A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose ~ Eckhart Tolle

Please note: These excerpts are my notes from the book—A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle—plus my personal comments about the book. The following is not intended to be a replacement for the purchasing the book. Rather I sincerely hope reading my comments to inspire YOU to buy the book, comtemplate it, and even send in your comments to the site.

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Ch 1: The Flowering of Human Consciousness

• Flowers were most likely the first things humans valued that were not linked to survival.

• Flowers have provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics.

DCP: Beauty ~ flowers ~ inspiration.

• Zen Buddhism supposedly originated from a “silent sermon” of gazing at a flower.

DCP: Emotions at their deepest level are an energy vibration.

•  “The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intricately connected to that recognition.”

DCP: Consciousness + Thought

• Flowers are a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. Flowers are the “enlightenment” of plants.

DCP: Beauty is a bridge to appreciation and gratitude.

• Birds evolved to transcend crawling and walking and learned flew.

DCP: We exist spiritually as energy that transcends thought or conscious awareness.

• Flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds as symbolic of the human spirit.

• “Once there is a degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings’ perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves.”

• Fear, greed, and the desire for power are created by the dysfunction of the ego.

• “You do not do good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing it that goodness to emerge.”

DCP: Focus on what you want and believe that it is already yours.

• Hinduism = Enlightenment. Christianity = Salvation. Buddhism =  The end of suffering.

• Gautama Siddhartha lived 2600 years ago in India, and was called Buddha, which means the awakened one.

• Lao Tzu in China wrote the Tao Te Ching (the way of life).

• Religious teachings became distorted and religions, to a large extent are divisive rather than unifying forces. They became ideologies; belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self.

• Having a belief system—a set of thoughts you regard as the absolute truth—does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs are.

DCP: Religious or legalistic people consider those who do not believe as they do, as unworthy, wrong, sinners, or evil.

• How spiritual you are has nothing to do with what you believe, but everything to do with your state of consciousness.

• “The dysfunction of the egoic human mind, recognized already more than 2,500 years ago by the ancient wisdom teachers and now magnified by science and technology, is for the first time threatening the survival of the planet.”

• At the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought, the newfound ability of rising above thought, of realizing a dimension within yourself that is infinitely vaster than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself.

• Ego, is the identification with form, which primarily means thought forms. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every “other” as well as with the Source.

• A new heaven is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and a new earth is its reflection in the physical realm.

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Ch 2: Ego: The Current State of Humanity

• Words cover up the mystery with a label.

• Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it and let it be without imposing a word or mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you.

• The greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, or mental labels, and images.

• The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and all around you.

DCP: The more we grasp, the less we live.

• In this way, cleverness may be gained, but wisdom is lost, and so are love, joy, creativity, and aliveness. They are concealed in the still gap between the perception and the interpretation.

DCP: What cannot be owned or bought, but we all must have to survive? Love = Connection ~ Relationships.

• Albert Einstein referred to our sense of self as an optical illusion of consciousness.

• Who we are, suffers a monstrous act of reductionism and our infinite depth becomes confused with “I”, “me”, and “mine”.

DCP: Rectio ad absurdum ~ reduce to the absurd. “I” is the ultimate conceit!

• Our inner voice is the unobserved mind, as opposed to allowing ourselves to be and allow an influx of joy and inner peace.

• Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.

• “Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.”

DCP: Life is to be enjoyed.

• The word “identification” is derived from the Latin word idem, meaning same and facere, which means to make. So, when we identify with something we make it the same, and lose ourselves through our identification with the world around us, which is the ego.

• We use the things around us, and our accomplishments as “identity enhancers” seeking out the unique, or novel.

• Ego satisfaction is short-lived, so we keep looking for more and more ways to enhance it.

DCP: Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want.

• We cannot really honor things we use as means of self-enhancement.

DCP: Do we appreciate and take care of what we have or always just seek more?

• Ego identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, and so forth.

• Is your sense of self-worth bound up with what you have?

• What is it in our lives that we need to let go of? (Physical things, people, attitudes, beliefs) What is it that defines who you are?

• Feeling the I AM is the joy of Being. Being must be felt.

• You can value and care for things, but when you get attached to them, you will know it’s the ego.

• Sometimes we can find greater satisfaction in giving things away.

DCP: Learning to flow, moving in spirit.

• Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.

DCP: Law of Attraction…

• When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it.

• The ego will identify with whatever it can, or whatever your life is consumed in doing.

• How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself.

DCP: Looking glass self.

• Attachment to things drops away, when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

• “Having” is short term gratification (serotonin).

• “Wanting” is the ego’s need for more (dopamine). This is a psychological (addictive) need and not an authentic one.

DCP: An authentic need is one that meets a tangible or internal need (Maslow).

• Gender becomes identity, and becomes a role we are forced into that affects all areas of our life, not just sexuality.

• For many people their sense of self worth is intimately bound up with their physical strength, good looks, and external appearance.

• Once the ego has found an identity, it often does not want to let go.

