Yes, Eckart Tolle, like a small percentage of people on this earth, is an enlightened being. That means he grasps the underlying madness of the ego mind and transcends it through his insights and awareness. He came to his understanding through many years of mental and emotional suffering and unhappiness.

He is generous to share his discoveries about why the world is in such a state of insanity. All the killings, the tortures, the child abuse, animal abuse, that fill the news and our history books. He points out that, as long as we allow ourselves to be driven by the automatic and repetitive fearful churning of our lesser minds, the world will always be in trouble.
​
He is able to translate his vision in words that are easy to understand and accessible to all. Everyone needs relief from their anxious, restless minds. Eckart Tolle points to many different pathways. But his primary path is to be continually aware of and awake to the present moment. In this indestructible moment lies the core of peace, freedom, and creativity.

One of the best ways to lead a harmonious life is to avoid people who do not love and support you. This one step, staying away from toxic people who want to drag you down into their whirlpool of negative energy, would solve so many problems that lead to disharmony.

Sometimes we don’t have a choice because work and home situations are complicated. We can’t just walk out because someone is behaving hatefully towards us, for a number of reasons. We have financial commitments, we have children to consider, etc. This is when we need to build our inner sanctuary.

When we are around people who are behaving badly or events that are difficult, we can still deal with them in a calm manner. We can use Don Miguel Ruiz’s brilliant, “Four Agreements.” They are Ancient Toltec words of wisdom that simply and clearly lead to inner peace and harmony. If you follow them, you will not fail in living a harmonious life.
​
One of the most powerful of the Four Agreements is, “Don’t take anything personally.” The haters are behaving according to their own conditioning, their moods, what they ate or didn’t eat that day, etc., and it has nothing to do with you at all. You just happen to be there. They would be like that with someone else. Think of that next time someone tries to spread their toxic vibes to you.

The “why,” or the cause of things, is more fundamental, because it comes first. Yet, if we continue to ask why, we will end up with many unanswerable questions. We can ask, “Why is the sky blue?”.

• A scientist will tell you the sky is not really blue. It depends on how light is refracted and reflected, and how it is dealt with by your optic nerve.
• A mother might say the sky is blue, “Because I said so, now go and clean your room.”
• A religious devotee might say the sky is blue because God ordained it to be that way.

The “how” is about what action do you need to perform to accomplish a desired goal. It comes after the “why.” First you need to know “why” you want to accomplish something. Then you go about “how” to do it. The why is, “I’m, hungry.” The how is, “I put together some food to make lunch.”

But if you ask me more fundamental questions about our lives, such as, “Why are people so cruel to each other and why is life so painful?” I would have to go on for days to explain all the why’s.

If you ask me, “How do I go about living a happy life, in spite of people’s cruelty and all the pain?” I will be able to give you some actions that have helped me achieve happiness. And I might even give some blanket statement about the human mind being hard-wired to survive at all costs. But then, you could keep asking, “Why, Why, Why?” Why survive at all costs if it is so painful?
​
Therefore, “why,” the ultimate Great Unknown, is like the Source Energy of the Universe. It can never be completely explained in a way that takes all the factors involved and is fundamentally unknowable. But a step-by-step process of how to do something is within our grasp and a secondary part of an intention.

​Nature is a process that is in constant transition from one phase to another. This includes rocks, which are eventually eroded away by forces of nature such as wind and water, to become sand and soil.

More than even a process, nature is an interaction. Nothing in nature exists on its own. Everything depends on everything else. Plants couldn’t live without the minerals in the soil from eroded rocks. Animals could not live without plants. Even if the animals are carnivores, somewhere along the food chain someone depended on plants. Plants could not live without water. Water follows the process of gravity, rains down on us and flows to the sea.

The sea is full of animals, that, like on land, are being born, surviving, eating each other, and dying. Their bodies nourish other animals and so it goes until the planet is consumed by the eventual death of the sun.

Within these processes and interactions we have what appear to be substances. These substances appear differently to different animals with their unique sensory apparatuses. A solid rock to us may look completely different to an octopus. We don’t know. We don’t see through the eyes of the octopus.
​
It is all one enormous continuity, always changing, always transmuting into something else. Nothing is ever completely destroyed. It always changes into something else.

The Simpsons show us a family of unique characters that all have their quirks, funny flaws, and lovable moments. This is a very good representation of a happy family that co-exists and accepts each other’s strengths, shortcomings, and silliness.

The Simpsons represents how humor throughout the day makes everything colorful, bright, and light. Yet, buried within all this humor and fun, we have some profound statements:

Homer: “It takes two to lie. One to lie, and one to listen.”
—Homer was addressing Marge and letting her know he was not participating in her lie. If you let someone lie to you, you are part of the lie.

