February 9, 2005







  • Eckhart Tolle has been talking about emotions:"Emotion literally means 'disturbance.' The word comes from the Latin emovere, meaning 'to disturb'...[The positive emotions such as love and joy] are inseparable from your natural state of inner connectedness with Being.  Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought...Suddenly there is inner stillness.  And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace...Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being, or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being...Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within...(i wish i had read this b4 i gave my first sermon - i would like to have had a source to back up what i knew to be the truth...) And what is often referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive clinging, and extremembly needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a switch... Emotions...being part of the dualistic mind, are subject to the law of opposites..."

     

    This part where he talked about love reminded me of our readings of Rilke... how true love is not the clinging, needy, addictive sentiment that modern society seems to want it to be, Hallmark not withstanding... The fact that one who truly loves the other will want to protect the integrity of that other, to assist in keeping the borders solid and true... to border and protect the solitary I...

     

    "Real love doesn't make you suffer.  How could it? It doesn't suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain...even before you are enlightened -- before you have freed yourself from your mind -- you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep inner peace, still but vibrantly alive.  These are aspects of your true nature, which is usually obscured by the mind...there can be moments when the prescence of something more genuine, something incorruptible, can be felt.  But they will only be glimpses...It may then seem that you had something very precious and lost it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion anyway.  The truth is that it wasn't an illusion, and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be destroyed by the mind."


    So while you may think that you have fallen out of love, perhaps you had best look deeply within, into the core of yourself, into Being.  The reality is more likely that the love is still there, but the ego of the mind has gotten between that pure sentiment, resident in Being, and has created its own turbulent agenda to turn your attention away.