The Seven LevelsModel describes the evolutionary development of human consciousness.

The Seven Levels Model was developed in 19961997. There are two aspects to the modelthe Seven Levels of Consciousness Model and the Seven Stages of Psychological Development Model. Weoperate at levels of consciousness and wegrow in stages (of psychological development).

The Seven Levels of Consciousness Model applies to all individuals and human group structuresorganisations, communities, nations. The Seven Levels of Psychological Development Model applies to all individuals.

The following diagram shows the correspondence between the Seven Levels of Consciousness and theSeven Stages of Psychological Development.

Under normal circumstances, the level of consciousness we operate from is the same as the stage of psychological development we have reached. However, no matter what stage of psychological development we are at, when we are faced with what we consider to be a potentially negative change in our circumstances or a situation that we believe could threaten our internal stability or external equilibriumanything that brings up fearwe may temporarily shift to one of the three lower levels of consciousness.

Alternatively, if we have a peak experiencean experience of euphoria, harmony or connectedness of a mystical or spiritual nature we may temporarily jump to a higher level of consciousness.

When the threat or peak experience has passed, we will normally return to the level of consciousness that corresponds to the stage of psychological development we were at before the experience occurred. In rare situations, a peak experience may have a lasting impact, causing us to shift to a higher stage of psychological development and operate from a higher level of consciousness.

Similarly, a negative experience, if it is traumatic enough, and particularly if it occurs in our childhood and teenage years, can impede our future psychological development by causing us to be anchored, through frequent triggering of the traumatic memory, into in one of the three lower levels of consciousness.

I created the Seven Levels Model to provide a clearunderstanding of human motivations. The model is based on Abraham Maslows hierarchy of needs. It was apparent to me that Maslows research and thinking was ahead of his time. Abraham Maslow died in 1970 at age 62, well before the consciousness movement had taken root. I saw that, with some minor changes, his hierarchy of needs could be transposed into a framework of consciousness. In 1996, I set about making these changes.-Richard Barrett

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The Barrett Model | Barrett Values Centre

The work of the Institute is rooted in a set of passionate beliefs: that people can and do recover from mental health challenges and addiction: that all people-including recipients of behavioral health services-must have opportunities to participate fully in the communities of their choice; that peers helping peers is integral to the recovery process; and that we must transform our systems of care into systems of hope.

The Institute for Recoveryworks to introduce and advance communities' understanding of recovery as the catalyst for transforming individual lives, communities, and all levels of behavioral health systems in a culturally competent manner.

What is Recovery?

Recovery is a self determined and holistic journey that people undertake to heal and grow.

What is Peer Support?

Peer Support is the building and nurturing of relationships between peers which assists individuals in their journey of recovery and wellness. Some characteristics of this relationship include mutual respect, trust, hope and education.

What is a Certified Peer Specialist?

A Certified Peer Specialist is a paid staff person with a mental health or co-occurring disorder who has been trained and certified to help her/his peers identify and achieve specific life goals. The Certified Peer Specialist promotes self-determination, personal responsibility and empowerment inherent in recovery, and assists people with mental health challenges to regain control over their lives and their recovery process.

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Since the dawn of psychedelic trance and psychedelic downtempo music, there has been a prominent tool in artists repertoires that has captivated us, made us think, and transported us to the vast reaches of the cosmos or our deepest inner selves: sampling. Whether from movies, literature, scientists, visionaries, or philosophers, samples serve to help producers tell their stories and set the mood for the listener.

Watts avuncular joy and McKennas hallucinogenic machine elf explorations just seem to fit perfectly within the psychedelic music scene.

Two of the more popular sources of samples are ethnobotanist and visionary Terence McKenna, and Alan Watts, Zen practitioner and philosopher. Watts avuncular joy and McKennas hallucinogenic machine elf explorations just seem to fit perfectly within the psychedelic music scene.