• Inner body awareness is you ability to sense your own aliveness.

• Inner body = life energy.

• We need to move away from form identification towards formlessness, which is called being.

• More fundamental than the external forms—things and bodies—are the thought forms that continuously arise in the field of consciousness.

• Are we focused on the voice in our heads (the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking) or can we focus on our sense of Being or “I AM.”

• Descartes: “I think therefore, I am.” (His answer to the question: “How do you know you are alive?”)

• Jean-Paul Sartre said: “The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.”

DCP: It is our awareness of our thoughts and thought processes that allows us to distinguish a difference as a dreamer who knows he is dreaming can separate him or herself from their dream, and is different from a dreamer who believes that his or her dream is real and is caught up in the dream until the point where they awaken.

DCP: In the movie Hotel Rwanda – Paul the hotel manager says to the general at one point “You cannot hurt me, it would be a blessing to be dead.” In that instance he was able to separate himself from his human confines and see himself as eternal – invincible. At that moment he was able to speak and act with a spirit of power and authority.

• The Peace that Passes all Understanding ~ Then suddenly and inexplicably, the anguish or intense fear they initially felt gave way to a sacred sense of Presence, a deep peace and serenity and complete freedom from fear.

DCP: Living like you have “nothing to lose” ~ living in complete grace and appreciation, that the attainment or ownership of material possessions or the complete lack of material possessions, has the same impact on the person’s soul.

• When we exist as I AM, spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the Peace of God.

• When we live with inner acceptance, we are open to life.

• Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance (which we could also call negativity) will create more outer resistance, and the universe will not be on your side; life will not be helpful.

• When you yield internally, a new dimension opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness that we become one with. Circumstances and people become helpful, and cooperative. Coincidences happen.

DCP: Are we in-sync with the universe and allowing our energy to flow, or are we holding back, trying to control, or resisting what is unfolding all around us?

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Chapter 3: The Core of Ego

• Mind possession – the core of Ego. There is a sense of self, in every thought, memory, interpretation, opinion, viewpoint, reaction, emotion!

• The core of ego is the repetitive and persistent thoughts, emotions and reactive patterns that you identify with most strongly.

• All egos live on identification and separation (how are we the same and how are we different from others).

• Living in an ego state means we are constantly faultfinding and complaining about others.

• Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself. This includes applying negative mental labels or name calling of others.

• Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended.

• Anger (action) complaining. Hurt (emotion) resentment.

• If we can recognize another’s behavior as coming from their ego, they we can respond (appropriately) rather than react.

• By not reacting you may be able to bring out the “consciousness” (conscious awareness) in others, who otherwise would continue to act on an unconscious and conditioned level.

• At times you may need to take practical steps to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people. Remember not to personalize the other person’s unconscious behaviors. Non-reaction is not weakness, but strength.

• Remain neutral, stick to the facts, and remain calm.

DCP: Our most challenging task is to learn how to stand up for ourselves appropriately.

• When we complain we are stuck in our ego (past emotional state), and not able to change (not open to possibilities).

• When we are self-aware, we are able to notice the inner voice that is our ego state, and when we notice the voice, we can realize that we are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it (the observer).

• Awareness and ego cannot co-exist!

• Some people are as addicted to their emotions, such as being upset or angry, as others are to drugs or alcohol.

• A long-standing resentment is called a grievance.

• Collective grievances can survive for centuries in the psyche of a nation or tribe and fuel a never-ending cycle of violence.

DCP: Consider the many “first nations” people who are still so concerned about what “the white men” did to “us.” Yet, the truth is that both the aggrieved and original perpetrators are generally long dead and gone, yet the “self-righteous” feelings and behaviors live on.

DCP: When we act unconsciously in our ego state we concentrate negative emotional energy and create stuck points.

• The honest self-examination, we can root out grievances, and move on from them.

• Ego always takes everything personally, and acts defensively and even aggressively.

• Ego says: “I am right, and you are wrong.”

• Some Christians complain about moral relativism (right and wrong are a matter of perspective), and cling to Church Doctrine or a narrow interpretation of scripture as “the truth.”

DCP: “Universal truth” is what fits with our core spirit energy, and does not fit with moral relativism nor narrow in its interpretation.

• Thought (ideas) can at best, point to the truth, but is never the truth. That is why Buddhists say: “The finger pointing to the moon, is not the moon.”

• All religions are equally false and equally true, depending on how you use them.

• Religious teaching are signposts, or maps, left behind by “awakened humans” to assist you in spiritual awakening. The very Being that you are is the truth.

• Jesus tried to convey that when he said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

• Buddhists call this “truth within” your “Buddha nature.”

• Hindus call it “Atman” – the indwelling God.

• When you are in touch with that dimension within yourself—and being in touch with it is your natural state—all your actions and your relationships will reflect the oneness with all life that you sense deep within. This is love!

• St. Augustine said: “Love, and do what you will.”

• The ego acts out as greed, selfishness, exploitation of others, cruelty, and violence.

