My spiritual blog & articles - My Spiritual Coach

Who is Eckhart Tolle? Why should we read him? What is his background?

5/30/2023

Let’s begin by saying that nobody “should” read anything. Either what someone has written resonates within our consciousness and inner being, or it does not. No one is saying we should read or listen to anyone. However, if what someone is imparting to us leads to a new understanding of life and who we are, then we will want to hear what they are communicating. Either we see that the relief Tolle is bringing is of value to us, or it isn’t.

Eckhart Tolle is a well-educated man who is fluent in several languages and studied Psychology, Philosophy, and Literature at the University of London. He also was in a postgraduate program at Cambridge towards his PhD, from which he dropped out.

But his education, and even his intelligence and ability to write and speak effectively, have nothing to do with the insight he brings to the human condition. Knowledge and education were of no comfort to him during the fretful nights and anxious days that plagued him for many years. Education, learning, degrees, and credentials have nothing whatsoever to do with grasping what he came here to teach.

His teachings focus on the power and beauty of being in the present moment. This awakened state of consciousness goes beyond the unfortunate tricks of the ego and its non-stop tangle of thoughts. If we are going to survive as a species and not wreck most of the planet in the process, this awakening is the essential next step in human evolution.

All the ancient spiritual communicators have brought this same message. Tolle just relates it to our times. He chronicles how the human ego, unique only to humans, causes untold suffering and destruction—as witnessed by history. With 110 million estimated people who have been put to death under communism alone, the rest of the death toll resulting from humans inflicting violence on each other is monstrous. So he is putting this ancient philosophy in the context of historical as well as modern developments that affect the peace and well-being of each one of us.

So, nobody “should” read his reflections on how the ego-mind works just because he is the latest authority on how we should live our lives and win the game of life. But if we passionately want to find a way out of the knots the ego-mind, which cannot abide in the present moment, then he is there to guide the way.

Why did Buddha say, "All things are impermanent" or "Everything is changing" in his first teaching?

3/10/2023

Buddha discovered a system for alleviating human suffering. He also discovered that one of the major causes of human suffering is that things change. Because we cling to things in the desperate hope that they won’t change and try to control them so they will remain permanent, we are frustrated and frightened. We recognize that, underneath it all, clinging and control don’t work when everything is in a state of flux.

Buddha saw that we cling passionately to our loved ones. And if they die, we can be in mourning for the rest of our lives. Their physical presence is gone. It is not coming back. And we loved them so much, the world looks dimmer and more hostile because of their absence. Who will love us now? Furthermore, this is going to happen to us too. Every cell in our body has changed or been replaced over and over again as we grow, age, begin to weaken, and finally disappear.

This realization causes enormous pain and fear in people and they obsessively fight all the changes: Plastic surgery, large accumulations of wealth beyond what anyone could ever spend, fanatical dietary practices, rigorously dangerous exercise routines, and hoarding all kinds of material goods to hedge against an uncertain future.

The past is not bringing any consolation to our minds in this swirl of change, either. We remember our beloved persons or pets who are gone and the sadness begins again. The recollection of the past, with all of our family sitting together during the holidays or our pets curled up in our laps, underlines the vacuum they have left as the world continues on its inexorable path of transmutation.

An so Buddha told us not to be in denial about this. If we don’t face it, we will be in a constant scramble of trying to keep things the same. And we will always be uncomfortable. We will go through life kicking and screaming over things that are not in our control. We will try to cling, but it will all slip out of our hands. Therefore, we must let it go, let it be the change that is a constant, and follow the Buddha’s suggestions in his Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold path. He gave us a to get out of our misery. If we really adhere to what he presents, we will find a way out of this endless suffering due to clinging to what is constantly changing.

Can a woman attain enlightenment in Buddhism?

1/10/2023

As a woman, whose entire life has been devoted to the Spirit and the unseen powers of the Universe, I have been dismayed by some of the antiquated views on the ability of women to be enlightened.

In some world religions, such as Svetambar Jains, women don’t have a chance of getting off the wheel of birth and death until they are reborn as a man. They were reborn as women as a result of being deceitful in a former life and have to work like crazy to prove themselves worthy of even being born a male next time around. One of the Jain sacred texts states:
“As the result of manifesting deception, a man in this world becomes a woman. As a woman, if her heart is pure, she becomes a man in this world.”

In the Aganna-Sutta from the Pali Canon, a record of the teachings of Gautama Buddha, imply that women are responsible for the downfall of the human race.

These attitudes toward women were imposed many, many centuries ago, when women were not seen as men’s equals. Historically they were seen as men’s possessions or as brood mares for ensuring the birth of a son. A girl birth was seen as a liability, especially when it came to the dowry for marriage.

