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B4Peace, Blog for PEACE, Eckhart Tolle, ego, Healthy Minds, mind, Mindfulness, self-awareness, serenity, stillness, Thought
I’ll begin with a short story that Eckhart Tolle likes to tell:
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. Two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were walking along a country road that had become extremely wet with mud and deep puddles after heavy rains.
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Sometime I just go with what the expert says. In this case, I have a few clarifying paragraphs.
The story that Tolle relates is used to illustrate a point that we have a vulnerability protection system. He calls it the ego.
I just want to clarify what happened (in this story).
First, the mind is not who we/you are. However, the body believes whatever thoughts that mind allows. Thus as the information is processed in the body, it actually changes subtly the body; the brain and molecules, etc… we know there are chemicals and brain waves and signals being transmitted throughout the brain-heart-gut-body (form, aka. mind-body, un-awakened consciousness). The information, together with form, is ever changing. Thinking, therefore, requiring time, occurs in form (as interpretations of information / consciousness) … not in a/the single unchanging mind (divine mind).
This is confusing and difficult when there is an upset.
In the story, Ekido believes that Tanzan did wrong by carrying the girl. The monks have been walking for a long time when Ekido finally tires of his burden. Ekido has been carrying his belief of the wrongness for hours. He’s been feeling upset. Finally, he relieves himself of this upset by confronting Tanzan rather than himself. He might have said right away to Tanzan, “I got uncomfortable with what happened. What is bothering me is my thinking that it was wrong. We are not supposed to hold women. Still, no harm came of it. She clearly needed some help. I ought to get over this.”
Instead, Ekido allows the disturbance to grow into greater discomfort. He begins to believe that Tanzan is the cause of his discomfort.
Negative thinking about it may have seemed to be the best thing. However, negativity attracts more negativity and the mind then is left feeling badly and having a pressing urge to find some relief. Typically, a person acts out when under this sort of pressure. If there is someone else that can be blamed, that seems the right thing then to do. The upset gets taken over by the body’s pain management system — the source of the pain being out there, Ekido accuses his friend of doing a wrong.
Ekido unknowingly was maintaining a separation from the present moment while he was feeling disturbed. This gets tiring. The disturbance feeds into a delusion that Tanzan is responsible for the upset. His mind is unable to break free of the discomfort while ruminating about the past event. Finally his mind then convinced him that the problem can be fixed by blaming Tanzan. Fortunately Tanzan feels free to accept that Ekido is needlessly upset and his reply is matter-of-fact rather than defensive. If Ekido wants to think excessively, he may. The thinking was tiring his mind. Since the incident is past and Tanzan was free of it when he put the girl down, Ekido wasted his time carrying the upset for miles.
There are two parts to Ekido’s problem. First off, he is excessively thinking.
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Here is a training video by Eckhart Tolle…
“How do we break the habit of excessive thinking?”
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Eckhart explores excessive (addiction to) thinking, offering a handful of ways to put the stop to thoughts and to choose presence of now instead. When body sends a signal, mind gets a thought. You may allow this or you may choose to diminish the thought by coming back to the presence of now.
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A second problem for Ekido is that he didn’t have any control to change what upset him since the upset is about Tanzan’s action. The inner dialog lead to excessive thinking about something that was beyond his control. Some of us spend our time when dealing with people trying to change circumstance that are beyond our control. This is, it turns out, usually just a waste of time and energy.
We may even threaten, scold, manipulate, coerce, bully, plead, beg, shout, pout, bribe or try anything to make a situation go the “right” way — often, only to see things getting progressively worse before they get better. Since negativity attracts more negativity this is quite stressful and the mind-body then is left feeling badly.
Peace is my goal and tolerance, acceptance, compassion, genuine concern and loving presence is my way to get this. Getting better at this began for me with reducing stress and finding inner peace. I began to understand that I was reactive to the content of my life situations and that I was sacrificing sanity this way. Self-will was inadequate. Controlling my surroundings by exercising self-will was not healthy. I began to look for solutions and I found that there are hundreds of great ways to reduce stress and gain personal freedom. Today’s second video may help you to gain some peace of mind for dealing with stress.
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“How to live without Stress in your day-to-day life”
by Eckhart Tolle
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Learning how to achieve peaceful living may be much eased by knowing how to live without reacting to the “content” of our lives. There may be realization that the form of thought need not make a home in me as a lasting identity.
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I hope you find this training useful. I added some more in the comments section and there are additional related articles listed too.
Need help or want to collaborate with me?
e-mail me at thehunt4truth@yahoo.com
Thanks for visiting.
