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Eckhart Tolle: Conscious Manifestation
Eckhart Tolle is one of the world’s most renowned spiritual teachers. In addition to hosting many talks, retreats, and seminars, Eckhart has written two all-time bestselling books: The Power of Now and A New Earth. In this special episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon joins Eckhart for an in-depth question-and-answer session that includes queries from members of his teaching community. In preparation for a new, eight-week online course on conscious manifestation, Eckhart explains the difference between creating from the demands of the ego and from a place of still Presence. Eckhart also describes how to deal with doubts and fears of insufficiency during the creative process. Finally, Eckhart comments on the true origins of inspiration and how you can use the principles of conscious manifestation to affect positive change in the world.(68 minutes)
The Yin and Yang of Self-Compassion
The concept of yin and yang is a perfect metaphor for the energies of self-compassion. Most people are familiar with the circle of yin and yang, black and white halves and a dot of each in between. The yin is the dark energy; it’s supposed to be more feminine, more of a passive energy, more the “being with.” And the white—or yang—is supposedly the more active energy, the masculine energy, doing things that make a change. But really these energies are not male or female, these energies are in every single person and actually all life forms.
A lot of these ideas come from Chris Germer—my close colleague, who developed the Mindful Self-Compassion program with me—and the things we have been talking about for a long time. And to give him credit, Chris actually came up with the idea that the main domains of yang self-compassion are protecting ourselves, providing ourselves with what we need, and motivating ourselves. What I have been doing with this model is developing each of these ideas in more detail.
Readers may know there are three basic components of self-compassion:
- Kindness—being kind to ourselves
- Common Humanity—remembering this is part of life
- Mindfulness—being mindful of our struggle or pain
And so these three components of kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness take a different form, they feel different, and they have a different flavor depending on what form the self-compassion is taking.
For instance, when self-compassion is aimed at protecting ourselves, it feels like fierce, empowered clarity. The kindness is fierce: that’s the Momma Bear, “No! That is not OK. You will go no further.” Common humanity, that’s that “me too” feeling. We stand together with our brothers and sisters in strength, we are empowered by our connection with others. And then the mindfulness is that real sense of clarity, that “This is not OK.” So it’s a difference between loving, connected presence, and fierce, empowered clarity.
It feels different when you are providing for yourself, when you’re giving yourself what you truly, authentically need. In this case, the kindness feels very fulfilling and satisfying. When we give ourselves what we need, we feel fulfilled. With common humanity, we recognize that it’s a balanced way; in other words, we don’t just give to ourselves, and we don’t subordinate our needs to those of others, but we’re balanced. Common humanity allows us to balance our needs with others. And then mindfulness gives us a real sense of authenticity: “What do I need? Do I even know what I need?” When self-compassion is in full bloom while we are providing for our needs, it manifests as fulfilling, balanced authenticity. Again, it feels very different.
And last, if we’re motivating ourselves, kindness in motivation comes out as encouragement. It’s not kindness when someone needs to be motivated and they’re stuck, to just say, “Oh well, that’s fine.” Or to ourselves, if we aren’t feeling happy, to say, “Oh, that’s fine.” Kindness means we don’t criticize ourselves; we don’t call ourselves names, but we say “You can do it! I believe in you!” Kindness is a very encouraging quality. Common humanity kind of sees how things are related to each other. It actually comes from the bigger view of interdependence—the causes and conditions that come together to create our suffering. So, when we motivate ourselves, common humanity actually manifests as wisdom. We can see where we’re stuck, why we’re stuck, what mistakes we made—we kind of understand the bigger picture of what’s happening. And then, mindfulness, in this case, is vision. It gives us the vision to see what we need to change in order to help ourselves. So in this case, kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness feels like encouraging, wise vision.
Let me give an example of this last domain. If you care about yourself and you don’t want to suffer, you’re going to want to make needed changes. You’re going to want to reach your goals. You’re going to want to be your best self. I mean, just like a parent wants that for their child, we want that for ourselves. Also we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up. Because, again, if we remember that the reason we do it, the reason maybe if you’ve ever been hard on yourself, is because you want to be safe and you want to be happy. And there’s a part of you that thinks maybe this will help. If you’re really harsh on yourself, maybe you’ll pay attention and remember and do something different. It’s natural, but it’s just not very effective, right?
