“All suffering is ego-created and due to resistance. All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal thoughts. All negativity is resistance. You can stop negativity from arising by being fully present.” Eckhart Tolle (from A New Earth)

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If we really look deeply into this teaching we will see that I AM SUFFERING! This sense of Me as a separate being IS suffering. Buddha calls this suffering Dukkha, which means separation. I exist because I resist. Resistance is the movement of the mind that separates me from the whole. Resistance creates the island I call ME. Resistance is the Rub I experience as ME. The world rubs me so that I can exist.

So I can stop me from arising as resistance by being “fully present,” says Tolle. This appears to be a positive choice. Being fully present seems to be a positive choice. But wait.

This teaching is a Zen Koan. How can the Chooser (which is you as ego) choose to be not the choose(fully present)? If you choose, you are suffering: if you don’t choose, you are suffering. Now you must choose! This is the spiritual knot that cannot be untied because the tying or choosing creates the knot.

Tolle Teaching prods you to step off the Pirates Plank of logic and choice and even your identity into the unknown. You can’t choose the unknown because you don’t know what’s there. Awareness or being “fully present” is not a choice. Being fully present is the choiceness choice.