All things interesting …

Live as one

I have been listening to the talks of Mr Eckhart Tolle a lot over YouTube. I find his way of speaking as also the content mesmerizing, very appealing, and best of all, calming. I used to find a similar peace in listening to Ms B K Shivani as well.
Tolle’s idea of oneness of spirit is ever so relaxing. It puts all the complaints and egocentric thoughts of anger, jealousy, like and dislike towards other human beings to rest in a jiffy. Think about it, if you and the others, if you and the people whom you are surrounded by are just different manifestations of the same energy , only at different levels of consciousness- there is really no ‘You”, ‘me, ‘him’, ‘her’ etc. We are all energies in various states, forms, however one may like to perceive it, manifested in the now. Once this thought sinks in, the mind calms down, anxiety dissipates and people seem a lot closer to us, each one feels like the self. Loving becomes easier because loving or liking oneself is not hard if one decides to, the tendency to compare oneself with others and thereby to feel less or more than them automatically wanes – when an understanding that they are just you in another form dawns. Whether we may realize it or not, we as humans tend to forgive ourselves and ignore our own weaknesses in an oblivious absent-minded way but highlight in our minds the same about others – most of it being a by-product of learnt behaviour and an over-active mind.
The experience of now, as Tolle talks at length about and of “pain body”, are such reasonable ideas. When I identified my self-defeating thoughts, ideas and the “poor me” as my pain body ( perhaps Tolle’s word for Sanskar), as I observed my “pain body” taking over and consuming me, my self revelling in it, it brought a deep sense of relief, a release from guilt , a burden lifted off my shoulders. Combine with it the fleeting experience of Now and of being in the moment, life seems simple ,not “an inevitable incessant tangle of problems” which it is not even meant to be. The mind needs to learn to be in a state of empty space as against being in a state of constant thought, the plague of the human mind, source of all disease and conflict. Seeing the now for what it is , stripped of thoughts – those emerging from the ‘pain body’, those stemming from one’s ego, those from events associated with the past and those which relate to the future. Rid of all these thoughts, of constant evaluation of the content of the moment, the now is probably very light in nature and probably worth living . A life made-up of only such “nows” would indeed be a life full of happiness and lightness.
Not sure how far my understanding of this concept is from the actual concept propounded by the Gurus but putting such theories to test and experiencing blips of pristine thoughtless Nows every now and then is already helping me live lighter and a bit more content.