LWT 11 | Hard Economic Times and the Teachings of Eckhart Tolle
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On this episode of LWT we discuss the economy. How can the teachings of Eckhart Tolle help us understand our relationship to the economy and to our individual economic situation? We discuss ways of dealing with the current economic situation using awareness and presence.
Key Insights From This Episode:
How you approach your situation from a state of presence will depend on the level of presence you were cultivating before this situation came to you.
Use awareness, be the silent watcher, watch and question your thoughts, do not let them control you. Witness how your pain body is activated, how your deepest fears are agitated, and how you are reacting to the economic situation around you.
Cultivate acceptance to foster a more conscious decision making process as you face economic hardships. From this state of acceptance, not resistance, you can interact with your life situation dynamically and will be open to discovering new ways in which life is calling you to serve. We have an opportunity to look at our deeper purpose in life.
Be aware of how your sense of ego or your “economic self” is shaping the ways you face your current situation. Realize that you are not your life stories, or the past, or the future, or your home, or your career, or your economic situation. Look beyond your individual sense of self. Look beyond our collective definitions of who we are – they are temporary (and unsustainable).
Connect to a deeper level of life and move beyond the thoughts and stories of your ego. You are life itself. Life expressed in form. There is no lack in life force. The one Source of Life that is never ending, never depleting, never in a recession. It is ever-flowing.
Items mentioned in this episode:
- Living With Tolle: Episode 5: Practicing Acceptance
- Deepak Chopra on Ellen
- Eckhart Tolle’s Finding Your Life’s Purpose (DVD)
- Eckhart Tolle on Avoiding Identification With Content and Fear of Loss
- We both really enjoy Leo Babauta’s: Zen Habits blog. Check out the “finances & family” category for great practical tips.
Questions for deeper reflection:
1. As I face the new economic landscape before me, how can I practice acceptance? How can I use my economic situation to cultivate awareness?
2. How can I play with form? How can I re-invent myself? How can I explore this world of forms differently? How can I connect with my family, with my community, with other forms around me? How can I be a better friend?
3. Who am I? What am I? What happens once I realize that I am not my life stories, but that I am Life itself?
Let us know what you think. If you have a question or if you want to share your experience, please use the comments section below to share and continue the conversation.
If you enjoy this podcast, please look us up in the iTunes store and write a quick review!
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Hi guys, I’m just dropping by to say thank you so much for your podcasts and the website.
I’ve listened to Eckhart’s Power of Now – I love his voice- but I find the Power of Now really hard to read. Then again, I tried to read when I was at an intensive workshop where I didn’t sleep for two weeks, so I guess that’s my fault!
I find the pain body concept a little hard to comprehend clearly. I’m a bit of a skeptic, although I have no problem with Tolle’s teachings about living in the now (but not dispensing with learning the lessons of the past nor with planning ahead). I just can’t seem to ‘think’ around the pain body as an external energy in any other way than relating it to a kind of global cultural habitus (to use the words of French anthropologist, Pierre Bordieau), a predisposition to negative behaviours that occurs in contemporary, globally linked human cultures.
Not sure if this metaphor is useful or equates to your understanding, but any extra insights you have to help me understand would be great.
Om Shanti,
Amanda
Hi Amanda,
Thanks for listening and for your great question. I’d have to do a bit more research into Bordieau’s cultural habitus to give an informed opinion.
Instead of thinking about the pain-body as a “global cultural habitus” occurring in a “globally linked human cultures,” I would suggest looking within and discovering your truth of the pain-body as an experience of it.
Eckhart is able to teach about the pain-body because he lived it at such an extreme level. He experienced it, therefore he was able to witness it in himself and in others with such deep insight.
There is a collective aspect to the pain-body, but looking for the truth “out there” will lead you down a long and winding road.
The shortest path to the truth is within.
All the best on your journey!
Greg
Hi Leo and Greg,
This podcast was awesome!! Great conversation between the two of you. I have questions. While today was great in many ways, I also wondered how Eckhart’s teachings can help a person who is facing immediate crises during 10% plus joblessness across the country. For example, losing your apartment or house tomorrow, with no money to store your things including clothes, no money to pay bills or all utilities are getting cutoff this week. Feeling gripped with primal fear induced by the knowledge that I am homeless, have no where to go, the shelter is full, and I am going on the streets is a natural reaction. Is the fear felt here part of the pain body and ego? How can one practice acceptance in this situation? The mind is screaming oh my God, no way can I live on the streets, but it is a fact. How can one accept this? What technique can you use to accept the truly unacceptable? This surely does not feel like just a “story,” but a really serious situation one is faced with these days by many people.
What techniques can you advise when you are in immediate danger and significant stress from truly fearful and horrible situations such as I’ve described? Have either of you ever been in this kind of desperation, and how did you deal with it using Eckhart’s techniques? I know that Eckhart left Europe and moved to the US with no money, no plan, no home and he found his way. How did that happen? How can we do the same during this serious economic crisis? Many people receive unemployment benefits and have some money to scrape by during this economy, but many do not.