Mrs. Krabappel: “Most of you will never fall in love, and will marry out of fear of dying alone.”
—We hope that isn’t true but we have seen too many examples to write off this bit of wisdom.

Security systems salesman: “But surely you can’t put a price on family.”
Homer: “I wouldn’t have thought so either, but here we are.”
—Homer, who can’t afford a security system, buys a gun. He would like to be able to afford better. He is talking about the many fathers would like to protect their families in the best possible way but can’t afford to.

Homer: “Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true. Facts schmacts.”
—We all know of cases where people twist facts to suit their purposes, so Homer is right on target there too. You can say, “All dogs have hair. My cat has hair. Therefore, my cat is a dog.” It sounds factual, but, clearly, it is not.
​
These are just a few of the gems of wisdom from the Simpsons about the reality of family and social life in our times.

We pay a price for not having inner peace.

We pay a terrible price for every fearful and hateful thought that inflicts its path of destruction on the body. We pay the price of an anxious life when we do not know how to find peace within.

We pay the price for not having boundaries in our lives and allowing energy vampires destroy our peace.
​
Inner peace and contentment are free. They cannot be bought. But all the things that stand in the way of inner peace cost us dearly. They have consequences now and in the future. They can be destroyed and replaced. But peace is always there for the asking and costs nothing.

I would say it is the other way around. When you are enlightened, then you think right thoughts. It is true that the Buddha listed “right thought” as part of the Noble Eightfold Path. But he was referring to living a life free from suffering. Being enlightened is more than just the cessation of suffering.

An enlightened person’s body may suffer, yet at the same time, he or she is aware that they are not their body. That is enlightenment. When we realize that we are not our bodies and we are not our minds. We clearly see that we are Spiritual beings inhabiting the body for a duration, with a mind that helps us navigate through the physical world.

We cannot monitor every thought we think. They are too many and it is ridiculous to sit all day, every day saying “This is a right thought, this is a wrong thought.” That is not going to lead to any kind of enlightenment and may even lead to madness. And who is going to tell us what is a right thought and what is a wrong thought? Organized religion has tried that for centuries with very little success, judging by the state of the world.
​
Therefore, enlightenment bypasses thought altogether. Thoughts appear and disappear automatically. When we think we are our thoughts and their whimsical patterns, we are clearly not in an enlightened state. But if we go beyond thought and allow our minds to be the wonderful tools that they are and nothing more, we are in a much more enlightened state.

Artists are good examples of people who create their own reality.

• Picasso completely re-arranged the geometry of the face and the symmetry of animal bodies. He fractured reality so we could view it differently.
• Van Gogh created a reality of swirling stars and colors, a baby with a green face, sunflowers that look like miniature suns.
• The French Impressionists, in general, created a new world of light and color that made many question their reality.

All artists who do not simply represent the reality we all agree on but dares to present a world of their unique vision, is creating their own reality for others to see.

Material goods lure us into their field of fantasy, offering the good life, pleasure, and a distraction from fear and pain. This is why so many people are addicted to “Retail Therapy.” For the moment, when we buy the boat or the purse, we fulfill our dreams. But, after all, the purse is just leather and the boat just fiber glass and wood. They can be destroyed easily. And once they become ours, they can lose the luster of novelty. Somebody’s boat is bigger. Somebody’s purse is even more fashionable.

So we search for something else. Some other item that will charge our adrenaline and contribute to the image we are creating for ourselves. We strive for it, work so hard, sacrifice—and then find the thing we loved so much cannot love us back. A sparkling pair of Louboutin shoes will not give us affection and they might even hurt our feet. The boat leaks and needs a lot of maintenance. It becomes a problem.
​
So we go onto the next thing we think will make us happy. People can spend their whole lives on a rollercoaster like this. Any material item cannot feed the hunger of the soul for meaning and purpose. Materialism is the entertainment of the masses. Malls are teeming with people every weekend, milling around, searching and seeking for the next distraction, thrill, and momentary pleasure. Momentary and fun, but never completely satisfying.

On the subconscious level, when they were only children, some people were given messages that they were bad or worthless. That is what they were taught about themselves when they were too young to argue against it. Now that they are adults, they have buried these messages but these messages are still active, like volcanos under the surface.

Because the self-sabotagers truly believe they are worthless and bad, they don’t believe they deserve to succeed. Logically, bad people should not succeed. They need to be punished. So they sabotage themselves. If they want love, they find it with an abusive partner who will punish them. If they want a promotion at work, they will make important mistakes and watch as a someone else gets the job.
​
It takes a lot of interior contemplation to find and root out any hidden messages that we absorbed when our minds were like little sponges. If we allow these programs to fester deep within, we will always find a way to “lose” instead of win.