Mathoms, etc.

I'm re-reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. He talks about the ego, or our sense of self, of I, and our identification with certain roles, with our minds. And of course the effects of living unconsciously and not being Present. Here are a few gems:

• Trying to become a good or better human being sounds like a commendable and high-minded thing to do, yet it is an endeavor you cannot ultimately succeed in unless there is a shift in consciousness.

• How do you let go of attachment to things? Don't even try. It's impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

• No matter what you have or get, you won't be happy. You will always be looking for something else that promises greater fulfillment, that promises to make your incomplete sense of self complete and fill that sense of lack you feel within.

• Nonreaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego. But you can only be in a state of nonreaction if you can recognize someone's behavior as coming from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it's not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.
• "If you think you are so enlightened, go spend a week with your parents", Ram Dass said. The relationship with your parents is a good test for your degree of Presence. The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be; otherwise, you will be forced to relive the past again and again.
• Suffering has a noble purpose; the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.
• Give up defining yourself. If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what's left is who you are---the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined.
• "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."Shakespeare
• Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that wants the negativity, that perceives it as pleasurable, or that believes it will get you what you want. Otherwise, who would want to hang on to negativity, make themselves and others miserable, and create disease in the body?
  
• The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Let go of your unhappiness the moment you recognize it as unintelligent.
• How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment. Be One with Life.Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.
• The more unconscious individuals, groups or nations are, the more likely it is that egoic pathology will assume the form of physical violence. Violence is a primitive but still widespread way in which the ego attempts to assert itself, to prove itself right and another wrong. With very unconscious people, arguments can easily lead to physical violence.
  
• In Zen they say:"Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions." Let go of identification with your mind. Who you are beyond the mind then emerges by itself.

• If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it.

• If the thought of lack – whether it be money, recognition, or love – has become part of who you think you are, you will always experience lack. Rather than acknowledge the good that is already in your life, all you see is lack.

• Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.

• Awareness is the greatest agent for change.

• Unconscious people – and many remain unconscious, trapped in their egos throughout their lives – will quickly tell you who they are: their name, their occupation, their personal history, the shape or state of their body, and whatever else they identify with. Others may appear to be more evolved because they think of themselves as an immortal soul or living spirit. But do they really know themselves, or have they just added some spiritual sounding concepts to the content of their mind? Knowing yourself goes far deeper than the adoption of a set of ideas or beliefs. Spiritual ideas and beliefs may at best be helpful pointers, but in themselves they rarely have the power to dislodge the more firmly established core concepts of who you think you are, which are part of the conditioning of the human mind. Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.
• Why does the ego play roles? Because of one unexamined assumption, one fundamental error, one unconscious thought: I am not enough. Other unconscious thoughts follow: I need to play a role to get what I need to be fully myself; I need to get more so that I can be more. But you cannot be more than you are because underneath your physical and psychological form, you are one with Life itself, one with Being. In form, you are and will always be inferior to some, superior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
• Be aware that what you think, to a large extent, creates the emotions that you feel. Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them. Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather then making up stories about it.