I just wonder if we are better able to utilize The Power of Now when there is a basis of relative economic safety. How does this all work in these conditions?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Best regards,
Kristine
Hi Kristine,
I thought I would offer some suggestions although I don’t want to be standing in the way of Greg and Leo. This is their site after all. I know that they will have very enlightened answers. It’s just that I’ve noticed that once you can accept what is…and I mean anything…you will be okay. I have not faced the struggle that you portray, but I have lived in fear and come close to death.
Please look at your comment “My mind is screaming”. That is the key to your question. Have you taken a moment to step back and watch your mind “screaming”? You would find it very interesting if you did. Then turn your mind away from the future and look at now. Does your mind have to scream “now” or are you okay right “now”.
“I have lost my job. I have no income right now. I guess that has to be okay since that is what is and I can’t change that right now.
Give yourself some space around your fear.
Once you can free yourself from your “screaming mind” (and it’s not always easy) you will see that “now” is not so bad (it’s the future you fear) and you can use your mind to start planning for a better tomorrow instead of fearing the future.
Eckhart found his way (in my opinion) because he did not “fear” living on the streets. In fact, he was in a state of bliss from the simple act of being. Everything else took care of itself.
Peace,
Terry
Thanks Terry. I really appreciate your comments!
I have indeed listened to the screaming mind, and it is quite interesting
Peace back to you,
Kristine
Hi Terry & Kristine,
Thank you both so much for your comments and dialogue. You present a great starting point, Kristine, for looking at these teachings more closely.
There are many ways to explain the concept of “acceptance of the present moment” which I think is key to dealing with any crisis. Take a look at Chapter 3 of the Power of Now, where Eckhart describes how acceptance helps us find “the life underneath your life situation.”
Here are just two of the many insights from that chapter that can we can reflect on when asking your question:
“When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you are free of “becoming” as a psychological need, neither your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so there is
freedom from fear. You don’t seek permanency where it cannot be found: in the world of form, of gain and loss, birth and death. You don’t demand that situations, conditions, places, or people should make you happy, and then suffer when they don’t live up to your expectations.
Everything is honored, but nothing matters. Forms are born and die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms. You know that ‘nothing real can be threatened.’
…
There is a great question at the heart of your comments:
“What technique can you use to accept the truly unacceptable?”
I would say let’s use the same technique we use to accept the acceptable.
In one of his audio recordings, Eckhart uses the words “this too” to describe a Zen teaching that illustrates this concept of acceptance. Not “this too shall pass” which implies waiting for a future to embrace, but simply “this too,” as in “this also is”… now.
This is not to say we do not create change when we feel the need to, but we do it from a state of acceptance, from a position of “this also is.”
Again from Chapter 3 of PON:
“Should a situation arise that you need to deal with now, your action will be clear and incisive if it arises out of present-moment awareness. It is also more likely to be effective. It will not be a reaction coming from the past conditioning of your mind but an intuitive response to the situation. In other instances, when the time-bound mind would have reacted, you will find it more effective to do nothing – just stay centered in the Now.”
The “It” that you’re dealing with is not a problem. It is also not you, nor is it Life.
“When the compulsive striving away from the Now ceases, the joy of Being flows into everything you do…Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation.”
….
One final thought… If I said I was unemployed now, would that validate my words any more? If I said I have never felt pain would that devalue these words? If the words were spoken by a sadhu in Delhi or a CEO on Wall Street, would it matter? Does validating the words bring us closer to peace?
Signposts, the need to validate, and presence…these all are.
Thank you for your contributions to this great dialogue!
Leo
Hi Leo. Thanks for your excellent guidance.
I see everything you’re saying, yet I still don’t know how one can be in a state of acceptance or free from fear or form when you are in a severe crisis, such as having to live on the freezing NYC streets, surrounded by danger at all times (especially if you are a woman). Shelters are filled to capacity, and have you ever seen the NYC rats? Fear inducing for sure!! This is about making it to the next hour or sometimes the next minute, and you don’t give a minute’s thought to seeking someone else to make you happy or anything of the ego. You want so desperately to sleep, but can’t because you don’t know if you’ll wake up again. All you seek is to have a stable place on this planet, food for your family, warmth.
I should have explained more about why I asked the question on whether you’ve ever been in this kind of desperation, and how you dealt with it using Eckhart’s techniques. Actual experience can give a certain appreciation of the feelings (pain body, ego) involved, and I’m looking for specific help with the techniques beyond what was in your excellent pod cast. I don’t feel like my practice is really helping me and really just needed comfort from knowing it helped you or Greg. Then I thought I could try your specific practice that dealt with a desperate set of circumstances.