Here are some of our favourite psychill songs with our favourite Terence McKenna and Alan Watts quotes. At the bottom you can find also a long playlist with many other tracks using their vocal sample:

And since youre all here and engaged in this sort of inquiry I assume youre all in the process of waking up.There is the central Self and its All of Us. Its playing all the parts of All Beings whatsoever everywhere and anywhere. And its playing the game of hide and seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets involved in the farthest-out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself.

We are living beings were very sensitive and inside the human skin by an extraordinary fluke of nature, there has arisen something called reason, and there have also arisen values, such as love.

We are somehow the children of the planet, we are somehow its finest hour; we bind time, we bind the past, we anticipate the future we are going hyper-spatial; we are claiming a whole new dimension for biology that it never claimed before. We are actually becoming a fourth-dimensional kind of creature. Our future is somehow with us, as we seem to be able to move through metamorphosis into our own imaginations a super civilization spread throughout space and time. Our future is a mystery, our destiny is to live in the imagination.

Every electron is the yawning mouth of a wormhole that leads to quadrillions of higher dimensional universes that are completely beyond rational apprehension matter is not lacking in magic matter is magic!

There are of course many many more. Click play on the playlist below and dive into a long long session of psychedelic electronic music with Terrence McKenna & Allan Watts samples. Including tracks from Shpongle, Entheogenic, Gnomes of Kush, Dhamika, Soulacybin, Ancient Core & more.

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Psytrance & Psychill with Terence McKenna & Alan Watts ...

Advancing under an arch of glory and peace,Traveller on plateau and on musing ridge,As one who sees in the World-Magician's glassA miracled imagery of soul-scapes fleeHe traversed scenes of an immortal joyAnd gazed into abysms of beauty and bliss.Around him was a light of conscious sunsAnd a brooding gladness of great symbol things;To meet him crowded plains of brilliant calm,Mountains and violet valleys of the Blest,Deep glens of joy and crooning waterfallsAnd woods of quivering purple solitude;Below him lay like gleaming jewelled thoughtsRapt dreaming cities of Gandharva kings.Across the vibrant secrecies of SpaceA dim and happy music sweetly stole,Smitten by unseen hands he heard heart-closeThe harps' cry of the heavenly minstrels pass,And voices of unearthly melodyChanted the glory of eternal loveIn the white-blue-moonbeam air of Paradise.A summit and core of all that marvellous world,Apart stood high Elysian nameless hills,Burning like sunsets in a trance of eve.As if to some new unsearched profundity,Into a joyful stillness plunged their base;Their slopes through a hurry of laughter and voices sank,Crossed by a throng of singing rivulets,Adoring blue heaven with their happy hymn,Down into woods of shadowy secrecy:Lifted into wide voiceless mysteryTheir peaks climbed towards a greatness beyond life.The shining Edens of the vital godsReceived him in their deathless harmonies.All things were perfect there that flower in Time;Beauty was there creation's native mould,Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreamsAnd Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;Desire climbed up,a swift omnipotent flame,And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;Dream walked along the highways of the stars;Sweet common things turned into miracles:Overtaken by the spirit's sudden spell,Smitten by a divine passion's alchemy,Pain's self compelled transformed to potent joyCuring the antithesis twixt heaven and hell.All life's high visions are embodied there,Her wandering hopes achieved,her aureate combsCaught by the honey-eater's darting tongue,Her burning guesses changed to ecstasied truths,Her mighty pantings stilled in deathless calmAnd liberated her immense desires.In that paradise of perfect heart and senseNo lower note could break the endless charmOf her sweetness ardent and immaculate;Her steps are sure of their intuitive fall.After the anguish of the soul's long strifeAt length were found calm and celestial restAnd,lapped in a magic flood of sorrowless hours,Healed were his warrior nature's wounded limbsIn the encircling arms of EnergiesThat brooked no stain and feared not their own bliss.In scenes forbidden to our pallid senseAmid miraculous scents and wonder-huesHe met the forms that divinise the sight,To music that can immortalise the mindAnd make the heart wide as infinityListened,and captured the inaudibleCadences that awake the occult ear:Out of the ineffable hush it hears them comeTrembling with the beauty of a wordless speech,And thoughts too great and deep to find a voice,Thoughts whose desire new-makes the universe.A scale of sense that climbed with fiery feetTo heights of unimagined happiness,Recast his being's aura in joy-glow,His body glimmered like a skiey shell;His gates to the world were swept with seas of light.His earth, dowered with celestial competence,Harboured a power that needed now no moreTo cross the closed customs-line of mind and fleshAnd smuggle godhead into humanity.It shrank no more from the supreme demandOf an untired capacity for bliss,A might that could explore its own infiniteAnd beauty and passion and the depths' replyNor feared the swoon of glad identityWhere spirit and flesh in inner ecstasy joinAnnulling the quarrel between self and shape.It drew from sight and sound spiritual power,Made sense a road to reach the intangible:It thrilled with the supernal influencesThat build the substance of life's deeper soul.Earth-nature stood reborn,comrade of heaven.A fit companion of the timeless Kings,Equalled with the godheads of the living Suns,He mixed in the radiant pastimes of the Unborn,Heard whispers of the Player never seenAnd listened to his voice that steals the heartAnd draws it to the breast of God's desire,And felt its honey of felicityFlow through his veins like the rivers of Paradise,Made body a nectar-cup of the Absolute.In sudden moments of revealing flame,In passionate responses half-unveiledHe reached the rim of ecstasies unknown;A touch supreme surprised his hurrying heart,The clasp was remembered of the Wonderful,And hints leaped down of white beatitudes.Eternity drew close disguised as LoveAnd laid its hand upon the body of Time.A little gift comes from the Immensitudes,But measureless to life its gain of joy;All the untold Beyond is mirrored there.A giant drop of the Bliss unknowableOverwhelmed his limbs and round his soul