In other religions such as Islam, women may not pray in public. They are also not permitted to pray during menstruation as they are not considered clean. Judaism also has constraints around women’s spiritual attainments with the concept of not being clean for the menstruating woman. If a woman is seen as not clean during the natural process that enables her to have a child, it brings a great stigma in terms of self-worth even if it not acknowledged.

Buddhism can then also be seen as a sexist religion in this way. Buddha himself was reluctant to take women as nuns. He was afraid of the various consequences that would arise if women were enrolled. The consequences he thought would have a negative impact on the society at that time, when women were held at little value. It was only upon the request of his stepbrother Ananda that Buddha agreed to take female followers into the worship practice.

And even when allowed to enter the practice, only women were required to follow the eight garudhammas. These are the “eight heavy restrictions” the male practitioners were not ordered to follow. These eight restrictions clearly kept monks at a much higher level than the nuns. One of these restrictions is:

"A nun who has been ordained even for a hundred years must greet even a newly-ordained monk by rising up from her seat and saluting with joined palms."

Therefore, women were not considered as complete entities in the old Buddhism of thousands of years ago. This attitude has still carried over to modern times in some Buddhist societies. Women's bodies are not considered fit to attain enlightenment and to become Buddha. There is a still a concept that women are not complete until they attain enlightenment when reborn as a man. The man’s form is required for completeness. The Bahudhatuka-sutta states that there could never be a female Buddha.

The psychological impact of this view is to keep women in a weaker and inferior position. Their morale is kept low because they think, “What’s the use? What if I get born as a woman again? How holy do I have to be before I get a chance at freedom from this bondage? There’s something wrong with being a woman.”

According to Ajahn Sujato, the early texts state that the first garudhamma, which states that every nun must bow to every monk, was instituted by the Buddha because of the customs of the time. But modern scholars doubt that the rule even originated with the Buddha.

The rules were written only after the people started to become literate. And in ancient times, men were the first ones to learn to read and write. It was only much later that women got the chance to be educated because they were seen to be more at the level of the animals. These rules were written by a male-dominant society to favor that male Buddhists. It was one more power play over women.

But now, the world has changed. Yet fundamentalist world religions have not changed. Their opinions and beliefs are based on what seemed practical many centuries ago. These beliefs do not apply today if they ever applied at all. As a deeply spiritual person, I know that we are not just these bodies, miraculous as they are. At the Soul level, we are beyond being men and women. The body and its endocrine and hormonal systems do not apply to the world of the Spirit. Any view about men being spiritually superior to women is not relevant when we know that women are capable of every task a man can do—and also produce children!

What is your opinion on the spiritual state of California and other parts of America?

11/22/2022

I was surprised to find, when I lived in California recently, a wasteland of spirituality. The symbols are there, but they are for show, or possibly good luck. For example, many well-decorated houses have statues of the Buddha. And people wear jewelry with all kinds of symbols, such as the ankh and the Hamsa hand. They use spiritual terms, such as “vibrations,” “cosmic,” but they are labels for superstitions. The Californians I met did not spend too much time contemplating the meaning behind the symbols and words.

The symbols are for good luck: For financial gain and survival. If I have a statue of Shiva, I will attract all the good stuff I want in life. I want to look cool and enlightened, so I will dress this way to send the signal. The spiritual-sounding terms have become slang and over-inflated, as have the words, “epic,” and “awesome.” “This pizza is awesome!”

I participated in very few conversations involving the nature of consciousness. or anything other than body maintenance, house maintenance, dog and pet maintenance, politics, and health practices such as exercise or food. Politics was a big topic for many people. Very few people showed even an interest in deep contemplation of the Source Energy of the Universe, cosmology, or metaphysics.

I say I was surprised to find that California was a spiritual wasteland because it had been the womb of so many spiritually advanced movements: From introducing Yogananda and the practice of yoga to the US, to the obviously spiritually-oriented sixties and such luminaries as Alan Watts. I was expecting to find people sitting around in Berkeley, strumming guitars and singing Kumbaya. What I found was the devastation of homelessness and the hopelessness it represents on many of the streets, including of course, in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It is hopelessness that hangs in the air, rather than spiritual upliftment.

These are overall impressions and experiences gathered over the five years I lived there. I had relationships of the heart that I will always hold dear. And many people expressed kindness and love. But spirituality, no. Talk about meditation and yoga, yes. But these are practices to get something. They are to get fitter, look better, get peaceful, or have some me-time. The core of why they came into being has been lost. For example, the flocks of people who go to whatever yoga is big at the time. It’s all about what’s popular and what feels good to the “little me.”

The “little me” in California is also running scared about aging and any bodily flaws or perceived imperfections. Therefore, time that could be used for understanding who we are as eternal Souls, is spent on getting every possible body part fixed so we can fool ourselves that we will never die. Or we can display to others how we have it all together, when in fact we are terrified.

