“The Human Condition. Lost in thought. Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of there own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow mind-made personalised sense of self that is conditioned from the past” - Erkhart Tolle

Quote

No, not imprisoned, don't agree. Sure most people are in their own thoughts, but hey, who or what other thoughts can we be in?
The last part of the quote, about past experience , I see as generally correct.

Quote

I see thought as a wall - stay this side or use it to stand on for a better view - then jump off and over. Set of thoughts = a few walls = potential prison.

Who owns the thought is not the issue; it's more a matter of who's owned by the thoughts.

Quote

Eckart Tolle now perhaps theres a man to model Carl. I too love his wisdom and energy. Reminds me of Byron Katie, perhaps they could be King and Queen of the Roundtable.

I'll post for Katie separately.

Love Kim x

Quote

Jon, Tolle's point is that thoughts and the thinking mind are, for most people, such a trap that they are imprisoned in the sense that they have become unable to do anything else but think - incessantly.

He puts forward the view that the real power in the human being is when s/he evolves beyond thinking, to a more intuitive mind and way of life. So it's not a matter of whose thoughts you can be, it's a matter of spending time not thinking instead of spending all your time automatically lost in the constant flow of thoughts.

He still believes that thinking is not in itself a bad thing, just the way that we use it -or rather, as is more often the case, the way that IT (i.e. the thinking mind) uses us. He suggests that we learn to pick up the thinking mind as a tool and only use it when it is really necessary, then immediately set it back down again. And gives some pretty excellent, simple and accessible ways of doing so.

I'm a big fan, reckon he "has it".

Cheers,

Scott

Quote

I'm having trouble working out how you can be conscious and NOT think. Can someone please explain that to me.

Quote

To be AND not to be that is the answer!

Quote

Jon

Perhaps it would be easier if you explained it from the other direction - why do you believe that is it necessary to be thinking all the time in order to be conscious? Who has declared that consciousness be limited to the activity of thinking?

Is it simply that you are following Descarte's greatest error, the idea that "I think therefore I am"?

The human being is capable of doing so much other than thinking whilst still remaining conscious. Have you never experienced that perfect moment of stillness, when the thinking mind quietens? A moment when the other aspects of the conscious mind are finally given space to arise. When creativity flows, intuition guides, you are totally present and rather than DOing your life you simply BE.

Have you ever met the kind of person who is totally connected, completely moving with the flow of his/her life? That kind of person is likely to be beyond (above, not below) thought. You know, the kind of person who just lives their life effortlessly, sometimes even despite great trouble. In fact this state comes to many terminally ill people when they accept their inevitable death, they find peace and the mental chatter subsides.

This is what the yogi-s have been exploring for thousands of years - how to achieve this state of being (or more accurately, how to realise that state of being is always present and to access it beyond the clouds we put in its way, mostly through thought). I haven't experienced it much, but the little tastes I have had are enough to show me it is 'a better way' than the confused, manipulative alternative.

Tolle explains this very clearly and simply, but I am not quite so good at explaining. Rather than ask me questions I would urge you to read (or listen, which worked better for me) to his book, "The Power of Now". He won't fumble to explain things as much as I do. He is the one to explain this properly to you.

Cheers,

Scott

Last edited: 18-02-2007 08:21:23 PM

Quote

I'm also a huge fan of Eckhart's books and in my opinion they're essential reading to anyone that's interested in personal development.

Here's quite a long excerpt from The Power of Now. You can read a bit more of it at http://www.soulfulliving.com/not_your_mind.htm

What is the greatest obstacle to experiencing this reality?

Identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering. We will look at all that in more detail later.

The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at one" and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested - at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other." You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By "forget," I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.

Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease.

Note: The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.

I don't quite agree. It is true that I do a lot of aimless thinking, like most people, but I can still choose to use my mind to get and accomplish things, and I do that all the time.

Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn't mean that you use your mind. Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs. You have no interest in either. Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?

You mean stop thinking altogether? No, I can't, except maybe for a moment or two.

Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don't even know that you are its slave. It's almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity - the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken, freeing yourself from your mind

What exactly do you mean by "watching the thinker"?

When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.

You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or "mental movies." Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream - a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body.

As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as "your self." That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you. What I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no other way that I can express it.

Instead of "watching the thinker," you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation. In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions associated with the activity: the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap, and so on. Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

From The Power of Now

Quote

Perhaps it would be easier if you explained it from the other direction - why do you believe that is it necessary to be thinking all the time in order to be conscious?

Do I believe that it is necessary to be thinking all the time. No I don't, but when I am awake, my mind is going and I am thinking, it is NOT a belief that I have to, its automatic. Show me some one who doesn't think when they are awake. In order to do anything, the thought must be there first.

Last edited: 19-02-2007 09:24:43 AM

Quote

Did you think about breathing, growing hair or producing hormones today?