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SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI BY SHRADDHAVAN SSC 2018-10-28 BOOK 02 C 09 L 34-158 & C 10 L 1-192 P 234-243

Editors Note: This is a guest post by Michael C. Williams.It is the 23rdinstallment in ourEnd of IR Theory companion symposiumfor thespecial issueof theEuropean Journal of International Relations.SAGEhas temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue.This post refers to Williamsarticle(PDF). Aresponse, authored byDaniel J. Levine, will appear at 10am Eastern.

Other entries in the symposiumwhen availablemay be reached via the EJIR Special Issue Symposium tag.

Disciplinary history is too important to be left only to intellectual historians. It should concern anyone interested in international politics. The tradition of all dead generations may not weigh on the brains of todays International Relations (IR) scholars with quite the fever of Marxs nightmare, but it does continue to exert powerful and often unrecognized effects on contemporary thinking. The idea of an end of IR theory that animates the Special Issue of the EJIR provides an intriguing opportunity to open up this issue: to ask where the field is going by looking again at where it came from.

This story can be told in many ways. One of the most revealing is to take seriously Stanley Hoffmanns famous claim that IR developed as a quintessentially American social science (PDF). Hoffmann was right, though for reasons and with implications quite different from those he advanced. In his eyes, these origins lay mainly in a concern with American hegemony and policy-oriented theory in the context of the Cold War. No one could doubt that these questions were important, yet in many ways IRs origins and commitments are better located in a wider but generally unrecognized analytic and political sensibility that, in his brilliant study of Desolation and Enlightenment, Ira Katznelson has called the political studies enlightenment (note the small e).