As for the rest of the nation, spiritually conscious beings exist in every state. They may not make a big display of it and they live quietly or even boisterously. They may not belong to a group, which at base has nothing to do with spirituality and much to do with conditioning, fear, and the need for structure. But, in general, the entire world consists of over 8 billion people, all striving to stay alive. We are not at the stage in our evolution for world-wide understanding of our inner being and its connection to All That Is. The state of the world of humans is a testimony to this.

How does Thich Nhat Hanh's work differ from that of other mindfulness teachers?

11/15/2022

Thich Nhat Hanh’s message is the same of all the great spiritual masters of all time. He quotes the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and others. And his message is to find the peace of the Soul within and discover a path out of the whirlwind mind and its fearful, angry, and upset states.

To do this, he offers simple and nature-based meditations that allow us to gently return to the groundedness of the Now. His meditations are refreshing poems and tributes to all of nature: Flowers, trees, mountains, rivers, and oceans. So it is not his message, but the way he communicates it that makes Thich Nhat Hanh unique.

All mindfulness teachers have their favorite practices, from fire walking to exercises in letting go. Hanh doesn’t favor one way of achieving peace in the present moment. He goes back to the very basics. Breathing and walking.

We are a culture of shallow breathers and are barely conscious of the most primary act that keeps us alive. Hahn tells us to pay attention to the in-breath. Pay attention to the out-breath. They are different. Just sit still and breath, separating the two and even remarking, “This is my in-breath. This is my out-breath.” Just this practice clears away the cobwebs of endless old thoughts and well as clearing the path for new creative ideas. Because while we are paying attention to the breath, our mind doesn’t have room for other thoughts.

Walking is another very simple modality that Hahn uses as a tool for centeredness and being in the Now. Most people walk to get somewhere. They are impatient. The future is more important than the present. They are in a rush and the present moment is standing in the way of “getting there.” Thich Nhat Hahn says, “Take each step as is you have arrived.” Stop running. You have arrived home. In the Now.

It is the way he expresses himself that is impactful and different from others. He defines mindfulness as “The energy of being aware and awake to the present moment.” And he gives us the tools to allow this energy flow to enter our lives and bring us inner peace.

Here is part of one of his poems on walking:

“Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.
Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety.”

Do enlightened people believe in aliens?

11/14/2022

An enlightened person would probably call them, “extraterrestrials.” The word “Alien” means that we think we are the center of the universe and any other life form is a foreigner and doesn’t belong. But we all share the same Universe. It’s almost racist to call them aliens because it is such a people-centered outlook. It’s like, we are the only ones that count. Everyone else not on this planet, is strange and somehow not good.

It is also very people-centered to believe we are the only ones out there. There are about 125 billion galaxies consisting of 100 billion stars on the average. It is preposterous to think that everything in all this centers on earthlings and that the only possible form of life in all grandeur and complexity, is on earth.
Some have postulated that the reason extraterrestrials have not made significant contact with us is because we are not enlightened enough for them to communicate with. They are operating on a higher level of consciousness and why would they bother hanging out with a species still involved in petty ego conflicts as well as large-scale wars.

If they already have the resources to break through earth’s atmosphere and land, what possible benefit could it be to them to befriend us? Some say so they can make us into slaves and mine our resources for their project, but this is just a human view of grabbing things, enslaving people, and being a menace. The human view of extraterrestrials comes from TV and films. For example, Star Wars or Star Trek, where the extraterrestrials indulge in warfare and other power struggles, simply based on human social interactions.

Enlightenment is about expansion of consciousness to ackowledge more than the finite human struggles for survival. It is about acknowledging the vastness of the Universe itself. As Neil de Grasse Tyson says, “To declare that Earth must be the only planet with life in the universe would be inexcusably bigheaded of us.”

What are some of the most important spiritual principles that can be found in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) literature?

10/31/2022

“Let go and let God,” is one of the fundamental spiritual precepts in AA. This is why AA has been the most effective treatment for the destructive patterns of alcoholism, through the years, that I have encountered. We have already relied on our fearful minds and fault-finding intellects to take us to a place where we are out of control. We believe the negative bias of the mind and therefore try to numb it by consuming ever greater quantities of alcohol. Our decisions have taken us down a dead end of ruin and loss.

Willpower didn’t work for us. Therefore, it’s time to let go of the idea that we, personally, are the masters of the universe, can control our self-destructive impulses, and begin to understand the forces that are really “in charge.” Then, we must give up our fearful sense of self and rest in the bountiful heart of the Universe.

AA shows us that thinking we’re capable of total self-management doesn’t work if we believe we are our worrisome, petty minds. They will drive us to drink or other destructive addictions. We must acknowledge and give up the control to a Higher Power—which is the force behind all that is, because it works. AA does not assign a name, such as Jesus or Allah to this Higher Power. This allows everyone access to the idea something larger and wiser than our smaller selves is in control. We’ve allowed ourselves to get out of control anyway, despite our willpower, thus we have become alcoholics, addicts, and dependent on substances to get us through the day.