So if you think about it, what voice is more effective? A voice telling you how bad you are, who’s belittling you, who’s really mean? Or a voice that’s encouraging, supportive, “You can do it”? We’re going to listen more to that encouraging and supportive voice. We’re also going to be able to take in what that voice is saying more readily than a voice who’s just shutting us down.
There’s a wisdom element, too. Self-compassion taps into constructive criticism.
What mistakes did I make?
How can I do it better next time?
That’s a caring, understanding, compassionate approach. What self-criticism tends to do, is it just gives us not very wise information. Just like, “You’re bad. You did it wrong. Do it better next time.” It doesn’t say what to do differently or how to do it differently. Or it doesn’t see the bigger picture of all the causes and conditions that led to this outcome. That’s actually pretty lousy information. Kindness, on the other hand, yields a kind of wisdom. “Oh, I see. I did this. Maybe I can try this different next time and that would lead to a better effect.” It’s actually much more informational to give wise encouragement as opposed to the belittling name-calling.
Then also, the thing about having the vision. What we know—actually you probably know this from positive psychology, is that negative emotions tend to narrow our focus. It limits what we can see. We only see what we did wrong and how we’re wrong. We can’t actually see possibilities because the negative emotion actually has the function, evolutionarily actually, of narrowing our vision. Positive emotions—kindness, safety, warmth—they have the effect of broadening our perspective so that we can have a larger vision so that we can see the possibilities so that we might get an idea of, “Oh, I can try this. This may really work better for me.” The research we’ve done really backs up that this kind of encouraging, wise voice of compassionate motivation is actually much more effective and more sustainable in motivating ourselves to change.
This is an excerpt from the Insights at the Edge podcast episode with Kristin Neff, author of The Yin and Yang of Self-Compassion: Cultivating Kindness and Strength in the Face of Difficulty.
Kristin Neff, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a practitioner in the Insight Meditation tradition. She is the author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. A true pioneer in the field, over 15 years ago she first identified self-compassion as a measurable trait, and now there are over 2000 published studies on its benefits. Kristin is a cofounder of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, and gives talks and teaches workshops on self-compassion worldwide. In addition to her research, she has developed an eight‑week program to teach self‑compassion skills called Mindful Self-Compassion. The program, co‑created with her colleague Chris Germer, has been taken by tens of thousands of people worldwide. Kristin and Chris recently co-authored The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, an immediate bestseller. Learn more at self-compassion.org.
Listen to The Yin and Yang of Self-Compassion today!
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Peter Sterios: Gravity and Grace
Peter Sterios is a renowned yoga teacher who has been spreading the good word of the practice for almost 40 years. With Sounds True, he has published the new book Gravity & Grace: How to Awaken Your Subtle Body and the Healing Power of Yoga. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Peter about the themes behind the title Gravity & Grace, as well as how the concept arose from Peter’s own experience with performance-limiting injuries. Peter comments on the psychospiritual experience of yoga practice and the immediate benefits of checking in on the state of your body. Tami and Peter also talk about the innate intelligence of the body, how to tap into your subtle energetic field, and the bedrock necessity of knowing how to breathe. Finally, they discuss Peter’s approach to “levity yoga” and the self-trust needed to craft a truly personal movement practice. (69 minutes)
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Love is Being Present
How do we stay truly present to whatever is happening in our lives? How do we practice living from the deep gratitude that each of us has experienced in fleeting moments? How do we remember, with every breath, the miracle of simply existing, the miracle of this body that sustains us from the moment we come into human form until the moment we go out again—while remembering also that our true being is not confined by the body, did not begin with birth, and does not end at death?
Truthfully, for me at least, it’s hard to navigate daily life from this place of grateful remembrance. It’s hard not to get caught up in bills and deadlines, irritations and disagreements, until life begins to feel like a series of problems to be solved or tasks to be crossed off the to-do list. Sometimes it takes the shock of the unexpected to open us again to a truer sense of who and what we are.