Katznelson holds that diverse figures in post-war American social science including Dahl, Hofstaeder, Lasswell, Lindblom, Polanyi, and Arendt were united in the view that the desolation of the previous half century and its apparent refutation of Enlightenment promises of progress, peace, and the reign of reason. In response, they undertook systematic analyses of the limits of a century and a half of increasing rationalism within the liberal Enlightenment tradition. Yet they did so not to reject modernity or liberalism, but to save it. They held that understanding the calamities of the period required seeing them not as simple irrationality erupting inexplicably into the otherwise placid, progressive, world of reason, but as specifically modern, arising in important aspects from the Enlightenment itself, and representing key weaknesses within it, including its inability to engage the question of radical evil in modernity; the increasing dominance of technology, and technical rationality; the rise of mass society and mass politics, and the accompanying crisis of classical liberalism and its vision of democracy; and the rise of extreme nationalism and anti-liberal politics as an at least partial consequence of liberal modernity, not as its simple antithesis. The goal was to grasp these dynamics philosophically, historically, and sociologically, in order to understand how they might be countered in pursuit of suitably chastened but nonetheless recognizable Enlightenment values and principles.

Although Katznelsons account does not include any scholars in the nascent field of IR. Yet his analysis captures remarkably many of the concerns of some of the most prominent thinkers in post-war IR, including Morgenthau, Neibuhr, and Herz, who might well be viewed as part of an analagous IR enlightenment. Post-war realism was not concerned simply with defeating a facile idealism, or teaching realpolitik to a naively liberal America. Nor was it interested constructing a modern social science. On the contrary, IR in this period began as a reaction against rationalist social science. As research by Nicolas Guilhotand others has shown, IR was an irredentist movement driven by political as well as methodological reasons. At its core was the need to engage in the urgent task of assessing the flaws of existing forms of liberal modernism and, I believe, with providing foundations for a new and more realistic liberalism.

If this is true, then the canonical divide between realism and liberalism that continues to dominate IR theory is fundamentally erroneous. Realism sought to reformulate and revive a form of liberalism by looking hard at the legacy of desolation and trying to address it. Far from being its implacable adversary, Realism in post-war IR emerged as one of the most powerful attempts to reformulate and save liberalism. The historical forgetting of these concerns has created the strangely divided theoretical landscape that we see today. It has allowed a denuded liberalism to continue blithely on, as if none of the desolation had ever happened, or as if it had little or nothing to do with liberalism itself. At the same time, it allows large parts of contemporary realism to operate without a serious engagement with its historical relationship to liberalism. Putting the IR enlightenment back into disciplinary history puts this issue back on the contemporary agenda.

Equally importantly, it also lets us rethink the relationship between Realism and critical and constructivist theories to which it is often opposed. It is often claimed that post-war American IR developed as a positivist social science, and that this marks a fundamental divide between American and European IR, which remained more historically and sociologically oriented. True as this may be of contemporary theory, it cannot be convincingly traced to the thinkers of the IR enlightenment, who were fundamentally opposed to rationalist social science for political as well as methodological reasons. As IR has moved ever closer toward rationalist political science, it has become increasingly blind to this heritage. Losing its previous scepticism toward social science, IR became in many ways a standard-bearer for precisely the kinds of political knowledge that the IR enlightenment had been at pains to reject and which they sought to construct the field in opposition towards. In fact, if one wished to be particularly provocative, it is possible to say that from this perspective what is often taken as the defining moment in the invention of IR theory Waltzs Theory of International Politics actually marked the culmination of a move away from the fields beginnings and represents the end of IR theory as conceived by the IR enlightenment. From that point onward, the irredentist analytic and political concerns of its earlier beginnings were almost fully eclipsed as IR was subsumed within the conventions of American social science that the proponents of post-war liberal realism had opposed and sought to avoid.

This history shows, finally, that from its very inception IR was a substantive normative and political project. The IR enlightenment did not have all the answers. But a more serious engagement with it may provide both a clearer understanding of where we have come from, and open paths to a more productive future for the field as an analytic and a political enterprise.

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The International Relations Enlightenment and the Ends of ...

Nietzsche believed that the central task of philosophy was to teach us to 'become who we are'. You can find out more about him and other great thinkers in our 'Great Thinkers' book. For gifts and more from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://goo.gl/YvzneeDownload our App: https://goo.gl/vZDLqp

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The challenge begins with how to pronounce his name. The first bit should sound like Knee, the second like cher: Knee cher.Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in a quiet village in the eastern part of Germany, where for generations his forefathers had been pastors. He did exceptionally well at school and university; and so excelled at ancient Greek (a very prestigious subject, at the time) that he was made a professor at the University of Basel when still only in his mid-twenties

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PHILOSOPHY - Nietzsche

As promised, this year's official gift thread!