• As a world full of nations focused on much of the above ego-states, it is no wonder that crime, drug abuse, and wars continue to flourish.

• In simple terms, do you want peace or drama in your life?

• All that is required to become free of the ego is to become aware of it.

• Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment.

• Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience (act), think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away.

• The Buddhist concept of Anata (no-self) illustrates this most clearly, and is a central point of Buddhist teaching.

• When we can deny our ego state, what remains is “the light of consciousness” in which perceptions, experiences, thoughts, and feelings are allowed to come and go without being clung to. That is Being, the deeper, true I.

• Can I sense my essential Being, the I AM, in the background of my life at all times?

• Can I remain in a state of self-awareness?

• Fear = Ego = Insecurity (our ego need to stand out is always based on things that never last, such as worldly wealth).

DCP: The theme of the movie the Emperor’s Club – is that great conquest without great contribution is worthless, and never remembered.

• Fame is a manifestation of the egoic madness in our world. Albert Einstein never identified with the image the collective mind had created of him. He remained humble, egoless until his death.

DCP: When our focus in on the quality of our relationships, not the number of admirers we have, we are on the right track.

• A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking desires. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever. That alert attention is called Presence.

DCP: Being fully Present to another (giving them your full attention) is the best way we an honor each other.

• In contract the ego is always wanting something (from someone else), is indifferent (aloof and ignoring of others), or is dwelling in thwarted wanting (anger, resentment, blaming, or complaining).

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Chapter 4: Role-Playing: The Many Faces of the Ego

• The ego thrives on getting attention from others – from collecting their psychic energy.

• The ego wants to be noticed and acknowledged.

• The shy person has and ambivalent ego that both wants and fears attention from others.

• Shyness often goes with a self-concept that is predominately negative, the belief of being inadequate.

• Behind the confident ego’s feeling of and need for superiority is the unconscious fear of inferiority.

• If adults and children cannot get positive attention from others, they may resort to seeking negative attention. This negative ego state creates and builds a pain-body.

• The pain-body gathers emotional pain and renews itself through experiencing more pain.

• This ultimately results in children and adults continually acting out victim roles in all of their relationships. This victim role then becomes their story, which they endlessly repeat to others or continue to act out as a way to feel their pain-body and their identity.

• As every therapist knows – the ego does not want to end its “problems” because the problems are so much a part of the person’s identity. Even though victim role-playing is often hard work, to the person in their unconscious ego state, it is easier to maintain the view of themselves as a victim rather than face the fear of the unknown and take on the conscious awareness and responsibility to change.

• When we “fall in love” we become addicted to the image we have created of another person, and when they no longer match the image we have created, we say that we have “fallen out of love” with them.

DCP: Real love is based on a commitment to another person, knowing that both yourself and the other person will continue to change throughout your life together and the ideal is to fully appreciate each other, as you share experiences and grow together.

• When we love each other unconditionally (without expectations) we allow the eternal light that shines within each of us to illuminate all aspects of the relationship.

• Letting go of self-definitions: Can you cease looking to thought for an identity?

• When we get lost in role-playing, we lose our ability to form authentic relationships.

• Zen teaches us to have the sameness of bearing before all human beings, whether beggar or king.

• Rather than say: “I am unhappy,” try saying to yourself “there is unhappiness in me.” This latter statement allows you to investigate and find out what might be causing your feelings of unhappiness, and opens the door to positive actions and change. Labeling yourself as “unhappy” just helps to keep you stuck in that negative ego state.

• The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it.

• Acknowledge your situation honestly and face facts when you need to. In this way you empower yourself, and through this awareness of your situation you are able also be aware that it is a situation that can be changed.

• Awareness means Presence, and only Presence can dissolve the unconscious past in you.

• It is important to allow others to suffer the consequences of their actions. Awareness of our suffering helps us to learn what it means to be human. When you accept suffering, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.

• Doing is never enough if you neglect Being. It is more important to help others (especially children) learn how to Be, and the way to do this is to give them attention.

• Alert attention to another creates a shared sense of Presence that can embody looking, listening, touching, and speaking.

DCP: We are both: Celestial (spirit) and corporeal (body) – Being or Presence – is a conscious embracing of both states simultaneously.

• In Being, we can move beyond mere form, and be equal to others in body and spirit. True love is recognized and validated through being fully present to one another.

• The longing for love in every child is the longing to be recognized not on the level of form, but on the level of Being.

• To do whatever is required of you in any situation without it becoming a role that you identify with is an essential lesson in the art of living that each of us has to learn.

• You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.

• When you learn to function from the deeper core of your Being, there is no need to appear more than you are, and it is easy to just be yourself.

DCP: Be true to yourself. Aristotle – “Know thyself.”

• When you act from your core, your actions are in alignment with the larger whole and greater truth.

• In form (body) you will always be superior to some, and inferior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true 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.

