the Horn of Dilemma. We have divided the bull of the All into this or that, and then we identify with our object, since it is created by our own consciousness, (Get that), so of course we have to identify with our own baby. It is then a good or bad baby, but either way we identify with it. And now we are hooked.

Life is a Bull. When we don’t see both horns as belonging to One Life, then we get hooked on the Horns of the Dilemma, and create a feedback loop of one horn against the other horn…but trying to restore the bull to its original oneness…in time. But the Bull is Now.Lets look at what we mean by “listen” and “Now”. Listen Now and you will be at peace. What is listening, I mean really listening? When you are listening, which is silent stillness, you are Now listening. Listening means not actively choosing what to listen to. If you are in a group of people, and someone is talking down someone, giving reason why that person annoys them, listening has to dimensions. The listening we think is listening is listening to the person tell their story. But this listening is selective, active listening.

Imagine sitting on the front porch and you can listen to the whole sound space of the front porch, the cars, different birds, the whole space of sound without picking out one and focusing on that, like a particular bird song. You will notice the when you select one bird song the other sounds fall into background. When we select something to listen to our awareness changes.

The ground of our awareness is Awareness-as the world, and out of that awareness that is not differentiating any objects rises differentiating awareness, and what I focus on then comes into existence as an object to my subject, which is my point of view. Me as a point of view rises when I select an object to listen to.

But when I listen without “listening” everything rises simultaneously as Now. This totality before I choose something to focus on is what Tolle calls the Now. When I choose something to focus my attention on, the Ego as a point of view that is sustained in time as ME rises, and because this ME is separate from the Totality of Now, there is conflict and I don’t feel at peace.

The Now IS peace, so it is out of peace that I rise can create my sense of lost peace—I create time and now I want peace in the future, when I can remove the irritant that I am now focusing on. It’s like a choose to think of a thorn, stab myself with the thorn I’m thinking about and yearn for the future when I will be free from this thorn….

When we really Listen, we can see this.

When Ram Das says “Be Here Now.” What does he mean? We think we are here now. But “being” here is not being here in the way we think it means. Being is the ocean, we are a waves focusing on other waves. One can say in this analogy that I as the subject is the crest of the wave and what I choose to look at is the valley of the wave. Subject ME as the top of the wave is separate from the bottom of the wave. The Up is now separate from the Down. The ONE is cut in two by my observation of objects. That is not Being Here. That is divided Here into the observer and the observed. And this is necessary to catch a bus, but we believe this type of awareness is the only awareness, the awareness we need to discover peace. We throw this “being in the moment” around without really looking deeper…what is the look that doesn’t look?

This is an interesting topic if you are interested in how creativity happens or doesn’t happen and the truth is that the only way out of a fix is through creativity. We have to create our way out of grid-lock. Grid-lock, whether it is in politics, society, or your personal live, is the amplification of a feed-back loop of polarity, like when you stick a mike next to an amplifier. Sound get locked into an auroborus, snake eating its own tail, and cannot get out because the energy is self feeing itself in an escalation that cannot stop itself.

We have a current whirlpool developing in society right now when you have Alt Left demonstration against speech they don’t like, and you have the Alt-Right deomostating against the speech they don’t like. This is becoming a feed back loop, a polarity self feeding itself and growing. Like a fight in the school yard, the energy feeds itself and draws everyone into it, each being drawn into it under the hope of ending it. So each end of the polarity tries the end the pain of the grid-lock by feeding the grid-lock. Sound familiar?

What Tolle is saying is that there is no real difference, only a matter of degree, between the speech in your living room and the speech in the society when you have a feed-back look rise to give existence to the separate ends of the polarity. A tennis match is a polarity in which two One’s, each end of the court, battle for there to be only ONE, and when there is ONE there is the Peace of Now. Now is ONE, so in a polarized situation where there is no creativity, and no listening, you have each end of the polarity fight for their to be only ONE. This is like a positive and negative end of a batter fighting so there is only positive and non negative. The irony is that when one side of a polarity wins, they are destroyed as well. The battery won’t work.