Quote

Me. Thousands (millions) of Yoga practitioners and meditators worldwide. Eckhart Tolle.

Of course I don't mean every second of every day (I wish), though some people have reached that state. But if you think it is necessary to think constantly, to engage the thinking mind without respite, that is comletely wrong. Meditation is the practice of entering the non-thinking state. It starts off with thinking only because that's the way you have been conditioned by society to act, and it's a pattern to undo.

Modern medicine is now catching up to this, if you look at the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and the medical practitioners who follow the mindfulness approach to medicine, yo uwil lsee the scientific side. They have done lots of work over 20+ years, scientific studies to show what the experience of yogi-s and meditators have known for years - if you stay grounded in the present, using the thinking mind only when necessary, you will access a better, less stressful, way of living.

As Carl says, you already know that everything you do doesn't rely on thinking. If it did we'd drop dead from forgetting something important. Of course the examples he gives there are examples of sub-concious mind. Tolle is really talking about the super-conscious mind - which many people may think of as intuition.

Jon, have you ever experienced a non-thinking decision? When you had a decision to make but didn't need to think about it as you "knew" deep down what was the right thing to do. This is what we call a "gut feeling" because it is the body and not the thinking part of the mind that gives us our cues as to how to proceed.

Anyway, I am pretty certain that we will never persuade you (or anyone) with words - just the same way you could probably try to explain Kinesiology for a year and a day and not really do it justice. I appreciate that this concept is outwith your ken, but if you really want to understand, perhaps find a better way of sorts, then do give it a go. Someone you know will have "The Power of Now", so borrow it and commit some time and effort to practising what he suggests.

That's the only real way you'll find out for sure. Be careful though, it may change your life.

Cheers,

Scott

Last edited: 19-02-2007 11:59:34 AM

Quote

The point to this is simple. It is NOT that thinking itself should stop, or even that it will. It is that the activity of thinking is generally taken as being synonymous with being alive - 'i think therefore i am' - but that consciousness itself is not investigated with the simplest of questions:

Who am I?

The direction of Tolle's teachings, as with Byron Katie, Gangaji, Isaac Shapiro, Papaji and Ramana [to name only a few] is to find out who is thinking.

Once it is seen that the I to whom we habitually refer is not to be found in the activity of the thoughts [or for that matter, the sensation of the body] it becomes clear that peace is not to be found in thinking.

The true nature of self is that which is before, during and after all thinking.

Hence the reference to being imprisoned within one's own thoughts. When life is approached from the place of thinking, there is always an apparently separate I who behaves in a manner that one only could if imagining one's self to be separate.

Only a mad person would act the way we do towards so many things we believe to be separate if they were viscerally experienced as a part of one's own self.

This is not metaphysics or semantics, but a rational, indisputable, logical approach to being alive.

Our apparent separateness is incapable of being proven - as any quantum physicist will tell you.

In this, Tolle speaks from a place of knowing that the intellect cannot dispute, and no further thinking can ever hope to displace.

Quote

Carl, you comment about growing hair or hormones is, to be quite frank, (edit). There are many many activities our bodies perform without conscious thought, and so excuse me for being dumb, but with the original post, I assumed you meant conscious.
This is all terribly esoteric, but hey if anyone thinks they can perform yoga without thinking, go right ahead. I, for one, am not trapped in my thinking, I am freed by my thinking. To state that anyone is trapped by their own thinking is making a judgement about people that no-one has the right to make. You are setting standards for people and saying they are wrong if they dont agree. My response to that is....um ...what is it that comes out of the back of a bull.
Have I ever experienced a gut feeling, of course I have, so have most THINKING people. However, just because you made a decision based on gut feel, doesn't mean there is no thinking involved. Meditation is NOT thinking? Wow, so when you go to your 'safe place' or whatever, your not thinking, hmmmm don't see that, sorry.
This whole thing started with being trapped by my thoughts, which, as I said before, I am freed by my thoughts not trapped, you all go be trapped by your thinking. I have read many books that people have told me may change my life, they didn't, they may have changed the way I THINK about a certain aspect of my life. I have never been one to pay much attention to these sorts of sweeping generalisations.

Last edited: 25-02-2007 12:51:44 PM

Quote

Jon

Obviously our words are not very good at explaining this to you. It is a shame that you are so closed-minded, it almost seems from your words like the concept of using the non-thinking mind is a threat to your entire world-model. I guess in some ways it is bound to be so, as obviously you have had no experiences which for you back up what is being said. If so, that's fine, just ignore this concept and go on with your life the way it is. Nobody is saying that you need to do anything here, you can choose to remain in your current thought-patterns as long as you like. Some might say though that this is a prime example of being trapped by your thinking... hmmm...

There is no judgement in Tolle's approach, the fact that you feel you are being judged is simply a reflection back of your own thoughts. He presents his approach, his world-view, and many many people have explored that and found it to be true and helpful.