What's on YOUR wish list, and what are you picking up for your nearest and dearest yogis?

Here's a big list from last year to kick things off:

Books

DVDs

Subscriptions- which sites do you like?

Props you might not have thought to purchase for yourself but find yourself loving

Jewelry

Malas for those who do japa meditation

Online courses- for students

Online courses- for teachers

Some specifics:

** For studio-going yogis:

** Clothing:

** Gear/props:

Mat bags

DIY mat spray (lots of recipes - link to search)

Dharma Wheel

Blocks

Straps

Eye pillow

Sandbags (probably easiest to buy the bag online and the sand @ a Home Depot, etc)

Zafu / zabuton

** Subscriptions/Downloads

** Random things for home practitioners

** Just for fun

** Books

What are your book suggestions for new yogis, experienced yogis, yoga and/or anatomy nerds?

Yoga philosophy

Yoga spirituality

Yoga humor

FAQ section for books

Light on Yoga, Iyengar

Bhagavad Gita

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Autobiography of a Yogi

The Yoga Sutras

** Other ideas

Other resources:

2017 thread

2016 thread

Mat megathread

Search, 'gift'

Please put all the giftygoodness here - other posts will be removed.

Obligatory 'plz to not spam' statement:

If you're here to post your store and your post history does not fall within reddit's 10:1 rule, it will be removed. Spam's been crazy lately. If it's blatant, Bad Santa(yogi?) has a bag of coal.

As always, no referral or shortened links. Amazon links must be just to the item - please nuke anything after the base product info.

Originally posted here:
yoga - reddit

From the description: "A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except faults, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions." Some commenters say that is a misquote and state that it should be "thoughts" instead of "faults". Referring to "mental chatter"

Either way, it demonstrates a choice of choosing not to control what you think about. Focus on something you think worthwhile. It is possible to direct your thoughts away from mulling things over and over again or other chatter and onto constructing something worthwhile. The choice is yours, to let yourself be controlled or to control yourself.

Some people decide they need meditation. Others, like Tesla, honed his mind to the point he didn't need paper to work out the details of constructing his inventions. Fortunately many of them were documented for the purpose of obtaining patents. His assistants stated that his motors and such worked the very first time being built.

Maybe meditation could be a path to honing one's mind rather than only a means to remove the mental chatter.

People choose to drown out their conscience and conscious via chemicals when they could direct their mind to very interesting journeys without the need or expense of such chemicals. The most beneficial observation of all is to observe one's ego at work and gently observe it back into its proper place of being a clear pane of glass through which which things are observed, rather than a pain or splinter of glass in everyone's ass. Being in control of your ego and emotions rather than them controlling you is the worthwhile journey.

Unfortunately the evil in control of the world do much to make that journey harder than ever; for you are the easiest to control and inspire to do the wrong things they desire when your ego and/or emotions are in control of you.

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Zen: The Best of Alan Watts - Top Documentary Films

Posted March 2, 2017 in Diet Management, Tags: Kidney Diet, low protein, phosphate additives, Phosphorus, renal vegetarian diet, vegan, vegetarian, vegetarian kidney diet by Chhaya Patel, MA, RDN, CSR.

Can a kidney diet also be a vegetarian diet? Its estimated that about 5% of people on dialysis are vegetarians. Some of the reasons for following a vegetarian diet include religious, cultural, social and personal beliefs.Others adapt a meat-free diet because of taste changes due to uremia as a result of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Vegetarians generally avoid all animal products including eggs, beef, pork, poultry, fish and seafood.

Limiting high protein foods may help slow the progression of CKD. Diets rich in red and processed meat are linked to higher rates of heart disease, cancer and death. Vegan and vegetarian diets are becoming more popular. This makes it easier for people to accept and follow protein-restricted vegetarian diets.