What we look at in this talk is how this polarity rises out of the peace of Now in the first place. The basic polarity is I-IT— I as an observer (subject) and IT as an object focused on. The Peace of Now is then the Observer and the Observed are One. We go to movies to know this Peace of Now. In the movie you are not a separate observer. You are the movie. You are you as the movie. Only when someone starts talking next to you do you reemerge as an I and IT, and you are irritated with that IT who is talking and pulling you back into your separate sense of self, out of the bliss of being-in-the-movie.

Here the rule: Identity needs conflict in order to exist. When you identity with a political view, you now belong to a political tribe, and that tribe exists through raising conflict with its opposite tribe. Identity politics is tribal warfare, but not as a game, but as a life and death struggle. Politics used to be a game with rules, like a tennis match. Now it is a blood sport. identity is now absolute instead of relative. The absolutes are in the saddle and ride our mind.

The Peace of Now already always exists as transcendent to or prior to our rising polarity of I-IT. From the view of I-IT the Now is transcendent of experience. Experience is I-IT. I am having an experience of IT. I-IT rise together like two ends of a horn. And this horn is always a dilemma. Now is seeing the whole bull simultaneously, both ends of the horn at once, instead of selectively, one horn and then the other as either/or. As the Zen Koan would phrase it: if you choose one horn you don’t see the whole bull; if you choose the other horn, you don’t see the whole bull. Now choose, which is it?

In the news today, a matador got gored to death by tripping on his cape. We are always being gored by the horns of the dilemma because we can’t see the whole bull, of the Now that is not divided by selective either/or.

Our media world look like a calm sea with increasing and decreasing whirlpools of polarities. Some big ones have disappeared like the one in Northern Ireland. but there are new ones growing all the time. Black Lived Matters is one, the polarity of Black versus the Police, and those who identify with each side of the horn. Trump, of course, creates polarities as a mode of operation, intentionally stirring one up so that he can through conflict keep his base identity tribe energized. If they stop feeding the whirlpool, the polarity will dissolve.

This was MLK non-violence philosophy: stop feeding the polarity, but don’t withdraw from it. Off yourself to the jaws of the polarity without resistance, but don’t withdraw. So you stay in engaged without feeding the whirlpool, by not identify with one of the horns. This reveals the other side of the horn of dilemma as the aggressor. Exposed the whirlpool can’t sustain itself. Awareness does not feed the feed-back loop because it does not feed the loop with its identity as one side of the loop.

Following this thread of Insight, I want to see into how we can create our way out of a polarity, or grid-lock of the two horns of the bull. Face with a polarity of opposites, we are conditioned to choose one or the other horns, and then get gored by the horn we don’t choose. Choice must choose something. Choice cannot choose everything. There is no end to everything. We can’t choose unless we draw a line and say this and not that. When when it comes to the field of choice itself, we can’t choose the field. We can only choose something on the field, the foreground and not the background that is the whole field out of which the foreground rises. So choices is limited to choosing what we select to choose. Awareness is not choice. One can’t choose to be aware, because then you divide awareness into the awareness I choose against that which I don’t choose. Choice divides, and Awareness cannot be divided. Awareness is always already Now. So Now cannot be divided, until our selecting, choosing consciousness pick out something to identify with. When we choose something to be conscious of, we identify with it, either as a friend or a foe. And that is the Horn of Dilemma. We have divided the bull of the All into this or that, and then we identify with our object, since it is created by our own consciousness, (Get that), so of course we have to identify with our own baby. It is then a good or bad baby, but either way we identify with it. And now we are hooked.

Life is a Bull. When we don’t see both horns as belonging to One Life, then we get hooked on the Horns of the Dilemma, and create a feedback loop of one horn against the other horn…but trying to restore the bull to its original oneness…in time. But the Bull is Now.