DCP: How then do we “value,” others and ourselves? I do not completely agree with this selfless or egoless identity. We need to be true to our purpose in life as a journey, rather than strive to obtain a state of Being or lack there of.

• The Greek root of the word pathological is pathos, which means suffering.

• Unhappiness is an ego-created mental-emotional disease that has reached epidemic proportions. Anger and resentments strengthen the ego enormously by increasing the sense of separateness, emphasizing the otherness of others and creating a seemingly unassailable fortress-like mental position of “rightness.”

DCP: We lose our connection to others, our sense of relationship.

• 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. If you can be aware of your negative state, you can shift from ego to awareness, and realize that you are creating suffering for yourself!

• Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness divides, intelligence includes.

• Future imperfect ~ “There is something that needs to happen in my life, before I can be at peace, happy, fulfilled…” and I resent that it has not happened yet.

• Past imperfect ~ “Something happened in my past, that should not have happened, and I resent it.” If that had not happened I would be at peace now.

• Present imperfect ~ “Something is happening now that should not be happening, and it is preventing me from being at peace now.”

• How can we be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment.

• The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else.

• There are three words that convey the secret art of living, the secret of all success and happiness. One with Life.

• Being one with life is being one with now.

• Buddha calls – reality Tatata—the fullness of life of this moment.

DCP: Reality is being fully aware of the here and now, it is complete acceptance and embracing of everything. When we fully live in the moment, time extends to infinity. When we resist the moment, and live in an ego state, we create our own unhappiness through not being satisfied with who and what we are. Our existence then is based on our emotional resentments of how we want things to be rather than love which is acceptance of how things are.

• To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment.

DCP: Who is responsible for you, if not you?

• Violence is a primitive, but still very widespread way in which the ego attempts to assert itself, to prove itself right and another wrong.

• Zen says: “Do not seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.”

• Most people have moments when they are free of ego. Those who are exceptionally good at what they do for work may be completely or largely free of ego while performing their jobs. They may not know it, but their work has become a spiritual practice. Most of them are present while they do their work and fall back into relative unconsciousness in their private lives.

• When people live in the moment. They bring about a lessening of the ego in everyone who comes into contact with them.

• When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality.

• People may unknowingly sabotage their own work when they withhold help or information from others or try to undermine them lest they become more successful or get more credit than “me.”

DCP: The way to succeed is to help others succeed.

• Enlightened collectives will fulfill an important function in the arising of the new consciousness. Enlightened collectives can be a vortex for consciousness that will accelerate the planetary shift.

• I am life. Life and I are one.

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Chapter 5: The Pain-Body

• The greater part of most people’s thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive.

• Since the mind is conditioned by the past, you are then forced to reenact the past again and again. The Eastern term for this is Karma.

• Alienation means that you do not feel at ease in any situation, any place, or with any person, not even with yourself.

• You are always trying to get “home” but never feel at home.

• Emotion is the body’s reaction to your mind – the voice in your head.

• Gaia – is the complex living being that is planet earth.

• Primordial fear – gives rise to fight or flight.

• Our body cannot differentiate between an actual situation and a thought. Thus, our body reacts to every thought as if it were a reality.

• Our body reacts to dysfunctional automatic thinking with negative emotions.

• The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes and reacts to. Those reactions are emotions. The emotions, in turn feed energy back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place. This is the vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional story making.

• Negative emotion leads to unhappiness.

• Praise and recognition make you happy one day, and being criticized or ignored make you unhappy the next.

• The states of being that you should strive for are: love, joy, and peace.

DCP: The fruits of the spirit are: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control.

• It is through memory that we learn from the past and past mistakes.

• Our story consists not only of our mental memory (thoughts), but also of emotional memories – especially our emotional pain.

• Children in particular find strong negative emotions too overwhelming to cope with and tend to try not to feel them.

• The pain-body is not just individual in nature. It also partakes of the pain suffered by countless humans throughout the history of humanity, which is a history of continuous warfare, of enslavement, pillage, rape, torture, and other forms of violence.

• Infants come into this world with a heavy share of human pain and suffering. Other babies cry frequently because they can sense the emanation of their mother’s and father’s negative emotion, and it causes them pain, and also causes their pain-body to grow.

• Christ is seen as the archetypal human who embodies both the pain (suffering of the world) and the possibility of over coming it (transcendence).

• The pain-body manifests itself as energy that vibrates at a certain frequency.

• The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness.

• It is always easier to see it in another person, than recognize it in us.

• The pain-body feeds on our negative emotions.

• Thoughts consist of the same energy vibrating at a higher frequency than matter, which is why they cannot be seen or touched.

• Thoughts have their own range of frequencies, with negative thoughts at the lower end of the scale and positive thoughts at the higher end.

• Drama, emotional pain, gets passed down from generation to generation.

• We can only go beyond our pain-body by taking responsibility for our inner state.

• With forgiveness your victim identity dissolves and your true power emerges—the power of Presence.