You have not even explored it, so please feel free not to write it off as bullshit just because you are not able or interested in trying. That would be like me, who has never experienced your beloved Kinesiology, making declarations about it being a load of bullshit. Nobody is doing that here, even though some people may have their doubts. A mutual respect is what is called for - if you cannot be respectful to other ideas and concepts, simply choose not to comment.

As I said before, words are never going to explain to you what is being described here. You are trying to use the thinking mind to understand what is wrong with using the thinking mind. Like a heroin addict using more heroin to try to understand what is wrong with using heroin.

It is like your favourite food - try to explain to me here using words how good it tastes, how wonderful, and you will be doomed to failure. The only proof of the pudding is, as they say, in the eating. SO if you truly want to understand what is being said here then try it out. Borrow Tolle's book from someone, absorb what he is saying and truly give it a try. If it doesn't work for you, then you can write it off as bullshit and continue on with your current patterns. Nothing lost.

It's not difficult, though it will take a little sustained effort on your part. But it's not like anyone is asking you to try something freakish or extreme, no hardship or 'socially unacceptable' practices - just a little different from that which your current mindset has experienced. But if that's a step too far, then feel free just to ignore this thread.

And as for 'yoga without thinking', you are totally missing the point. Yoga is basically a vast number of methods to get into a non-thinking state. I tell you this as a yoga practitioner and teacher. That's what it is. Maybe you don't understand, and that's okay, but please don't come in talking about something you have no experience of and telling me it can't be done. That's just the limitations of your own experience/paradigm. Again, it would be like me coming along and trying to tell you what Kinesiology is or is not.

Cheers,

Scott

Quote

Scott, I didn't read your post any further than you accuse me of being closed minded, how the hell would you know, you read something I've written, a small infintesimal part of my thoughts and you accuse me of being closed minded. Your a fool, and an arrogant one, at that.

Last edited: 25-02-2007 01:13:30 PM

Quote

Jon

First, my apologies for the way that post read, of course I didn't mean to suggest that you are closed-minded in general. What I meant to say was that you seem to have closed your mind to this concept of a non-thinking mind, be unwilling to investigate the possibilities. So my unreserved apologies for my clumsy words.

In respect of being a fool, I totally agree with you there, I am guilty as charged. And arrogance is something I can wear as a label too, though hopefully not all the time. Thank you for your reminder of my imperfection, and please be assured that it is something I am working on.

At the same time perhaps you might consider the hypocrisy in what you have written in your post (and I mean that as an observation, not a name-calling exercise or personal attack). What do I mean? Well, you are annoyed at me for labelling you after reading a small number of words you wrote (which was not actually my intention, but you couldn't have known that from the words I used)). And then you go on to call me names based on a small number of words I have written (which clearly was intended on your part as a personal attack). You have done nothing less in your post than what you thought I intended to do in mine. I have no desire to call you (or anyone) names, but perhaps you might consider if I am an arrogant fool for what you thought I was trying to say, what does that make you for doing exactly the same?

Anyway, once again please accept my apologies for not saying what I meant. The rest of the post still stands, and I hope you will realise it is not meant as a personal attack in any way, but an observation. I do hope there's nothing else in there that I have crafted wrongly.

Cheers,

Scott

Quote

Hi Guys

Can I just say that this has been a really interesting debate and Ive got a lot out of it.
Ive just recently got his book the'' power of now''but then it promptly disappeared until we found it down the side of the bed whence moving.

I have to put my hands up here and admit to LOTS of chatter going on in my head.....and quite franklly I wouldnt wish my brain on my worst enemy....(bar one).
Quite frankly 50% of the time I'm a mess and you only have to look at my storage shed to see what is without is within.

However can I just...before we boys start putting pins in makeshift dolls of one another,say that there is a problem of semantics going on here . Its one of those language moments where we kind of talk past each other.One persons experience and understanding of 'thought' is not neccessarily anothers. Language is all to often unable to 'communicate' the minuti and subtleness of what we mean.
I think in practice you probably have more common ground than you think.

Just a thought.

Last edited: 25-02-2007 09:40:56 PM

Quote

John

I just wanted to say that I would never stick pins in my dollies - I love them and feed them and take care of them every day

And yes, I think you are right. Language is a big problem here. What I think of as the "thinking mind" will be almost certainly totally different from someone else's concept. Which is why I urge anyone (for about the fifth time) not to pay too much attention to what is written in this thread, but to read/listen to Tolle's book. His words are not half as confusing as mine.

LOL, you slay me!

Cheers,

Scott

Last edited: 25-02-2007 09:57:24 PM

Quote

I suppose if they're the ''blow up kind'' you best not.......also watch out for anything else you might let slip about your sexual practices Scott,.......... as rumour has it theres an ex vice squad copper on the forum

Last edited: 25-02-2007 10:38:25 PM

Quote