by Dries Cronje on December 15, 2010
This quote from A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle goes right to the heart of what the awakened spiritual life is all about… From moment to moment.
“What is spiritual realization? The belief that you are spirit? No, that’s a thought. A little closer to the truth than the thought that believes you are who your birth certificate says you are, but still a thought. Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continually pass away. The Buddha was probably the first human being to see this clearly, and so
anata (no self) became one of the central points of his teaching. And when Jesus said, “Deny thyself,” what he meant was: Negate (and thus undo) the illusion of self. If the self — ego — were truly who I am, it would be absurd to “deny” it.
What remains is the light of consciousness in which perceptions, experiences, thoughts, and feelings come and go. That is Being, that is the deeper, true I. When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but only relative importance. I honor it, but it loses its absolute seriousness, its heaviness. The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times? To be more accurate, can I sense the I Am that I Am at this moment? Can I sense my essential identity as consciousness itself? Or am I losing myself in what happens, losing myself in the mind, in the world?” — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
All Eckhart Tolle’s books, audios, and videos are wonderful tools to help us awaken to Reality — that same Reality to which Jesus pointed as the kingdom of God. I can highly recommend any of his resources. To find out more about them, and to find a handy recommended reading list, visit the Eckhart Tolle website.
by Dries Cronje on December 14, 2010
In the previous post we looked at some awesome news… Some news that is truly good, even (especially?) for the present generation.
Just one caution… You can’t know this good news only with your mind. You need to arrive at that deeper awareness, that higher consciousness, that is your true nature. This is the domain of your essence identity. This is your true Self. It is the place where you feel One with Being, One with all Life.
Everything in your life can be a collection of thoughts, and this would prevent you from ever realizing your Christ-in-you true identity.
Take this very simple analogy… If you tell a small child living on the equator in Africa that snow is cold, she might believe you. This will be knowledge. However, once such a child travels to Europe to experience the cold weather and snow of the winters there, the knowledge would be complemented by experience. Now this child will truly know that snow is cold.
In a similar way you can think that you know the peace of God. However, only once you truly feel Oneness with Being at your very core will this become more than a mere thought in your mind. Then experience takes you past mind-knowledge to true knowing…
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by Dries Cronje on November 22, 2010
I mostly relate to God in the first-person — as Indwelling Spirit or Being within me. However, for this post, I am writing (to you) about Him in the third-person. Please keep in mind that God is both transcendent and immanent.
I have immensely good news for you…
As you are, here and now, wherever you read these words, you are special, beautiful and precious to God. Like the perfect Father, He is not angry with you. He is not unhappy about the string of mistakes you have made throughout your life. He is not even unhappy about those mistakes that you made this morning, or those that you will make tomorrow… What He is concerned about is that you will miss a wonderful opportunity to experience his indescribable peace and joy during your earthly life.
See, to God the terms heaven and hell start as realities here on earth. To Him, these words don’t point primarily to ‘places,’ but to levels of consciousness. Through learning how to truly ‘see’ (developing spiritual awareness of what is real) you can start experiencing heaven here, now, today. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you! Sadly it is also possible not to wake up to this truth. You can go through life unaware of your deepest reality, and you will endlessly suffer as a result of your misguided searches for happiness. And when you suffer, you also create suffering for others… It is the definition of hell on earth.
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by Dries Cronje on November 16, 2010
So… what exactly is the ego?
In its most basic form, the ego is the thought “I,” “me,” “my,” or “mine” combined with any other thought… A little boy that shouts “Mine, mine, mine!” when his father takes away a lollipop (that he is putting to excellent work in his mission to destroy the couch) gives us such an clear and honest view of this… So much can be learned by simply observing little children.
It is often said jokingly, but it is true that men never truly grow up — their toys just get more expensive. In exactly the same way that the little boy gets upset by his father taking away the lollipop, grown men cry about their football teams losing… Or get into a fistfight and then rationalize it with: “He was looking at my girlfriend…” or “He knocked over my beer.”
This is absurd. Nothing is truly yours… Once you realize this, you can’t lose anything, much less become upset about it. You don’t even have problems. They are merely situations and can be dealt with much more effectively when you stop thinking about them as problems.