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Chapter 6: Breaking Free

• The beginning of freedom from the pain-body first lies in the realization that you have a pain-body. The energy that is trapped in the pain-body through negative emotion needs to be transmuted into Presence.

• Humans are meant to evolve into conscious beings, and those who don’t will suffer the consequences of their unconscious and repetitive behaviors.

DCP: We need to acknowledge (and validate) our pain in order to work through it.

• We need to create some space around our unhappiness, and make room for other feelings to come in.

• Stop buying into the drama of others.

• The dysfunctional thinking is... the more unhappy I become, the more likely I am to get what I want. (Think of children competing for attention.)

• It is important not to react (emotionally) to the child’s pain-body acting out, rather strive to respond thoughtfully and calmly.

• The pain-body’s unhappiness is always clearly out of proportion to the apparent cause.

DCP: Pay attention to whenever you or another person seems to over-react or under-react to a situation – especially emotionally.

• People with heavy and frequently active pain-bodies often find themselves in conflict situations. The negativity they emanate is enough to attract hostility and generate conflict.

DCP: Strive to remain “centered,” and calm.

• Being present to others, often involved letting them experience their feelings, but not interfering, and not doing anything.

• Zen calls a glimpse of what is possible, is called a Satori. A Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the body as emotion.

• Some pain-bodies react to only one particular kind of trigger or situation, which usually resonates with a certain kind of emotional pain suffered in the past.

• For example a child who experienced abandonment will likely develop a pain-body that gets triggered by similar feelings in adulthood.

• Just think for a moment: What causes you deep emotional pain?

• Negative emotion can serve as a doorway through which the pain-body can fully emerge.

• Inner peace can be achieved by focusing away from identification with the pain-body, and enter the state of Presence.

• Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at the moment. Through awareness, space is created, and the pain-body can be let go.

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Chapter 7: Finding Who You Truly Are

• Gnothi Seauton—Know Thyself. These words were inscribed above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, site of the Oracle.

DCP: The Oracle in the Matrix (movie), is depicted by an old lady who possesses the power of foresight, which she uses to advise and guide the humans attempting to fight the Matrix’s system. Whether her power of prediction is deterministic or not is a concept given much treatment in all three films. She herself clams that she lacks the ability to see past her own choice, explaining that no one can see past a choice they do not understand, including herself.

• It is likely that most visitors to the temple read the words and missed the deeper meaning of the message that no matter how great a revelation or how accurate the information, it would ultimately not save them from further unhappiness and suffering, if they failed to find the truth that comes from within.

• Thus, the first and most fundamental question of your life is: Who am I?

• Unconscious people (people stuck in their egos),  can quickly tell you their name, occupation, personal history, state of their body, and whatever else they identify with, but they may not have much of a sense of themselves beyond their physical and situational condition.

• Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind or your emotions.

• Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as your needs and what matters to you in life—and whatever matters to you will have the power to upset and disturb you.

• You can use these criteria as a way to find out how deeply you know yourself. What are the things that upset and disturb you the most?

DCP: It is easy to see ourselves as spiritual Beings when everything is going well in our lives, but when things are not going so well—it is amazing just how quickly we seem to get stuck in our unhappiness and apparent suffering that is our human existence.

• We quickly fall back in to unconscious behaviors when things go wrong, and automatically blame, attack, defend, and try to justify ourselves.

• If peace is really what you want, you must make a conscious choice to choose peace, and act accordingly. 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 non-reactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people and situations.

• You would immediately accept the situation, and become one with it, rather than separate yourself from it. Then you would respond out of your consciousness rather than reacting out of your emotions and pain-body.

• When you can step back from yourself and others, you can look “at” the ego rather than “through” the ego.

• Very conscious people are aware that their own ego is reflected in other people’s reactions to us. Thus, we react to what we unconsciously identify with in others, and other people react to what they unconsciously identify with in us.

• Who we are requires no belief, it requires no realization, it is our unmanifested potential, and is both infinite and ever changing.

• When we focus on the lack in our lives rather that acknowledge the good, all we see is lack. If we can continually acknowledge all the good and live in a state of gratitude, we will always have abundance.

• Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world, because deep down in side you think you have nothing to give.

• Try this for a couple of weeks and see how it changes your reality: Whatever you think people are withholding from you—praise, appreciation, loving care, and so on—give it to them. Outflow determines inflow! As Jesus said: “Give to others and it will be given unto you.”

• The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are.

• You do not need to own anything to feel abundant, although if you feel abundant consistently things will almost certainly come to you. Abundance comes only to those who already have it. It is a universal law (the Law of Attraction); both abundance and scarcity are inner states that manifest as reality.

• As Jesus put it: “For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

• You may not want to know yourself because you are afraid of what you may find out. Many people have a secret fear that they are bad.

• What we do or have done is not—who we are! Knowing about yourself, is different from knowing yourself. Content is not essence.

• Knowing yourself is being yourself, and being yourself is ceasing to identify with content.

• Most people define themselves through the content of their lives. Whatever you do, think, or feel is content. Content is what absorbs most people’s attention entirely, and it is what they identify with.

