Had the pleasure of hearing about Oprah’s 10 week online course where she sits down with Ekhart Tolle and goes through ‘A New Earth’ with him so I thought I’d start a study of the study so to speak  Perhaps one day someone can conduct of a study of my study of the study and we can create an infinite loop  Either way, each video is 1.5 hours long so grab a nice pot of tea, sit down for the duration and come back here with your comments on what you thought.

http://www.oprah.com/media/20090710-obc-a-new-earth-week1

You can grab the workbook for this class here although you have to sign up to oprah.com which is free and no doubt will take you all of 45 seconds:  http://www.oprah.com/workbook/oprahsbookclub/anewearth/pkganewearthwebcast/20080130_obc_webcast_workbook1

My notes:

Everyone’s responsibility to discover their disfunction. If you  get nothing else from this chapter this take this in.  In our comfortable complacent lives we never stop to think that perhaps there’s something to be changed.. Not necessarily that there’s something wrong but that we could stand to improve or look deeper into our very beings.  Once you take the first step down this path everything changes.

Why is this so important you ask?
“Everyone’s individual disfunction contributes to the collective disfunction. In order to fix the world we first need to fix ourselves.”

Why do we have the voice in our head?

It’s conditioned thinking, conditioned by our past, upbringing and surrounding culture. Sometimes when the awakening process begins, the old thoughts, the old voices still come up but the essential thing is to recognize them as conditioned thought processes. Allow it to be there, just say hello and be the awareness behind the old thought, not the thought itself. The only way to go behind the old patterns you simply have to be the witness, don’t look at the thoughts and criticize it, just be aware of what your mind is saying and realize that is only a small part of the totality of your consciousness. The essential part of who you are is the awareness of the space for the thought, the space that separates you from the thought itself, the awareness that knows there’s a voice in your head(ego)

Oprah rephrases Tolle’s quote of ‘asking life what it wants’ to ‘asking god what HE wants’. While it mainly is a big semantics debate of what is ‘God’ and that while she is explaining to a woman that it’s up to her to decide to move past her conditioning she is speaking in a way so plainly exposes her past conditioning as she holds on to the same dogmatic beliefs of the christian god that she is speaking out against. The main thing here isn’t about a christian god, it isn’t about chauvanistic idea of a male god, or even using the word ‘god’ as a synonym for anything, be it ‘truth’, ‘love’, ‘energy’, etc etc. The main danger here is the externalization of god. Oprah ‘prays on her knees to God and asks god what he wants of her’, what she is doing is looking outside of herself for answers, looking to an idealogical concept of the christian god wherever he may lie for her answers. She might even be one step ahead of me and be looking within herself for god but the fact of the matter is that she is making the distiction between ‘God’ and ‘Oprah’, creating duality which will ultimately be a roadblock to the awakening of her true self.

Community is very important as it allows you to access the stillness or presence much more easily when people come together. At the same time it’s important to not become dependent on any group, it is very important to carry this energy into your daily life. The internet is linking people in so many different ways on such a massive scale that’s never been seen before, it really the beginning a new awakening.

“You don’t become good by trying to be good, you become good by finding the goodness that is already within you” No matter how good your intentions are, when you are still in an egoic mindset you will always be led to conflict. You have to go deeper beyond the realm of opposites where there is agood and bad and reach a place within yourself that is unconditioned, the formless.

• “Be still and know that I am god” – This is the level where the eternal resides, the essence of every human being. Only do this by becomming still, you have to invite stillness into your life. Find something in nature, sit with a flower, a tree and invite the stillness in. Begin to feel the stillness in the tree that is also within yourself, the essence of who you are.

We need to learn how to find in our daily lives, as often as possible, this point of power of the present moment to enter the state of consciousness. If we don’t we continue to be dragged around by the old thought patterns. A simple thing way to get into the present moment simply stop and ask yourself ‘Am I still breathing?’. Taking that time forces you to focus on the air flowing in and out of your body and in that thought you enter the present moment, even if it is only for 5 seconds you are in the present moemnt with your breath and your body. Another thing is when you do habitual everyday motions such as washing yoru hands, walking down the stairs, do it consciously and be present of the feel of everything, the water, the smell of the soap. Become accutely conscious of sense perceptions brings you into the present moment. To the ‘mind’ this kind of thing is meaningless as you are inviting a different state of consciousness that the mind cannot understand, but this is how you bring in awareness and the more you bring these moemnts of presence into your live the more your old conditioning becomes eroded. Most poeple as they go about their dialy lives, performing their daily simple tasks are never in the present moment and these daily simple tasks are what occupies that greatest chunk of our day. Everything we do is a means to an end, we are never in the present moment we are always thinking one step ahead. When you make a health shake in the morning for example you aren’t thinking about making it you are thinking about drinking it. When you climb a set of stairs you aren’t thinking about climbing them you are thinking about finally getting to the top. All of these things, everything we do is taking us out of the present moment and away from the stillness wherein lies our fundemental truth. Simply living in the present moment as muhc as possible will allow you to be present in other moments, other peoople.

We are only forms that comes out of consciousness, consciousness is the evolutionary process of the universe. If humans all ceased no gain of consciousness would ever be lost. The universe or consciousness as a whole is perfect, it is eternal and unchanged but this manifested consciousness that is the world of form. Consciousness uses other billions and trillions of forms and we are a part of that, we have this manifested dimension, almost like a dream, that consciousness comes into and evolves, it emerges and evolves gradually more and more. The density of form lessens and this is what is happening.. Ultimately we are not the form, we are not the body which we see, in essence you are beyond you are formless. This form will disolve eventually as consciousness moves on, it is a contuous process. So ultimately nothing dies, it’s only a transformation of consciousness.

Can always recognize when a desire is coming from ego because when you get it it doesn’t satisfy you. It may satisfy you for a short while but the satisfaction is not permanent. The only illusion with manifesting material things is to expect the world of form to satisfy you. The world can bring some form of satisfaction but it cannot make you happy. We live in the world of things so why not manifest things, live in this world of form but if you expect some ultimate form of satisfaction then you will be living an illusion and always be frustrated. We must come to an acceptance of the this present moment so there is no neediness for things to manifest, there is no dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is not a good starting point for changing your life. You must make peace with the moment, peace with what is, the is’ness with this moment. You can’t argue with what is because it already is, so accept the moment first and then action comes out of the acceptance. You will still want to change but you will be creating empowered change from a place of acceptance as apposed to frustration and conflict.

How spiritual you are has nothing to do with what you believe, it has nothing to do with what you believe. How spiritual you are has to do with how aware you are, how present are you.

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