It is a humbling position, that leads us to recognize that we are in charge of so very little. And that we have messed up and are destroying our health, lives, and the lives of those around us. It takes the burden off of us when we realize that we can depend on something much larger than our little fears and ambitions to break a destructive pattern. Just as we do not circulate our own blood or beat our own hearts or order our stomachs to digest our food, we need to acknowledge that something much greater is at work. It’s delusional to think we can control everything and therefore become very upset when things don’t go according to our plans.

Our plans to go to the bar every day or drink a bottle of whiskey in our room never contributed to our health or abundance or happiness. Why did we think that our plans to quit the habit, based on our own mistaken mental habits, would work out when we are the ones making the decisions? Those decisions were flawed and made us feel more like failures when we couldn’t live up to our resolutions to quit. And so we took another drink to drown out all the mental noise.

The Higher Power is the source of wisdom, love, beauty, and peace. AA tells us to get into contact with the spiritual underpinning of All-That-Is. Stop thinking it’s all on us to fix things. It doesn't work, obviously. Willpower doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because we are forcing ourselves through sheer discipline, which we don’t have when it comes to substances.

It takes surrender. Or as the apostle John said in the New Testament, “I can, of my own self, do nothing . . . because I seek not mine own will but the will of the Father that hath sent me.” Our willpower alone does not work and we are backed up against the wall. The only way to go is to surrender: “Let Go and Let God.”

Who is better, Deepak Chopra or Dr. David Hawkins (quantum healing)?

10/23/2022

Both Chopra and Hawkins are accomplished, visionary thinkers and physicians who incorporate spiritual modalities into bodily healing and mental health. As to which is better, it is up to you if you like one style over the other. Both emphasize the same points and bring out the fact that hard scientists have not explored spiritual avenues enough to be effective in healing or in giving us answers to the deepest questions in life.

In 1995, Dr. Hawkins came out with a "Map of Consciousness,"in his book Power vs. Force. The "Map of Consciousness" brings discoveries from quantum physics and nonlinear dynamics. Deepak Chopra’s book Quantum Healing appeared in 1989. It is about the invisible mind-body connection and how we can alleviate our suffering by understanding this interrelationship and its spiritual component.

Hawkins’ "Map of Consciousness," shows that with each rise in the level of consciousness, the "frequency" or "vibration" of energy increases. In this way, higher consciousness radiates a healing effect on the world. He also tested human muscle response to these vibrations, which stays strong in the presence of love and truth. But negative energy fields induce a weak muscle response.

Chopra’s approach is similar: Human beings can become “metahuman” by reaching a new place of awareness and thus be endlessly healthy and free. He sees the human body as supported by a "quantum mechanical body" composed not of matter but of energy and information. Contact with these higher fields of energy and information brings health, happiness, and benefits to the world as well.

Both Hawkins and Chopra adhere to the fundamental ideas of the world’s great spiritual traditions: Kindness and compassion to everything and everyone, including ourselves; humility; forgiveness; reverence for all of life; and surrender to Cosmic Consciousness (or God). It is a direct path to Enlightenment in which each internal progression of love and integrity uplifts the whole of existence: "We change the world not by what we say or do but as a consequence of what we have become," states Dr. Hawkins.

Chopra also says, “Each of us is a unique strand in the intricate web of life and here to make a contribution.” So it’s not a matter of who is better. They are both great contributors to our understanding of how to alleviate the enormous amount of suffering in the world and in ourselves.

How does Eckart Tolle's "Power of Now" help people who live in countries which are a failed state with the lack of basic everything and not a glimmer of hope for improvements?

10/1/2021

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.

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.

As part of the divine consciousness, do we already know everything?

7/13/2021

As part of the divine consciousness, we really don’t know anything from the standpoint of our limited brains. We think we know things because we have accumulated many facts and educated ourselves so we can gain some measure of control over our lives. We believe that “knowledge is power” and on one level it is. It is better to have skills and understanding than to be completely clueless, especially when performing tasks.

But when we talk about divine consciousness, we are talking about something that is so large, we are simply not equipped to know about it fully. We may be able to see pieces of it, like an ant looking at an elephant. The ant may see just the toenail and think it is a huge mountain. It could never even see the whole elephant.

That is how we are in the realm of divine consciousness. We can get glimpses of it and live in it. We can experience it. But it is difficult to put words to what the experiences are. We can only hint at it. We can only talk about sensations but we can never pin it down. We aren’t meant to. It is arrogance to think that one day we will know everything.

The human race knows a lot already and it still hasn’t increased in happiness or peace. It has not taken itself into higher levels of consciousness and continues to chase after things that do not last. Knowing a lot does not provide much consolation on a cold and stormy night.