• When we focus on the content of our lives, we think in terms of what is good or bad for us—and we miss the larger whole and the interconnectedness of the universe.

• In Zen there is a saying: “The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.”

• We can never understand the higher order through thinking about it, because what we think about is content. Whereas the higher order emanates from the formless realm of consciousness, from universal intelligence.

• But we can glimpse it, and more than that, align ourselves with it, which means be conscious of the participants in the unfolding of that higher purpose.

• Imagine going into a forest that has not being disturbed by man. Everything in that forest will flow in cycle and perfect harmony and unity—a sacredness in which everything has its perfect place and could not be other than what it is, and the way it is.

• Just like in the forest, in life, there is an order that the mind cannot understand—and it is neither good nor bad. When we can let go of ego, and strive to be aware of the hidden harmony, we become more connected with the sacred and eternal, and less separate from it. In this way we become more connected with life and each other.

• As the universe is an indivisible whole in which all things are interconnected, in which nothing exists in isolation (Quantum Physics).

• Do you want to know my secret? (Don’t sweat the small stuff.)

• This is my secret… “I don’t mind what happens.”

• To be in alignment with what is, means to be in a relationship of inner non-resistance with what happens. It means not to label it mentally as good or bad, but to let it be.

• Does this mean that you can no longer take action to bring about change in your life? On the contrary. When the basis for your actions is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions become empowered by the intelligence of Life itself.

• Only when we resist what happens are we at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness or unhappiness.

• The most important, primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the NOW – the present moment. Do I want the present moment to be my friend or enemy?

• Become friendly towards it, welcome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative.

DCP: Go with the flow!

• Time is what the ego lives on. The stronger the ego, the more time takes over your life.

• Almost every thought you think is then concerned with the past or future, and your sense of self depends on the past for your identity and on the future for its fulfillment. Fear, anxiety, expectation, regret, guilt, and anger are the dysfunctions of the time-bound state of consciousness.

• The ego sees the present moment as a means to an end, as an obstacle, or and the enemy (and is never fully present in the moment as the ego is always dwelling in the past or putting expectations on the future).

• Time is the horizontal dimension of life (breadth), the surface layer of reality. The present moment is the vertical dimension of life (depth) and is only limited by our ability to be fully (spiritually) aware.

• We can eliminate psychological time, when we end the ego endless preoccupation with past and future.

DCP: Ideally we want to understand the past, and work towards a better future with no expectations.

• Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Through it, consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in form.

• Resistance makes the world and the things of the world appear more real, more solid, and most lasting than they are, including your own form identity, the ego.

DCP: How do we live in the moment, yet go with the flow? What is the difference between resistance and focus?

• The many things that happen, the many forms that life takes on, are of an ephemeral nature. They are all fleeting (transient).

• The dreamer is not the dream. The dream is a short-lived play of forms. The dreamer is the substratum (medium) in which the dream appears that which makes the dream possible. It is the absolute behind the relative, the timeless behind time, and the consciousness in and behind form. The dreamer is consciousness itself—who you are.

• To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we awaken within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.

• It is through creative action that we can bring something new into this world that is life-enhancing for yourself as well as others.

• When you are present, when your attention is fully in the Now, that Presence will flow into and transform what you do. There will be quality and power in it.

• Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.

• The Joy of Being is the only true happiness, and it emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself.

• Strive to let go of your ego, such as when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself—do nothing. When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, you realize that nothing has been diminished, that through becoming less you actually become more.

• What looks like weakness to the ego, is in fact strength.

• Jesus said: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

• When we consider the vastness of outer space; we are more easily able to consider the vastness of inner-space our consciousness.

• Being is spirit. Existence is form. Being is timeless eternity. Existence is bound by content and form and constantly fades away.

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Chapter 8: The Discovery of Inner Space

• There once was an ancient King who was continually torn between happiness and despondency. A wise man was found, who after listening to the king said that he knew how to help the king, but the price was very great. The king gave his assurance that he would do whatever the wise man asked of him. The wise man presented him with a ring and said that when every something happens, before you call it good or bad, you will touch your ring and read the inscription. In doing so, you will always be at peace. The King opened the ornately carved jade box and found a simple gold ring, on it was inscribed: “This too shall pass.”

• When we can accept the transience of all things and the inevitability of change, you can enjoy the pleasures of the world while they last without fear of loss or anxiety about the future.

DCP: Being able to appreciate the moment, and all that we have, is learning to detach or let go of the fear associated with losing what we have, or the emotional heaviness of not having what we want.

• Peace is found through detachment, non-judgment, and inner non-resistance.

• You can enjoy and honor the things of this world, and enjoy the dance of creation when you do not place attachment on outcome or unreasonable demands on the world.

DCP: True power lies in creation, not destruction.

• All suffering is due to an overvaluation of form and an unawareness of the dimension of inner space.

DCP: Freedom from suffering is as easy as taking the focus away from yourself.