Wondering about how safe it is to follow a vegetarian diet? The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics consider vegetarian diets to be safe, provided that low levels of vitamins and minerals like iron, vitamin B12, and vitamin D are corrected by supplements.

Some kidney patients may require protein and calorie supplements depending on lab results for albumin and presence of inflammation. Diet recommendations differ for patients with CKD stage 2 to 4 compared to stage 5. The protein recommendation is 0.6 to 0.8 g/kg/day for patients with CKD stage 3 and 4. Vegetarian diets usually contain between 0.6 and 0.8 g/kg/day of vegetable proteins and may be less damaging to kidneys. CKD stage 5 patients on dialysis need a higher amount of protein: 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg/day due to protein loss during dialysis. Patients on dialysis may require nutrition drinks or bars to help meet their nutrition needs.

Balancing phosphorus can be a challenge when choosing a vegetarian eating plan. Extra phosphate binders, if prescribed, may be required in order to include whole grains, beans and nuts. Also, for those on dialysis it is important that adequate dialysis is prescribed in order to control waste build-up in the blood.

Very little is known about the toxic effect of phosphorus food additives, preserving agents or taste enhancers in ready to eat and processed foods. Phosphorus is usually not included on the nutrition label but is included in the ingredient list. It is recommended to avoid foods with ingredients that include phos in the name. This isbecause 90 to 100% of phosphorus from the inorganic phosphorus (additives) is absorbed quickly and easily and therefore should be avoided. According to some studies by Kalantar et al., only about 50% of organic sources of phosphorus (beans and nuts as their protein source) are absorbed by thegastrointestinaltract. Because humans do not completely digest these foods, the amount of phosphorus absorbed from grains, beans and peas, and nuts is relatively low. Looking only at the milligrams of phosphorus in foods is no longer the best way to create a kidney-friendly diet.

Recent studies highlighted the concerns about phosphate additives and warned about sodium and potassium content. It is especially important for vegetarians as most textured protein foods are preserved and have high sodium content. It is important to read nutrition labels for sodium content. Sodium and potassium should be limited to 2000 mg/day for most patients on hemodialysis.

If you are interested in starting a vegan or vegetarian diet, or if you are already following one, your dietitian can help. They can help determine your nutrient needs, and if your current intake is adequate. They can help adapt your eating plan for different stages of CKD to be sure you build a balanced vegetarian diet.

Try one of these kidney-friendly vegetarian dishes from DaVita.

Crunchy Tofu Stir Fry

Roasted Red pepper, Basil and Vegan Provolone Cheese Sandwich

Zucchini, Black Bean and Rice Supper

For more information and a sample menu read The Vegetarian Diet and Chronic Kidney Disease and Building a balanced vegetarian diet, a Nephrology News and Issuesinterview with Chhaya Patel.

Reference: KalantarZadeh et al; Understanding Sources of Dietary Phosphorus in the Treatment of Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 5: 519-530, 2010.

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Building a Balanced Vegetarian Kidney Diet - Kidney Diet Tips

A man who has enlightened the world through his books and talks. A man known to the world as a spiritual guru. This man is called Eckhart Tolle, and if you are familiar with his work, then you may have read his first book, The Power of Now.

If you have not heard of Eckhart Tolle, let me introduce you:

Born in Germany, Eckhart Tolle, whose real name is Ulrich, is a man who lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety his whole life. His thoughts were mainly negative, as was his own sense of identity. He worked hard academically and tried to prove his success to the world, but there was always a dark cloud hanging above him.

Then, one night, he had a horrible dream filled with many negative thoughts and emotions. When he awoke, there was a sense of disidentification. He started thinkingif his mind had been dreaming and thinking all those negative thoughts, then who was observing it? He couldnt be his mind and the observer. That meant there must be two of him. The mind (or the ego) and his own sense of self.

That one thought completely changed his life.

After that night, Eckhart Tolle lived each day in a total state of bliss.

