I listened to Eckhart again this morning on Touching the Eternal. It was a beautiful foggy morning. There’s just something about fog where you feel the mystery and the wonder of something that is formless. For me, it really is the best example of what eternity is or what the formless dimension is, even though, in and of itself, fog is a form of weather. But taken outside of that context and just accepted as it is, obviously, fog is formless.
I had several moments while walking with Eckhart (by which I mean that I was listening to one of his many books or seminars) in which I really felt like I was touching the eternal, when words kind of dissipate and you just feel the aliveness and joy and peace of this moment. When I allow myself to accept this moment as it is right now, I begin to feel joy well up inside me, because I’m not naming everything I see. I’m not labeling everything I feel. I’m just in this moment. I allow myself to simply be. And I allow this moment to take whatever form it takes, rather than reacting to it and fighting against it and being angry that something isn’t the way I think it should be or judging the circumstances around me or the people around me. Instead, I simply accept whatever happens right now.
This is where eternity is, right now. Life can only ever happen now. Spirituality is being in this moment, living in the now. Heaven is now. God is now. There is no other time in existence but now. This is liberating when we can really grasp it. I know these are just words, and words are just forms, and forms are temporary pointers to the eternal, formless, God, consciousness, awakening. The words and language I use are only pointers to the eternal. And they can be turnoffs for many people if I don’t use the right language, say with my family, if I don’t use Christian language, then they will be turned off and they can’t hear the message or see the pointers which would direct them back to God and connection with spirit. But when I allow myself to just be in this moment, right now, when I see that life is now, when I understand that God is now, when I understand that time only ever exists now, when I go into that quietness and stillness now, I feel an incredible sense of freedom, of life.
I’m beginning to recognize that as long as I keep having these imaginary conversations in my head with other people who are not there, then I’m still dealing out of my ego self or the ego. Whenever I try to prove myself right or try to convince others that my way of thinking is the only way to see or view the world, then it’s still ego at work in me. Or, as Saint Paul would’ve called it, it’s still the carnal mind at work in me. Paul was right when he said the carnal mind is hostile to God and cannot even comprehend God. He said spiritually discerned things cannot be discerned by the carnal mind. Tolle wouldn’t call it the carnal mind, he would just call it the ego self. No matter what we call it, it’s still an illusion.
On another note, I was able to walk 4 miles in just over an hour, (yes, I’m a very slow walker) so my pace was picked up today and that is good news for my potential future trek in Ireland and Scotland with my younger sister in the summer of 2022.
In doing this, I recognize that as long as I hang some kind of future hope or significance or sense of self on a future version of me and my body, my mental state, my spirituality even, then I’m not truly being in this moment. At the same time it’s okay to have goals as long as I don’t identify or hang all of my sense of identity in those goals. For example, if I only think of myself as worthwhile if I am a certain weight and worthless if I’m not that weight, then I’ve kind of lost the plot. Even if I make being awakened or enlightened a goal, then that is the ego at work, because I somehow want to prove myself better than or superior to other people. So again, it’s not bad to have goals. It’s only when I make my identity out of that future version of myself that it gets convoluted and it gets off track.
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