• Object consciousness (materialism) needs to be replaced by space consciousness for sanity to return to our planet and for humanity to fulfill its destiny.

• The arising of space consciousness is the next step in the evolution of humanity.

• Alcohol and drug use, and other mind numbing activities like TV watching, may provide a temporary escape from the pain-body, but the person pays a high price the loss of consciousness.

DCP: Anything that causes us to be less present to each moment, causes us to be less alive.

• The ancient sages of India called Ananda—the bliss of Being.

• It is the ability to see beauty, to appreciate simple things, to enjoy your own company, or to relate to other people with loving kindness.

DCP: One day a traveler on a pilgrimage asked a Zen master how to enter Zen (a blissful state of consciousness). The master answered, you will find Zen when you can hear the sound of silence.

• A Satori is a flash of enlightenment.

• Rather than asking how we can make people and situations fulfill our needs. It is better to ask how I can respond to the needs of those around me and situations.

• Consciousness, the traditional word for spirit, cannot be known in the normal sense of the word, and seeking it is futile. Consciousness gets lost in its own dream.

DCP: Music is the silence between the notes.

• Discover inner space by creating gaps in the stream of thinking. Without those gaps your thinking becomes repetitive, uninspired, devoid of any creative spark, which is how it still is for most people on the planet.

• Be aware of your breathing as often as you are able, whenever you remember. Do that for one year, and it will be more powerfully transformative than attending any number of self-help courses.

• God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature.

• The ancient Indian word for breathing – Atman – also means the indwelling spirit or God within.

• Being aware of your breathing forces you into the present moment—the key to all inner transformation.

• A long-standing compulsive behavior pattern may be called an addiction.

• When you notice the compulsive need arising in you, stop and take three breaths.

• Be aware of the compulsive urge, and allow it to pass on through you, and let it go.

• Quantum Physics: Physicists have discovered that the apparent solidity of matter is an illusion created by our senses. Consider the following about outer space. Light traveling at a constant speed of 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kms), takes just over one second to travel between the earth and the moon; light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach earth. Light from our nearest neighbor in space, a star called Proxima Centauri, which is the sun that is closest to our own sun, travels for 4.5 years before it reaches the earth.

• Your physical body, which is form, reveals itself as essentially formless when you go deeper into it. That “empty space” is life in its fullness, the unmanifested Source out of which all manifestation flows. The traditional word for that Source is God.

• When you are still, you are who you are beyond your temporal existence: consciousness—unconditioned, formless, and eternal.

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Chapter 9: Your Inner Purpose

• The true purpose of your life is has nothing to do with what you do, or who you are, but what you are—that is to say, your state of consciousness.

• The question then, is how do we align our outer purpose (what we do, and who we are), with our inner purpose (achieving a heightened state of consciousness—awakening)?

• We share our inner purpose of awakening, and striving for enlightenment with every other person on the planet. However, every person will has a difference outer purpose in that we all are unique and need to awaken to our inner purpose in our own way.

• Without aligning our outer and inner purpose, we can still achieve certain things through effort, struggle, determination, and sheer hard work or cunning; but there is no joy in such endeavor, and it invariably ends in some form of suffering.

• Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. For most people it is not an event but a process they undergo.

• Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Awareness takes over from thinking.

• Awareness is the conscious connection with universal intelligence. Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought – BEING.

• The initiation of the awareness process is an act of grace (undeserved merit).

• “If you have found this book incomprehensible or meaningless, it has not happened to you. If something within you responds to it, however if you somehow recognize the truth in it, it means the process of awakening has begun.” Pg 260

DCP: The above is quite the conceit! (Bold statement of high opinion that may or may not be justified.)

• For some people reading the book will initiate the awakening process.

• For others reading the book will help them to be aware of their ego driven lives.

• Once you have a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it to be true.

• Einstein apparently said “I want to know the mind of God, the rest of life is just details.”

• How do you align your life with you inner purpose?

DCP: Whatever you do, do it with all your heart.

• As long as you are unaware of Being, you will seek meaning only within the dimension of time. And whatever meaning or fulfillment you find will dissolve or turn out to have been a deception. Invariably, it will be destroyed by time. Any meaning we find on that level is true only relatively and temporarily.

DCP: The way to succeed is to help others succeed.

• The separation of thinking and awareness, which lies at the core of your primary purpose, happens through the negation of time.

• When you look upon what you do or where you are as the main purpose of your life, you negate time.

DCP: Focus on the present moment as all that matters. Live in the Here and Now.

• The negation of time in what you do also provides the link between your inner and outer purposes, between Being and doing. When you negate time, you negate the ego.

• Whatever you do you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the doing itself becomes the focal point of your attention.

• Your doing then becomes a channel through which consciousness enters this world. There is quality in what you do, even the simplest action.

• Remember the paradox of time: Whatever you do takes time, yet it is always NOW.

• The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for.

• Consider atomic energy: An atom is a very small thing, yet contains great power.

DCP: In terms of quantum physics, the energy of “empty space” is infinite.

