posted July 19, 2007 05:16 PM         

PEACE LIVES IN THE PRESENT MOMENT

Do you ever day dream? Ever catch yourself lost in the thinking mind without a clue as to what’s going on around you? Our minds are wonderful tools that help us with logic, evaluation, and memory. We wouldn’t want to be without this most useful tool.

Who's In Charge?

So who, exactly, is in charge of your mental activity? Does your mind go on and on, frequently out of control? Who started that train of thought, while you stare into space, totally lost to your surroundings, to the present moment. It most likely was your ego, who loves to run your life. Ego has an important job to do with all of us. It separates us from the One Intelligence, everywhere present around us and as us. It does its job very well.

Ego uses a bag of tricks—resentment, guilt, jealousy, anger, hate, judgment and on and on. These are necessary at first. They serve as protection from being hurt. Ego makes us feel better when we put someone else down. Interestingly, we have to wake up to this separation before we can realize the oneness that we all are. Humanity is one energy, expressing as diverse forms. But we are all made of the same star stuff, just as is everything in all creation.

Ego can be a great servant, but only when we’re awake to its behavior and decide that we want to be in charge of our own lives. Ego is what runs our life when we’re not present. When we are fully present in the moment, awareness expands. We notice our breath, our feet on the floor, the temperature, the person or flower of tree that is present with us. Thinking actually stops. There is peace; a feeling of love and gratitude flows through us. We experience being a silent presence in a breathing body. We can watch any thought that wants to come in. Just noticing it, being neither for nor against that thought, and our whole being fills with healing energy. Our immune system is strengthened.

Whenever ego starts a train of thought in the mind without our being aware of it, we are taken out of the present moment and are elsewhere. We pay for these moments, as our bodies change without our noticing. Thinking tenses subtle muscles and is noticeable in the body by a trained Lomi bodywork practitioner.

Staring, a common occurrence while not present in the moment, actually weakens eye muscles and vision deteriorates. There is no such thing as a person that sees clearly at all distances who stares. Everyone who stares needs corrective lenses of some kind.This is because eyes are aimed at something in front of you, but your mind is elsewhere. This is a body-mind split and creates much stress.

Eckhart Tolle, who wrote The Power of Now, says in his Stillness Speaks, “The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn’t mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.”

INNER PEACE LEADS TO WORLD PEACE

"There is a Power for Good in the Universe, greater than I am, and I can use it." Ernest Holmes, the founder of Science of Mind, often began his talk with these words. If you use this level of consciousness, you can prove it for yourself.

NEW THOUGHT -- ANCIENT WISDOM

New Thought has been around in the USA since the beginning of the 20th Century and is really Ancient Wisdom. In a nut shell, all the great masters have told us to look within for God, or Power, or Love, or anything we need. Teachings in the New Thought-Ancient Wisdom tradition know that there is nothing to pray to, or ask, outside of ourselves, for we are actually the living flesh of Great Spirit. We are all made of the stuff of stars. It runs throughout all creation, both in form and without form.

This is not a belief.

Beliefs are opinions based on thoughts from the past or hope for the future. We are all full of thoughts, 99% of the time. Have you ever tried to stop thoughts from forming? Impossible! But wait--if you bring yourself present with whatever is present with you, such as in meditation, or communing with a tree, you are free of thought. Only awareness exists in the present moment. The thinking mind, or ego, cannot join you in presence.

When was the last time you caught yourself thinking about something that was not present? Just a few minutes ago, no doubt, you could have been deciding what to wear, regretting a past event, or who knows what. You were not present. You had gone away into the thinking mind, completely leaving your body. If you are unable to stop thinking whenever you wish, you are allowing your mind control you, not the other way around. A very full awareness expands to include breath, feet on the floor, flowers in the room, clouds in the sky, whatever is present.

We are alive in a silent Presence, in a breathing body. We can only experience Truth in the present moment; never in a future which never arrives, nor in a past that has already disappeared. Anxiety, anger, and hurt vanish completely in the present moment. Ego has stepped aside, allowing us to experience Peace, Love, Truth, and Oneness, the only reality.

Ego is that which runs my life when I am not present.

Think about it. The purpose of ego is to keep us separated from All There Is, and it does a great job of that, daily and continually. Letting go of the thinking mind does not mean you cannot use thought creatively and consciously, any time you choose.

During daily events, if ever we forget this Oneness of All There Is and are totally gone away some place in mind, we have only to remember, then return to whatever is present in the moment. Existence is always present as trees, flowers, clouds and you and me. Just look around you at how Love is expressing right now. Existence is reality in form.

The Experience of Enlightenment

Truth only happens in the present moment. We may be so focused in an exciting activity, like skiing, hang gliding, racing, or dare devil events; we have no thought at all in mind, only experience. This enlightenment feels good, so we continue to put ourselves in situations where we receive the thrill of the moment, of God. The truth is, we don’t have to find the most hair-raising events; we have only to be fully present wherever we are. The present moment, void of unconscious thinking, never goes away. All of existence is waiting for us to remember to come home. That's the only place peace is.

posted July 19, 2007 06:20 PM         

TRUTH
42645 = 21 The World, Completion, MasterShip!

posted July 20, 2007 08:05 AM         

I so feel this way & can relate big time!!!!

I'm now embracing my EGO with " BIG HUGS " and THANKING IT for doing it's job well!!!!

posted July 21, 2007 02:25 AM         

It is very hard to quiet the mind.

posted July 21, 2007 09:01 AM         

quote:

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I remember a talk of Wayne Dyer's in which he said if you want to know if the ego is in control just notice how many times you are offended. He then went on to say that if the ego were not in control there is absolutely nothing that could offend us.

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posted July 21, 2007 12:32 PM         

What you said regarding being offended by the wrongs in the world etc. is very true.

That comes from a healthy ego. We couldn't live without an ego and it is part of what we are as human beings. There is nothing about our humanity that is of itself bad. Humans were created good and for the good. Our egos are good.

We should nurture a healthy ego. What is being spoken of here and by Wayne Dyer is an unhealthy ego. Not a healthy ego which really is a driving force in all of us.

The difference is that a healthy ego would be able to see the wrongs in the world and a healthy ego would care about the plight of others. An unhealthy ego only thinks of self so it would not even care about the rest of the world except in terms of what others can do for it or how the world in general serves it.

It's really the spiritually unhealthy ego that sees the words of Jesus that we must die to ourselves and our ego in order to operate more out of the soul or our spiritual nature as a personal threat. Even Jesus was speaking of the unhealthy ego that controls all of our emotions and feelings and how we perceive the world and others. It is that unhealthy ego that Wayne Dyer was speaking of and that Jesus and all the great spiritual gurus and prophets spoke about when they said we need to learn to control the ego instead of allowing it to control us.

We have control over ourselves and our ego and we should strive to nurture a healthy ego. Even love and acceptance begins first with a healthy self-love and acceptance of self. Otherwise we could not possibly love and accept others. Narcissism is born out of an unhealthy ego that is definitely in control of the person.

In spirituality it is always the unhealthy ego that is being spoken of when terms like "dying to self" or being in control of the ego are used. When Wayne Dyer spoke of being easily offended he meant being easily offended by what others say to us, or about us or how others perceive us in general. We are easily offended by those things because our unhealthy ego sees it as a personal threat to it. A healthy ego is not offended by those things because it knows the truth, the good and the flaws, of itself. It knows it's place in the world and it does not care how others perceive it. A healthy ego only cares how God perceives it to be. Knowing that ultimately it is not going to be other human beings that judge it.