I need to ask you to go deeper into the topic of awareness in economic hard times for those who aren’t receiving unemployment benefits, whose savings have run out and welfare isn’t enough to survive. The truly poor in this world. My sense is that this pod cast geared more toward those who still maintain relative economic safety even though they are not where they once were in life e.g. job, lifestyle, ability to let joy flow through, awakened doing. There are a lot of people in the world who are in my shoes. One moment away from desperation, hunger, homelessness, illness. The news reports that many more are about to lose their unemployment benefits, and these conditions may not change for some time. It feels like we could benefit from a deeper perspective and guidance from you if that’s something you wish to take on.
The difference might be that these situations/ feelings have more to do with survival than dealing with the person you are “becoming” or mourning the loss of the person you once were. “Do I still have shoes or did someone steal them today,” is very different than feelings of loss at turning off cable TV because you can no longer afford it, or not being able to go on vacations or buy the latest gadgets like everyone else. It’s more focused on staying alive, getting a stable home again, having decent food to eat on a regular basis.
Can you elaborate on “This Also Is.” The full quote above was, “This is not to say we do not create change when we feel the need to, but we do it from a state of acceptance, from a position of “this also is.” I’m not there yet. I can definitely stay centered in the now, even when what’s in the now is dire, but acceptance is another thing.
Also, I’m not getting this result in my experience — “Should a situation arise that you need to deal with now, your action will be clear and incisive if it arises out of present-moment awareness.” If I am unable to accept the circumstances, will I ever have clarity? I feel fuzzy and muddy. I’m waiting for the direction, but it hasn’t come. I’m waiting for the joy of being to flow in, but it hasn’t surfaced yet. Help!
I do feel peace when I listen to you. I feel anchored in the moment, and I can feel life within. I just can’t seem to get beyond to feel the joy, or the clarity Eckhart talks about.
Any further thoughts you have are vastly appreciated!
With love and blessings from my heart,
Kristine
Hi Kristine,
Thank you for sharing yourself so openly and honestly! Eckhart has stated that awareness is the greatest agent for change, and the more honest and open you can be with your situation, the more likely a solution will emerge. I’m sending you positive vibes for that solution to appear and for the direction you seek to materialize!
Regarding the situation you describe, you are right in that it is extremely difficult to be in acceptance of a situation when your very survival is threatened. If someone has never had exposure to a teaching such as Tolle’s or awakened by some other means, then most likely they are trapped in complete resistance to their “unacceptable” life situation.
As Eckhart teaches, your response to a situation is completely dependent upon your current state of presence. If you find yourself in a situation where your very survival is threatened, then trying to whip up the presence required to be in acceptance is almost impossible.
If you are new to these teachings, then most likely your ego and pain-body still dominate your state of consciousness. If that is the case, then your ego and pain body will be completely threatened and your thoughts will be dominated by negative stories of catastrophic proportions. You will feel like the sky is falling and the weight of the world on your shoulders because the ego and pain-body will amplify the threat of survival (whether the story or perception is true or not).
So, if you have not been able to cultivate a strong state of presence leading up to your current situation, then you will be very challenged to be in acceptance of what you are facing. That is just the truth of what I know the teachings to be and my life experience with them.
That being said, I still want to provide you with some practical tips for your situation. The first tip is to practice the inner-body meditation as much as you possibly can. You can listen to a video recording of this meditation for free on the website and if you send me a message via the contact page, I will send you a professional audio recording of this meditation at no charge.
It is always a good idea to practice this meditation no matter what your current life situation is. It will allow you to grow in presence power – priceless in any situation – and create “space” for a intuitive solution to arise from within.
You are in a unique situation that is specific to your life journey. I could tell you what to do from my perspective, but the best answer for your situation will come from within yourself. Your physical body is a field of intelligence interacting with the environment around you. It is constantly sending you messages, you could say a “gut” level feeling of what to do, but the screaming mind drowns out those messages.
Practicing the inner-body meditation will quiet the mind and give you the best chance to hear how you are being guided from within.
I would also highly encourage you to reach out for help. The ego typically resists asking for help. “I can do it myself” is its conditioned response. That is why so many teachings specifically guide us to ask for help – “ask and thou shalt receive.” Sit down and brainstorm all the ways you can reach out for help. Even ask others to sit down with you and brainstorm.
The ego can have such a huge sense of pride that it will keep you from asking for the very help you need and the very help your intuition is guiding you to act on.
And here’s an chance to get your hands dirty. How are you being guided to reach out for help this very moment?
No matter what answer just came to you, and no matter how your ego is going to judge that, I highly encourage you to act upon that guidance right now and make that call, go visit that family member, neighbor, friend, or agency, and take that first step in creating a solution.
That first step may not be the ultimate solution, but it will get energy flowing in the direction of creating solutions instead of the ego zapping your energy by focusing on the “problems.”
I’m sending you positive vibes for your journey Kristine. And I really want to acknowledge you for sharing yourself on our website and being a voice for the many, many people currently facing the challenging situation you describe above. Thank you so much!
With love and blessings from my heart,
Greg
hi greg,
can u send in the inner awareness meditation audio for me .thank u……….my email id is sirishapr@yahoo.com