Every single day, for two years, he would sit on a park bench. No phone, no book, just his own presence: totally at peace and in the moment. Eventually, curiosity got the better of people, and they started to ask questions: Why does he come here every day? How is he so peaceful? What is his secret?

His behaviour went viral, and it wasnt long before a new spiritual leader was born.

In 1997, his first book about enlightenment, The Power of Now,hit the shelves. I first read it in 2008, way before I even knew what enlightenment was. The second time I picked up that book again was in 2016, after Id faced challenges of my own, disguised as my own awakening.

This time, I could not put it down.

I understood almost every word and would pause between chapters to really let the wisdom sink in.

Eckhart Tolle believes there are two types of people in this world today.

There are the conscious beingsthe awakened souls, who are aware of their thoughts and surroundings and less identified with their minds or egos. Then, there are the ones who are not conscious, nor awakened. Eckhart refers to this as unconsciousness. Unconscious people are identified with their thought processes and emotions and tend to come from the egoic mind rather than from the heart.

Become conscious of being conscious. ~ Eckhart Tolle

In Eckhart Tolles second book,A New Earth, he talks mostly about an ego-based state of consciousness and how it operates, referring to it as an ID (identification with the ego, or egoic mind). The egoic mind likes to interpret events and experiences as a personal, and likes to judge and criticise ourselves and others. Though we have evolved from prehistoric times when our ancestors were living in caves, our egoic mind still likes to try and keep us safejust in case that saber tooth tiger is still hiding around the corner.

Ego takes everything personally. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle strongly believes that all of life is right now, the present moment. When we start to think about tomorrow, we miss the beauty that is in front of us today. When we think about the next moment, we spoil the one we are in. Our minds are full of clutter every day telling us we have to be busy, that we cant be present because we have too much to do. This is just an illusion, as time is all we have. It doesnt take much to stop what you are doing, look up, and appreciate all that is around you.

In todays rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much, and forget about the joy of just being. ~ Eckhart Tolle

When we feel pain, it is generally because we have identified with a thought, emotion, or feeling of a past wound. Eckhart Tolle believes the pain body is a negative energy field that occupies our mind and body. He refers to it as the emotional pain body and describes it as a psychic parasite that feeds on any experience that relates to its own negative energy, anything that creates further anger, grief, destruction, illness, and even violence.

The only way you can dissolve the pain body is to accept that it is there. Dont judge yourself out of it; stay present, take deep breaths, and continue to observe what is happening to you.

Understanding your pain body dissolves your pain. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Do you ever wonder why you feel such enormous love for your pet when youre around them? This is because an animal does not judge. Just looking at a dog makes its tail wag. It simply thinks life is good. There is no story of why life is good, it just is.

When a dog or cat looks at you, its not wondering what kind of person you are; there is no judgement at all. In fact, our pets can teach us many things about staying aware and in the now, which is why Eckhart Tolle strongly believes that pets can help their owners stay in in the present moment.

Its so wonderful to watch an animal, because an animal has no opinion about itself. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Did you know that laughter breaks the ego? Laughter has been shown to reduce stress hormones, such as cortisol and epinephrine, and add a boost of serotonin, the feel good hormone. It is the best antidote, helps bring us back to the present, and lets us step away from any thinking and doing, even for a minute. I know after a fit of giggles, I feel happy, warm, and enormous joy for the moment I am in, which is why they say that laughter is the best medicine.

Life isnt as serious as your mind makes it out to be. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Eckharts teachings have been spread all over the world.

He has become an influential leader, attracting the likes of Jim Carrey, Russell Brand, and even Oprah, who became his number one supporter. There was something about this mans work that resonated with many other people, including myselfand after seeing him speak live earlier this year, I want to share his wisdom with others.

~Author:Naomi WengierImage: Authors Own;Surian Soosay/FlickrEditor: Catherine MonkmanCopy Editor: Yoli Ramazzina Social Editor: Callie Rushton

Link:
6 Potent Teachings from Eckhart Tolle. | elephant journal