It runs deeper still. The ego is your mind-generated identity, and it always feels incomplete — no matter what. It is the story that you tell yourself that always ends up with the conclusion “You are not there yet.” For this reason people go to extreme lengths to get to the “there” where they are not yet in their ego’s opinion. More suffering!
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by Dries Cronje on November 11, 2010
One of the deepest fears that a human being experiences is that of being someone who have not achieved much… Someone who is not worth much in the eyes of others, or someone who just simply is not special… If the joyous realization of your deepest Being is “I Am!” then this fear can be stated as the realization of “I am not enough,” “I am not yet …” or “I should rather be …”
This fear is false — illusory. You were not born with this fear.
As you grow up in an imperfect world, you develop this fear. When we experience disappointments in love or acceptance from our parents, our friends, our sisters or brothers, this fear grows, whispering in our ears: “I am not worth much. I am not special.” You then identify with that voice…
Our Solution for the Fear — The Ego
To help you cope despite the presence of this fear (and your subtle identification with it), you create an illusory identity for yourself. You do this in your mind. Whenever you then feel threatened by another person, you can retreat into the safety of ego identification. If you just listen to some positive thoughts about yourself, and how right you are versus how wrong they are, you feel better. Also, you ‘have’ this and that that they ‘don’t have’, and your identification with these things also make you feel better about yourself.
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by Dries Cronje on November 9, 2010
All the terms I am using on this blog will be things you have heard before. I will, however, attempt to state them in a fresh way to ensure the unchanging reality behind the words gets communicated clearly. Words are mere tools to help us grasp the Truth — something known and grasped on a level of consciousness above mere thought. No word is important in and of itself. However, words are necessary and useful to explain important concepts.
Someone who have really studied and wrestled with the message of Jesus, and who have considered the allegorical meaning toward which Jesus strongly hints throughout, might conclude that this is what Jesus was saying (and I am using my own words here):
There is this wonderful alternative reality that can free you of all your so-called problems and cure your unhappiness. You will see this reality if you learn how to truly ‘see.’ But you will need to attain a higher level of consciousness for such seeing to be possible. If you manage to enter — and learn to permanently live from — this reality, no one and no set of circumstances will be able to take away your deep peace and joy. Even if you get martyred or killed, you will not lose your contentment.
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by Dries Cronje on November 8, 2010
This whole post is a response to a reader’s comment on my earlier post called Suckers for Punishment. I am doing it as a post and not as a comment because I think the issues raised applies to many people considering the importance of spiritual awakening. Hopefully someone can learn something.
Please go and read Fanie’s comment here to ensure that you are up to date with the conversation.
In my writing from this point on, I am directly addressing Fanie…
Fanie,
I think your comment was left a bit prematurely. I am still going to address many of these issues as we progress.
However, these are very important issues. And this is an excellent opportunity to address them. I hope you are okay with me doing a post about them? In what follows, I am going to come across strong. I need to break through to a place within you where all this is known already, where everything written here makes sense. It is also a very long post… Apologies.
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by Dries Cronje on November 5, 2010
Excellent news! There’s an alternative reality. A reality where suffering is an illusion.
This alternative reality is available to everyone. Young or old. Healthy or sick. It is even (especially?) available to the oppressed… And it is never too late to follow the alternative route to true life.
I am going to try my best to explain it as I have come to understand it… It is what I refer to as Oneness with Being, what the mystics would call Divine Union. And it is actually felt / realized / experienced much easier than it is mentally understood. We know what it is not — suffering and illusion. But to describe what it is with mere words will never suffice. As you read, try and see if you can experience this reality as well. Try and feel or experience the reality behind the words. Once you do, it will grow in you…
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by Dries Cronje on November 5, 2010
We are a bunch of suckers for punishment…
We are all deeply unhappy. This is humanity’s main problem. We all feel as if we’re on our way to a happy, perfect life, but not just there yet… Everything is not as we would like it to be.
Instead of just simply resting in the profound realization of “I am,” most of us are still desperately trying to act and perform our way out of the prevalent “I am not enough…” or “I am not yet…” fallacy.
This subtle unhappiness is behind all the problems of our world. All violence, crime, murder, hate, broken relationships, divorces, etc. We kill each other due to the subtle undercurrent of unhappiness that we live with.
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