A month ago, my Uncle James came down with what he thought was bronchitis. By Thanksgiving, he’d been given supplemental oxygen to cart around, but still no one knew what was going on. A week ago, with breathing an increasing struggle, he went to the hospital in hopes of finally getting an accurate diagnosis. After a series of biopsies and CAT scans, the news came back: idiopathic interstitial lung disease. There’s no known cause and no treatment. In fact, idiopathic means simply “arising spontaneously from an obscure or unknown cause.” I guess one could say the same about life itself.
Today, my uncle is headed home to enter hospice care. He’ll be surrounded by his sisters and brother, his nephews and nieces, grand-nephews and grand-nieces. His kindness and his humor remain intact even as his body fails. He’s not afraid, he says, of death—only of dying. I have been through this before, with my father. I know the strange stew of thankfulness, sorrow, love, regret, joy, loss and celebration that comes with the imminent loss of one you love. In times like this, it’s easier to be absolutely present, knowing it might be the last moment we spend with someone dear to us.
But every moment could be the last moment, and every breath along the way is cause for celebration. It’s an absolute miracle that we’re here at all; that there’s something rather than nothing. These bodies, these lives, these relationships we have with other beings—all of it is miraculous. That being pours itself unceasingly into existence to experience all this—as earth, sky, stars, wind, water; as you, as me, as my Uncle James—is miraculous. And when we can remember this, even in the midst of the most ordinary tasks, then we really live the miracle of our own being, and know how vast we are. Through all our losses, nothing is lost. Through all our changes, what we are is unharmed, unchanging, eternal. The great German modernist Rilke captures this sense beautifully in his poem “Autumn”:
We all are falling. Here, this hand falls.
And see—there goes another. It’s in us all.
And yet there’s One who’s gently holding hands
let this falling fall and never land.
Whatever life brings, may we not forget those gently holding hands.
Postscript: James Mitchell passed away on Friday, December 27, surrounded by family. He was 67 years old.
Embodied Awakening Practices in the Vijnana Bhairava
So often, we compartmentalize our lives, with the spiritual stuff over here and everything else over here. The more I’ve noted this tendency in myself, the more I’ve tried to bring the same open awareness to tasks such as shopping, work, and doing the dishes that I bring to reading sacred texts and meditation.
I’m always on the lookout for teachings that understand the essential unity of all existence, whether it manifests as the transcendent or the banal. When I first read a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava—one of the key texts of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism, the tradition from which Indian Buddhist Tantra evolved—I was delighted to find that its 112 dharanas, or practices, ranged from the subtle and obscure to the sensuous and embodied. In other words, its techniques for meditative awareness encompassed all of life.
Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of working with one of my favorite Sounds True authors, Sally Kempton, to record a new program called Doorways to the Infinite: The Art and Practice of Tantric Meditation. In this program, to be released next spring, Sally explores the practices of the Vijnana Bhairaiva, unpacking the deeper meanings of the dharanas and offering guided meditation practices that evoke their unique flavors.
Each of the Vijnana Bhairava’s verses—which are presented as a conversation between the supreme lord Shiva and his consort Parvati—offers a doorway to expanded consciousness. Some are concerned with the space between breaths, the ascent of kundalini, and mantra practice—familiar subjects for spiritual practitioners. Other dharanas focus on the taste of food, on touch, on sexual ecstasy.
Still others point toward immediate realization of the Self as pure consciousness.
These dharanas prove that the ancients knew what we are rediscovering today—that spirituality is not something apart from all the other aspects of our lives. In Tantric teachings, the human body is a mirror of the cosmic body. When we have a felt sense of this unity of body and spirit, there’s no more gap between our spiritual lives and our ordinary lives. All life is spirit, and everything is our path to awakening.
The ‘Good Enough’ Interview
Mark Epstein is a practicing psychiatrist and noted writer on Buddhist meditation practice. With Sounds True, Mark has created What the Buddha Felt: A Buddhist Psychiatrist Points the Way to Uncommon Happiness, an audio program concerning the merging of Western psychotherapy and ancient meditation practices. In this episode of Insights at the Edge Tami Simon speaks with Mark about the often paradoxical benefits of Buddhism’s emphasis on non-identification. They also talk about the early childhood traumas experienced by Siddhartha and how they shaped his journey towards becoming the Buddha. Finally, Tami and Mark discuss what can be learned from the Buddha as a realist. (60 minutes)