Eric
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Apr 11, 2014 .
the Hunt for Truth 
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Great to discover you and your blog! So much of what you have written about is close to what I believe in, understand and agree with. You have written it with great clarity, thought and insight. Thank you for sharing! All best wishes…
Thanks. I did like that post very much. It wasn’t so difficult as some were to write. The videos helped to keep the word count down and yet fill it up with more depth. It is one of the very most difficult training lectures I ever give. I use it in two courses I teach so I just had to fit it into a post.
How did you come to my blog Anjali?
I see you are an author. Good for me; I like poetry. Usually the poems are good and also I like them because I can only visit blogs about once a week usually and the poetry blogs are much easier for me to read… I also love photo blogs and music blogs – same reason, entertaining and fairly quick. I have a few blog friends that write several pages every day… its all good, but since I value them so much is why I read them all – honestly the length is an issue for me.
I use google or facebook to be a learner. FB is much easier – arranged in groups and the log is easy too and I get the email updates into a separate social folder.
Glad to meet you. If you need any help please let me know. It seems you have wordpress pretty figured out though.
Blessings
~ Eric
Thank you so much for your reply Eric. I discovered you on osarobohenry’s blog. I commented and noticed you – your title grabbed me instantly! 🙂 The hunt for truth is my lifelong meditation – everything else is background noise that I live through, hopefully calmly (not always!). I too visit blogs only once a week – as I work and don’t have enough time. I write poetry – cos I can say what I want to with a limited word count and people can enjoy it easily without having to spend too much time! But seriously – I love poetry – it touches places in my soul. And I am so glad you liked them. I have followed your blog so will keep visiting. Thank you 🙂
I typed out a looooong reply to your comment but it seems to have got lost! lol
Nopes, it’s there! yay!
😀 yes, YAY!
Blessings Anjali. I am off to work. Enjoy your week.
~ Eric
And you too Eric! All best wishes 🙂
This is awesome information Eric! I mean seriously, I know it’s been said time and time again that we can not control anyone but ourselves, and it’s true. No matter how much we yell, stomp, bully or throw our adult tantrums it’s not happening. Yet we allow the actions and words of others to control us in one way or another leading to stress, over thinking and the carrying of unnecessary burdens just as you’ve discussed.
This post has helped me in that I am the person who for the most part will not carry any negative emotion due to acts of other’s. Even when I do, I tend to release it quickly simply because it’s a poisonous emotion and I don’t like the way it causes me to feel.
At one time I felt I was a bit uncaring and have been told that I had no emotions regarding people but I just reacted in a way that said I can’t do anything about other’s so why dwell. Again, I can only control myself so that’s what I try to do. Believe me if I could have other people do or say what I felt just not to upset me or stress me out then I would, but I can’t and don’t need to, and it’s all good! Thanks so much for sharing. And the illustration was great! I’ll try to remember it and share it in future conversations ;=)
Be A Blessing!
LaTrice
My greatest breakthrough comes when contemplating … “Thinking therefore, requiring time, occurs in mind-bodies… not in a single unchanging mind. This is confusing and difficult when there is an upset.” … an upset thought is by itself until it links with past examples or rules or other thoughts of similar nature. Therein lies the problem – we allow being taken out of the present and into the illusion of space-time judgments and comparisons and negativity. I might say, I get lost in my past – the same past that proves me inadequate and now robs me of my present. There is virtually nothing real that is going to come from this examination because the spirit of love is lost in the ritual of blame and shame.
As this time passes in upsets, the new mind-bodies are growing disease of bitterness, resentment, isolation of self-pity depression, sadness, hate, and so on – negative separating emotive thoughts that are making me sick and tired.
Thankfully, we are tougher than it seems.
With rest and proper diet and some loving people, we can make a full recovery. For me, there needs to be spiritual sense of that love is the energy of progress and that compassion and tolerance are tools of higher-perceiving … that I can apply these understandings with humility to gain connections with people and with progress – the alignment – of being loving.
Being loving is the best I can do. Sometime that may be by giving congratulation or even by throwing a party. Sometime that is by being blank… saying “Call me if you want or need to talk.”
Being loving is easier in time when I practice. It was difficult… in fact I recall needing to tell myself when conversing with someone caught up in negativity “Just do no harm” … repeating this as I listened.
Thank you for taking time to post a comment.
I’ll do my best… being a blessing. I know you too will progress.
Love and much thanks LaTrice…
~ Eric
“Being loving is the best thing you can do.” Eric, being loving is the best thing there is to do. And, I think it is a good thing to practice it allowing the Spirit of God to guide us, being obedient to his voice.
