All of us, no matter how wealthy or well-fed have found ourselves in terrible circumstances beyond our physical control. Eckart Tolle teaches methods for finding the peace within, from which we can solve whatever problem presents itself. We cannot solve any problem from a position of upset, anger, want, lack, need, and distress. Those emotions only cloud our problem-solving ability.
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We cannot solve the problem of a failed state from a position of greed of the elite, torture, imposed hunger, and terrorism. Those are all the results of the lesser, human ego mind that seeks to entrench its position through domination and control. Only an enlightened understanding of the peace that dwells within the soul produces cooperation, preservation of resources, and the overall happiness of all in any society.

Eckhart Tolle’s books are not a magic bullet for all of a sudden getting rid of the human greed and cruelty that fuels world hunger and other human-caused disasters.

Eckart Tolle’s work has helped people who are in prison, on death row, and other circumstances that are beyond the individual’s control. He explains that you can be in the worst of circumstances and still find that peace within. From that standpoint, you can then work to embrace your life, and understand that you are more than a survival machine that eats, procreates, and dies.

But first, we must clear our minds of all the garbage and fear that it automatically generates. Then we must find a path to where our inner peace lives. After that, no matter what the circumstances, they do not affect our inner happiness or peace.

Tolle uses the example of being stuck in the mud or quicksand. It would do no good whatsoever to kick and scream in fear and upset until you wear yourself out and get taken under. Better to acknowledge, “This is where I am right now. What is my next step to get out of this?” Thinking clearly and calmly will bring much better results. That is all Eckart Tolle is about. Get rid of the little, fear-filled human mind and tune into the rich territory of the Soul.

The Soul is connected to all the natural intelligence of the Universe. And when people tune into it, problems get solved. Even if you do get taken under, you will not die in an agonized state of resistance, but will surrender to the larger forces that work within and are much larger than the individual ego.
Tolle is very clear that anything in the physical state is unstable. We cannot expect anything in the physical to last. But he points the way to what does last: The Eternal Soul.

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Like the Ten Commandments, Buddha’s Nobel Eightfold Path, is simple to understand but not really easy to accomplish. These eight attitudes are not moral precepts about specifically what not to do, though. They are a simple list of how to behave if you want to live a life with a minimum of suffering for yourself and others.

Buddha does use the word “right” but it is not in the sense that you are damned by God if you don’t take his recommendations. It is more in the sense of what is most appropriate for the moment. Here is the Noble Eighfold Path:

1. Right understanding
2. Right thought
3. Right speech
4. Right action
5. Right livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right concentration

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Because they are so simple, people can interpret these concepts in different ways. Huge volumes have been written on the subject. My interpretation, in short, is approach everything with a free, pure, unattached heart. This ensures that we say the appropriate words as well as perform appropriate actions. We consciously put our efforts towards meaningful goals while remaining grounded in what is eternal about ourselves.

Four of the ideas in The Noble Eightfold Path concern themselves with our inner selves: Understanding, thought, mindfulness, and concentration. This is different from the Ten Commandments, which do not concern themselves with a person’s inner life and more with their relationship to Jehovah and with each other.
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Four of the items on the Path are action-oriented: Speech, action, livelihood, and effort. The Buddha did not leave anything out. And by not defining precisely what each “right” thought or action is, he left a lot of room for interpretation. But the final test is, by living this way do you alleviate suffering? Thousands of years after he delivered his insights, they are still alive and bringing people and understanding of life, so they have stood the test of time.

When Eckhart Tolle says that problems are illusions, or that fear is an illusion, he is not making light of the pain and suffering we go through as humans. He knows very well the unhappiness and fear that so many people live in, regardless of their external circumstances.

Instead, he is referring to how we create problems and fear in our lives. We assume people are out to get us, that the Universe is playing tricks with us, and that we are helpless victims. Tolle’s approach to problems is threefold:

• Leave them
• Change them
• Accept them

. . . anything else is craziness.

If we have a clear view of these solutions, the problems no longer remain problems because we have walked away, changed the situation, or accepted that the situation is not going to change so we might as well be happy and get on with our lives. Therefore, they are no longer problems, they are decisions we have a to make.

Fear is also an illusion. We cannot touch fear and we cannot make it stand still. It is a part of our thinking patterns that are influenced by so many things, including our brains’ hard-wiring for fear as a survival tactic. Tolle cites the example of sleeping in a safe, warm bed at night. The ego-mind will start conjuring up all kinds of things to be afraid of: Financial ruin, ill health, and even dying.
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Meanwhile, we are snug and secure in our warm bed creating mental strife for ourselves. There is nothing to be afraid of and we are tied in knots of fear and dread. That is why Eckhart Tolle describes fear as an illusion. And like problems, fear disappears when we understand the reality of our existence as Eternal Souls.

No, it is not possible to get everything we desire. And this is a good thing. Many of our desires are selfish and unconscious of the rest of the people on this planet. Criminals desire to kill and destroy. Sexual predators desire to dominate a frightened victim. Therefore, what we desire is not even desirable for many people who are led astray by their ego-minds.

The Universe is not designed to pamper our every whim just because that is what we want. We need to calm down with our demands as well as with our expectations of how we can bend the Universe to our will. People living in abundance are miserable because they still haven’t fulfilled all of their desires. Like spoiled children, they bang on their highchairs and cry because the world isn’t living up to their fairy tale dreams.
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They would love to believe that if they said enough affirmations and think positively enough, they will get all the goodies they crave and climb Mount Everest too without training. But that is not how it is designed. Yes, we may think positively and emit positive vibrations to attract good into our lives. But we are not in control of how or when that good comes to us. And we must put in the work. It is not enough to desire and think it will all happen. If that were true, everyone would win the lottery.

