I picked up Eckhart Tolle’s book again. It’s said that people become interested in the spiritual world after going through hard things. No matter how bad things are in this world and how much you want to find peace in the spiritual world, it’s far, far away. No matter when I read it, no matter when I listen to it, it sounds like ghosts to me. However, because I loved his first book, because my sister gave a sermon on the nature of the ego in this book, and because I had just read the Yoga Sutras, I decided to give the spiritual world another try. The book stayed with me for almost two months. I opened it during sleepless nights and bright-eyed mornings. However, the profound content that I had underlined and made countless notes on was quickly lost like smoke the moment I closed the book. The good words that touched my heart when I read them, disappeared like dust when I came to the real world. The list of abstract descriptions, which I had never experienced, was hard to keep in my mind, even if I followed them with my eyes.
“What is lost in the dimension of form is gained in the dimension of essence.”
“Being comfortable with uncertainty opens up endless possibilities in your life.”
“No one is wrong; it is simply the ego in someone.”When we realize that everyone is suffering from the same disease of the mind, compassion arises. Then we no longer fuel the drama of ego-dominated relationships. What is oil? It is response. The ego feeds on it and thrives. “
I wanted to experience the conscious, aware Presence, not to be led astray by the ego’s antics, but the moment I closed the book, the ego was at my beck and call, whisking me around like a bull in a china shop. My thoughts, shallow as they were, were infused with gestures to convince me of my superiority, and my words and actions were tinged with a desire to prove my righteousness. My ego’s ebb and flow of thoughts and ideas ebbed and flowed without pause as it reacted to and defended itself against changes in form. I would spend the day being driven by my “I” ego, then lie in bed in the evening and read Eckhart Tolle’s quiet stories again, only to wake up the next morning to find my ego running wild. On days when my head felt like it was going to explode with thoughts, I would do a headstand and linger. If my inhalation and exhalation were even slightly off, my shoulders would collapse and my legs would wobble. I cut off my thoughts to regain control of my breathing. I hit it.
The book I picked up again after finishing Eckhart Tolle’s book happened to be Koike Ryūnosuke’s The First Minister’s Words.
“Gazing into oneself can awaken a dull consciousness: ‘I have a desire to be lazy now,’ ‘I’m getting angry,’ ‘I want to be snappy this time,’ and so on… If one is consciously aware of one’s inner self, if one is constantly in control of one’s inner self, one is finally free from the slave-like state of being ruled by survival instincts and unconsciously run amok.”
For some reason, these words resonated with me. It’s true that I’ve been a slave to my emotions. I was offended or uplifted as my ego perceived it, so I talked the way I talked, reacted the way I reacted, acted the way I acted, and thought the way I thought. And that was me. The offended, depressed, proud, or anxious emotion was me. I was a slave to my unconscious emotions. I had given the reins to my emotions to “play with me and pretend to be me”. To look inward and be aware was to take ownership of my mind, my moods, and my thoughts as my consciousness raced around, and to stare at them still. To stare and notice my moods, feelings, and thoughts, even when they began to run wild, and even when they had run out of control and had grown tired and quieted down, my consciousness was still and aware of them. Eckhart Tolle’s ghostly chattering suddenly made sense.
If so, am I now in a position to live a spiritual life?
The awareness of presence as the essence of true happiness, the awakening of inner consciousness to be free and at peace in any form of transformation…….. I am curious about that world. I close my eyes and try to meditate. My mind is buzzing. They are constantly making noise and sticking to me like flies. I want to slap them, but I’m far away. I haven’t taken a single step.