I believe when we realize the vastness of God’s unconditional love for us it will erase any shame and blame that we may be carrying because God excepts us just as we are. Through our relationship with him we begin to drop of those things that tried to mask and hinder us in that shame and blame. We also learn to love and accept others through that very same love…the love of God through us to others.
Let us stay in the presence of love and in the present moment. Let us also thank God for total deliverance of shame or blame from the past, present or future. In Jesus Name Amen. Keep sharing Eric.
Enjoy The Blessings,
LaTrice
In Jesus Name … yes.
Thank you – and please, do continue your sharing as well. 😀
God bless us – everyone of us.
Amen.
Amen.
LaTrice
I’m going to have to apologize for what I’m about to do… but the teaching of peace, love, happiness isn’t going anywhere and I’ve had to resort to more extreme measures.
every fix is temporary – there is no permanence to solving problems – just breath and rest… find stillness and allow another mood – take no action while thoughts banter the nonsense of extremes.
I just want to say that I feel there are some types of thinking that aren’t done nearly enough and others that, as you say, are done excessively. I think it’s important to distinguish between the types of thinking rather than say we need to break the habit of excessive thinking. If more people thought philosophically, as in asking ‘what will happen if we do X?’ or ‘what if . . .’, then the world would begin to improve. this is one reason why Norway’s government includes a philosopher; that person’s job is to ask the right questions . . . and to do that, we need to think . . .
However, you are right, that thinking in the style of the young monk is fruitless and can cause us problems.
A good, thought-provoking post. Thanks. ~ Linne
Great post Eric, a timely reminder for me thank you 😊
Reblogged this on Above The Crowd Shopping, Sherri Of Palm Springs and commented:
Reblogged, meditations…beautiful..
Thank you… the perceptions that Tolle is speaking of tend to open us to a greater awareness of our present – in stillness there is “movement” that is like breathing and concentration on our breathing can come into alignment with this “source” movement – awakening occurs here from the expansive and gentle enlivening love flowing source
this is such a great tale… And so true… Nice to see it again… blessings eve.
Tolle is popularizing the easy part of mindfulness – as it turns out there are great health benefits even by just the simplest mindful practice of stillness
Eckhart is another great teacher, who has come to understand how the mind works and its so easy for us to carry burdens unnecessarily.. We love hanging onto jealousies, bitterness, anger, doubts and more…
But then none of us are perfect.. I like you have come to understand we are more so much more than we allow ourselves to be.. But we trap ourselves in our thoughts as we allow them to bog us down in perpetual feelings of guilt, or unworthiness.. Seldom do we Live in the NOW.. as Eckharts book the Power of Now illustrates… We either worry about the past or what is to come in the future… . Never allowing the freedom of Now in our lives.. Once we do and we understand Ego more.. its refreshingly freeing…
Big Smiles for this post.. 🙂
Sue
So not to stop all thinking, just negative thinking, irrational thinking that causes anxiety and depression.
Here is my belated contribution:
http://analyticalperspective.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/practical-problem-vs-emotional-problem/
that is a terrific article… thanks for adding a link.
Thank you. Thank you.
Great story Eric, and a good reminder of what happens when we allow negative thoughts to control our mind. I occasionally catch myself in the beginnings of this kind of situation and have to have a “chat” with myself. When we are aware of our thoughts and learn to focus on the positives, after a while negative thinking feels uncomfortable and we fall into a pattern of “right thinking”.as Easterners refer to it.
Loved it, Eric 🙂
Timely and pretty comprehensive. Thanks for sharing. vw
Excellent exposè Eric. Thank you.
Suffering and the End of Suffering
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The inner alignment with the presence of now may aid putting an end to unnecessary suffering. Tolle teaches that suffering is necessary until you realize that it is unnecessary. When you remove time from your unhappiness what remains is the feeling, sensation, pressure, disturbance. Give it attention, just allowing it to be. Thoughts that there is harm or upset that or unhappiness and personal wrongs against us are unnecessary. If you can accept the disturbance as it is without any additional story it isn’t as troublesome. Break concentration on the thoughts by focusing on the presence of now; focus on stillness. Take responsibility for the feelings. Say aloud, “I was allowing myself to feel upset. I don’t have to let this turn into anything more than it really is. I want to get back to effortless doing if I can.”
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How to Use Non-Identification with Form to Dissolve the Ego Self
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Dissolve the egoic or story self by non-identification with form. The formless essence of our being exists in the present moment.
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Two Monks Carrying a Girl
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Enjoying Every Moment (FULL Movie)
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