Feelings from ego are based in fear—even the happy feelings have a fearful component to them because we worry about how and when they are going to end. Ego-feelings are also based on external circumstances and are not generated from within.

Something happens and it makes us happy. The next minute something happens and it makes us sad. These feelings are all based on what our ego wants and how the world is bending to our demands at the moment. We want the perfect life for ourselves according to some definition we have in our heads and we will not allow ourselves to be happy until we have attained it.

Feelings from Soul are based in an underlying joy, regardless of the cards that are dealt to us by the Universe. The Soul is already complete and is not seeking completion in something else. It sees that the Universe is well-put-together and we don’t need to strive to bend it to our wills. Therefore, the Soul abides in peace while the ego-world goes on in its turmoil and strife.
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The ego-based emotions are perfect for survival tactics, reproducing our species, and creating social structures. The Soul-based emotions of love, peace, and joy are perfect for understanding the meaning and purpose of our lives.

Rationality does not equal happiness. It can lead to the opposite of happiness.
If we analyze life on earth with a completely rational mind, we see that it is a painful joke in so many ways. A child is born, only to have some mixed experiences, reproduce as all animals are destined to do, and then die, usually painfully. That is the way life looks to the reasoning mind.
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What’s the point? Why go through all this suffering if we are just pawns of our genes’ propulsion to reproduce themselves? The rational mind cannot find comfort in Higher Reasons for why we are on this planet. So it looks for happiness to distract itself from the terror of its meaninglessness. It thinks it will find it in treasures and pleasures. But deep down, it also sees the old, forgotten man slowly limping down the street with is walker, and knows that this is his fate, too, one day.

Rationality is an admirable faculty of the mind when it is put to good use. But it can also be perverted and twisted, as we can see by all the evil dictators who have slaughtered millions for their “rational” reasons. But it does not equate to happiness on any level. The only thing that leads to happiness is happiness itself. We cannot get there by reasoning it all out.

If we allow ourselves to feel the natural happiness that rises within us, we will attract more happiness to us. Being miserable, even if it is rationally justified, is never the path to happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of doing something we love. It cannot be forced or reasoned into being but it comes naturally if we let it in.

Carl Jung is saying the that the lower mind (as opposed to Divine Consciousness) moves mechanically, restlessly on the move, non-stop, like a pendulum. He thinks it is not so much concerned with what is right and wrong while it swings back and forth between fantasy and reality.
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Right and wrong have to do with what we are taught, whereas, the mind, left on its own is like a wild stallion. It is not easy to tame and disregards what we are taught to be good and bad. It runs back and forth from pleasure to pain, love and hate, anger and peace, regardless of how right or wrong these feelings may be deemed to be by its society.

Yet, Carl Jung may have not seen how deeply the lower mind clings to the pendulum that swings between right and wrong. He may not have acknowledged that we are constantly judging, measuring ourselves against others, measuring others against ourselves, and coming up with conclusions that add to even more judgments about who is right and who is wrong. So I would amend that statement to read, “The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, right and wrong.” We move from fantasy to reality while we are constantly judging according to some yardstick, whether real or imagined.

For example, you are at a party and someone spills a syrupy drink all over you. You immediately swing from anger to forgiveness as the drink spiller desperately apologizes. Then you congratulate yourself inwardly for being the better person and not throwing your drink in his or her face. You feel pleased that you are being moral about it and doing the right thing. From there you can go into fantasy of overcoming the mishap and becoming the best of friends, even possible soul mates.

All the time you are presenting yourself to yourself in the best light in terms of right and wrong while you are living out a fantasy in your mind that may be completely preposterous (they’re married, you’re married, it truly was an accident and nothing more, in life drinks get spilled). Or the pendulum can swing the other way, combining nonsense with morality. You imagine yourself fighting this person because they were wrong to be so careless and end up berating yourself as a victim that always attracts bad things. You go to the corner to cry.

While I admire Carl Jung, I feel he did not recognize that the ego mind is not as straightforward as a pendulum. It is more like a free-flying, restless machine that is all over the place. A pendulum follows certain gravitational pulls, while the ego mind is capable of going off in a completely random way.

People who deeply question life, its meaning, its purpose, the difficulty of suffering, the agony of loss—all experience the Dark Night of the Soul. It happens when we are lying awake in the middle of the night and everything seems dangerous, hurtful, painful, frightening, and pointless. We have lost our faith in anything spiritual and feel disconnected from all of life. It seems like a bitter joke and everyone dies anyway.
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This is a necessary step that brings us to our knees as we move along on our spiritual paths. It forces us, through despair and agony, to surrender to the Higher Power that is purposeful, organized, and often beyond our comprehension. We have nowhere to go but to trust in this Higher Power. We know that simply ending it all is not the solution for our Soul can never die. And when we get through to the other side of this Dark Night, it all appears light and clear to us.

It doesn’t take specialness to merit the Dark Night of the Soul. It happens to everyone who is a sincere spiritually-oriented being. And we can’t force it. It happens just at the right time for our growth and enlightenment. We just have to know that it is not the end. It is not hopeless and is a natural, though painful, part of our expansion during this human experience.