• Only when you align yourself with the present moment do you have access to that power. As Jesus said: “It is not I, but the Father within me that does the work,” and “I can of my own self do nothing.”

• When we connect with Being, we connect with the power of the universe. When we act out of ego, we separate ourselves from all that is timeless.

• The belief in God is a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting (being a part of) every moment of your life.

• When we are able to shift our focus to a heightened awareness, there may no noticeable difference in what we do, but the how changes and becomes empowered.

• We you talk or listen to someone, give them your fullest attention. Extend your field of awareness to include them in the Presence you project.

• What the world doesn’t tell you (because it doesn’t know)—is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Do not let the world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. (Being fully present and aware.)

• Quality implies care and attention, which comes from awareness. Quality requires your Presence.

• What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.

• Some people ask: How do I make a change from how I am to how I want to be?

• For some people there is a sudden or gradual break with their past; their work, living situation, relationships—everything undergoes profound change. You wake up one morning and you know what to do.

• For others the changes are small and almost imperceptible, yet how they begin to live each day has a new Here and Now focus. After a while through their new awareness, they realize that their lives have become more meaningful, and fulfilling.

• There may be a period of insecurity and uncertainty. What should I do?

• When we stop living by the desires of our ego, you are able to live with uncertainty, even enjoy it. When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.

• It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do, and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change.

DCP: Feel the fear, and do it anyway!

• Fulfilling your inner purpose is being at one with the present moment. It brings you into inner alignment with the whole of which the present moment is a part of. The whole, the totality of life, then acts through you.

• The deepest truth of all is Unity. Thus, when we are unified we can be conscious participants in the unfolding of universal intelligence.

• Can infinite purpose manifest in us?

• Yes, whenever there is inspiration, which translates to “in spirit” and enthusiasm, which means “in God,” there is creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of.

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Chapter 10: A New Earth

• Astronomers have discovered evidence to suggest that the universe came into existence 15 billion years ago in a gigantic explosion and has been expanding ever since.

• The outer purpose of the universe is to create form and experience the interaction of forms. The inner purpose of the universe is to awaken to its formless essence.

• The reconciliation of outer and inner purpose is to bring that essence—consciousness—into the world of form and thereby transform the world.

• Every thought implies a perspective, and every perspective, by its very nature, implies limitation, which ultimately means that it is not true, at least not absolutely. Only the whole is true, but the whole cannot be spoken of thought.

• The human brain contains about one hundred billion nerve cells (called neurons), about the same number as there are stars in our galaxy, which could be seen as a macrocosmic brain. The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain for its expression.

• Awakened humans have learned the meaning of awakened doing.

• Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose—what you do—with your inner purpose—awakening and staying awake.

• Consciousness flows through you into the world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it.

• Not what you do, but how you do what you do, determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny.

• There are three ways you can align yourself with the creative power of the universe: acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.

• Each represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all—from the most simple to the most complex of tasks. If you are not in a state of acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.

• Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do.

DCP: Do you do what needs to be done?

• The peace that comes from acceptance is a subtle energy vibration, which flows into what you do.

• If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do—stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing that you can really take responsibility for, your state of consciousness.

• In the new earth, enjoyment will replace wanting as the motivating power behind people’s actions.

DCP: I believe that it is a dynamic balance between “wanting/craving” which is mediated by dopamine in our brains, and “having/enjoying” which is mediated by serotonin in our brains.

• Joy is the dynamic aspect of Being.

• Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do, and thus into this world from deep within you.

• When we are aware of the inner Joy flowing out from within us, we are able to realize the Joy of Being in everything that we do.

• The Joy of Being is the joy of being conscious.

• The third way of aligning ourselves with our inner purpose is through enthusiasm. It manifests itself when people have a great vision, a goal, and from then on work towards implementing that goal. Our goal or vision is connected on a smaller scale with everything we enjoy doing already.

DCP: Passion is focused enthusiasm.

• Enthusiasm means that there is a deeper enjoyment in what you do, plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward. When you add a goal to the enjoyment of what you do, the energy-field or vibrational frequency changes. You will feel like an arrow that is moving towards the target—and enjoying the journey.

DCP: The Journey is the Destination!

• Enthusiasm ~ Greek “en” & “theos” — “in God.”

• Enthusiasm never opposes. It is non-confrontational. It is based on inclusion.

• Enthusiasm is goal directed and focused.

• “Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested source of all life, through you, for the benefit of all.”

• The Frequency Holders (the enlightened ones)

• Some people feel a strong urge to build, create, become involved, achieve, and make an impact on the world.

• If they are conscious, those people in whom the outward movement is strong will be highly creative.

• These frequency holders (aware people) help to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on this planet. They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others, as well as “just being.”

• In Revelations in the Bible, the prophet says: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free.

• Nothing is going to make us free, because only the present moment can make us free.

• That realization is the awakening. Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence.

• A new species is arising on the planet, it is arising now and you are it!