Chapter 6: Ego, Pain-Body, Live In The Present

Freedom from the pain-body comes from realizing I have one. This knowledge helps me stay present and alert enough to notice the pain-body in myself as a flood of negative emotions. When I recognize my pain-body, it can no longer pretend to be me and live and renew itself through me.

It is possible to rise above the egoic mind and the pain-body.  I do this by living in the Now, the present.  The ego will treat the present moment as a means to an end, as an obstacle, or as an enemy.  I am able to decide what kind of a relationship I want to have with the present moment.  The present moment is inseparable from life, so I am really deciding what kind of a relationship I want to have with life.  Tolle writes, "Life is always now.  Your entire life unfolds in this constant Now.  Even past or future moments only exist when you remember or anticipate them, and you do so by thinking about them in the only moment there is:  this one."

Tolle defines awakening this way, "Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. . .Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it.  Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.  Awareness takes over from thinking.  Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of awareness.  Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence.  Another word for it is Presence:  consciousness without thought."

This is a summary of what I learned from Eckhart Tolle in, A New Earth.  I already believed I have a spirit and there is a "higher power" before I read the book.

1. Do not believe every thought you have.  Question every thought.  Do not let your body feel the emotions from a thought that is probably not true.
2. The incessant voice in my head comes from the ego and not my higher self.  The ego is an illusory self.
3. The pain-body feeds on negative thoughts and produces more of them.  Be Present so you can identify the pain-body and not let it control your life very often.
4. Live in the Now, the present.  My life is a constant unfolding of the Now.  Learn from experiences.
5. Be aware.  Let your thinking be a servant of that awareness.  Rely even more on your "higher power" each day to help you.  You have been trying to do too much on your own.

After finishing, A New Earth, I listened to the CDs of, The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.  This book goes into more detail on the information in, A New Earth.  Every day I practice controlling my thoughts.  I think this is an important part of my treatment plan for depression.  I love these two books!  :)

Chapter 5: A New Earth, Changing The Way I Think

About this time, I started listening to the CDs of, A New Earth; Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle. The things I learned in this book helped me change the way I think. I had this book several years before I read it. I first heard about it when it was one of Oprah's Book Club Books.

Changing the way I think, changed my life.  In a section titled, THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK, Eckhart Tolle questions if humanity is ready for a transformation of consciousness.  He asks, "Can they defy the gravitational pull of materialism and materiality and rise above identification with form that keeps the ego in place and condemns them to imprisonment within their own personality?"  He believes the possibility of such a transformation has been the central message of Buddha, Jesus, and others.

The author states, "This book's main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken.  In that sense, this book is not 'interesting'.  Interesting means you can keep your distance, play around with ideas and concepts in your mind, agree or disagree.  This book is about you.  It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless."

This book had meaning for me.  I learned the ego is an illusory sense of self that becomes the basis for misinterpretations of reality, thought processes, interactions, and relationships.  If I can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves.  The egoic mind is the incessant voice in my head, the stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it.  These thoughts are often not true, but if I don't question them I will feel the emotions the thoughts evoke.  Jean-Paul Sartre said, "The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks."

Learning about the pain-body was especially interesting to me.  Eckhart Tolle describes it this way, "The pain-body is a semiautonomous energy-form that lives within most human beings, an entity made up of emotion.  It has its own primitive intelligence, not unlike a cunning animal, and its intelligence is directed primarily at survival.  Like all life-forms it periodically needs to feed---to take in new energy---and the food it requires to replenish itself consists of energy that is compatible with its own. . .Any emotionally painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body.  That's why is thrives on negative thinking as well as drama in relationships.  The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness."