I didn't write about last weeks class because quite honestly, I did not know how to put into words what I was feeling and thinking. I spent a lot of years dealing with and getting rid of my "baggage". I let got of a lot of misplaced identity before I read this book. I reinvented myself many times in my 42 years. I lovingly refer to them as lives. In one life I was a soldier. In another life I was a seamstress, etc. Each life has a set of identities and a story that begins and ends. Each life brought me to the right time and place to start anew. Without knowing what to call it, I managed to do a lot of the work described in the first few chapters. So why did I feel so very lost?
The fact is: Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world. You are withholding it because deep down you think you are small and that you have nothing to give. - Page 190
This answers so many questions. I almost feel silly for not finding this conclusion myself. What I am experiencing seems a lot like those with an eating disorder. I changed my behaviors. I changed my thinking. I changed my outlook, but when I looked in the mirror, I could not see that I had grown and had become a much larger person because of it. I was always hopeful. In fact, I was so hopeful, that it became my identity. I became "not there yet".
I am not sure if this makes any sense at all in words, but it is making a lot of sense in my life. The need for validation is slipping away. Things like: needing people to hear my story so they can see how far I have come or needing people to notice the nice things I do, so they can tell me I am a nice person. The best one of all is needing people from my past to finally come and tell me they were wrong about me. That was my favorite fantasy.
Way back in the beginning of the book it says:
You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you and allowing the goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness. -Page 13
That meant something when I read it. It is highlighted in pink, which means that I found it useful before I started tuning into the classes. It means something absolutely huge to me now that I have had an opportunity to absorb it and really give it a life test.
I recently told myself that I do not need to know why people love me. It is really none of my business. That was very hard for me to do. I wanted my children to love me because I was a good mother. I wanted my husband to love me because I was a good wife. I wanted my cousin to love me because we are spiritually connected. I worked very hard to be lovable. I wanted proof that all that work meant something. I didn't realize that proof was all around me and had manifested itself because it didn't take the form I assumed it would take. Letting myself be loved in ways I could not predict has been an amazing experience.
To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake 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. -Page 210
My tank is not only getting filled, it is overflowing. My family views this as me loving them more. Maybe they are right. I'm not sure. I am not going to give my ego the opportunity to hack this into describable pieces. Lucky for me, everything is as it should be and not my tiny little idea of what it would become. I am learning to cherish those moments when my mind goes blank and I cannot think of the words to describe what I am feeling.
When I used to hear wise people say that happiness, joy, love or any of those good feelings came from inside you, rather than outside you, I always understood that to mean that I needed to look at the bright side or change my opinion to a glass being half full. It isn't really a matter of changing how I think about these things. It is changing the need to think about these things that made a huge difference.
The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event--through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you--ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are. -Page 214
Yeah... that!
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A New Earth, creative thinking, Eckhart Tolle, self help, Tolle
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