The Power of Now

[lumberjim]

a Book by Echart Tolle

I'm reading this, and I can tell already that as soon as I finish, I'll be rereading it. I've hit several parts that I want to spend more time contemplating.

The concept of a Pain Body was very interesting....

This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting qute close to the truth. It's the emotional pain body. It has two modes of being: dormant and active....
....The pain body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existance, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, "become you," and live through you. It needs to get its "food" through you. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness.
So the pain body, when it has taken you over, will create a situation in your life that refects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.

Once the pain body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isen't really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others.
If you were truly conscious of it, the pattern would disolve, for to want more pain os insanity, and nobody is conscioulsy insane.

there are other very salient points in the book, and although it's a little weird... I think it's changing the way I see myself a little bit.

[Pooka]

Oh man... that is a wonderful book!! I've bought 5 copies and am always giving them away and findmyself buying another. That is awesome LJ!

[Pooka]

You might also want to check out The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman.

[lumberjim]

meant to tell you... my mom happened to have a copy of Loving What is. So that's on my list too. I'm finding out that there is a whole lot of shit I wasn't paying attention to, and a whole lot more stuff available to learn about.

[Pooka]

A wise man knows how little he knows ;-). I hope the book is as helpful for you as it was for me.

I just started reading a book called Women, Food and God by Greenen Roth and despite Women being in the title I can see how it would be valuable for anyone. It isn't a Christian self help book... the term "God" is used in a much broader sense. It talks about how what we put on our plates is key to our view on spirituality, ourselves... etc and key to identifying and healing whatever it is that causes us to eat (you could translate that into any distructive behavior as she points out) when we aren't hungry. It is facinating. I'm only about a 1/3 of the way through, but I have to recomend it as well... if you can get past the title.

[lumberjim]

I've noticed before that when I feel sad or depressed, or jealous, or grief that I somehow want to continue. I don't want to be cheered up. I don't want to be mollified.

I always thought that maybe I had some defect that made me want to punish myself for something. Or some invisible compulsion that caused me to create situations that caused me to be in trouble.

Giving it a 'body' as Tolle does makes it possible to see it as separate from myself, and thus changeable. If it's not actually a part of me, then it's not me. It's just something I do. I can fix that when I notice myself doing it. Tolle promotes constant presence to watch for it. I'm not even close to that at this point... but I have been able, lately, to recognize when I'm allowing my current situation to spin my emotions up into knots. It's not easy, but if I concentrate, and breathe deeply for a few moments, I can bring myself out of the spiral of remorse for the past, and dread of the future... and dig my claws into the present moment. It's getting me through the day, at least.

[lumberjim]

I've spoken about something like it regarding anger to my son. When he gets mad, it takes over. The anger has control, and he gets lost in it. I can see it when it happens. I've told him to be aware of it... You never know if it's sticking, with a kid, but I hope it does, because this feels true to me.

[squirell nutkin]

Here's something to watch, instead of read. Take it with a grain of salt, it brings up interesting things to contemplate:
"What The Bleep Do We Know?"

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the movie's message.

Here's a clip about addiction:

[HungLikeJesus]

What do you mean by pain, LJ?

We need an operational definition.

[lumberjim]

In his book, Tolle defines it as any kind of negative emotion, or situation. Say....addiction...or jealousy.....

[HungLikeJesus]

If you enjoy pain, then it isn't negative.

If it isn't negative, then it isn't pain.

If it isn't pain, then you can't enjoy it.

It's very circular.

[lumberjim]

the point he makes is that the pain takes on it's own awareness, and controls you. the pain enjoys the pain. you don't.

[squirell nutkin]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

the point he makes is that the pain takes on it's own awareness, and controls you. the pain enjoys the pain. you don't.

Yeah, that's essentially the point of that clip, except they throw a physiological spin on it: You become addicted to the neuro-chemicals produced by whatever mind state you are habitually in.

The more of the chemicals you produce, the more receptor sites are created...

[skysidhe]

what sn said

[casimendocina]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

Giving it a 'body' as Tolle does makes it possible to see it as separate from myself, and thus changeable. If it's not actually a part of me, then it's not me. It's just something I do. I can fix that when I notice myself doing it. Tolle promotes constant presence to watch for it.

Check out Russ Harris who does mindfulness stuff-works well for separating stuff out.

I don't know a lot about it, but mindfulness seems to be based on Vipassana meditation. I've read some stuff ("Monsoon Rains and Icicle Drops" + "Thirty Something and Over it") about 10 day workshops in Europe and Australia. From what I can work out, on the very limited research I've done, the mindfulness stuff seems like the 'lite' version of Vipassana, but if the thought of 10 straight days of meditation seems impossible, then mindfulness might be the way to build up the skill before going for the 10 day sink or swim workshop.