Tag Archives: eckhart tolle

living on purpose, being on purpose

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this is a guest post by my friend garfield, for whom i wrote the posts on goal setting a few weeks ago.



thank you isabella for inviting me to write a post on your awesome blog! i am a voracious student of human potential, and personal, spiritual, and professional development. i eagerly consume the teachings and knowledge of people such as: eckhart tolle, marianne williamson, michael losier, t. harv eker, jim rohn, satyen raja, esther hicks, and many others.

i used to feel so lost and confused and angry all the time. “why the hell am i here? this can’t be all life is…can it?”, i would desperately ask the universe, myself, anyone. then one magical day, after nearly two years of diligent and persistent training, seeking, reading, learning, wanting, i suddenly (and i do mean suddenly) after much perturbation, became totally present, realized the truth of who i am, and discovered how to live on purpose.

being ‘present’ has been a key element in joyously discovering how to live on purpose. i once thought that us human beings were given one grand purpose and it was our job to discover it and move toward it. of course, that would mean that our purpose is somehow outside of us, somewhere in ‘the future’…which doesn’t exist! the future will never be here, it will always be now, the present moment.

a truly great bonus to being present is the absence of negativity, fear, suffering, etc. it turns out that pain and suffering cannot survive in my presence. so how do i become present? i just breathe. the moment i observe my breath…in….out…i have become present.

how can it be that i have no pain or suffering or negativity by being present? well i’ve discovered that all worry, doubt, fear, anxiety, stress, guilt, and every other negative emotion exist solely in the past or future, in our minds. so once i thoroughly dismiss ‘psychological time’ and observe the now i realize quite readily that there is nothing wrong with my present moment.

when my mind isn’t plagued with thoughts of the past or fantastic future problems (which rarely, if ever, actually manifest in my life) i can think more clearly, and more importantly i can fully accept what is in the present moment and a feeling of lightness, joy, and purpose permeates my entire being. then the juiciest things come to light, i can feel my vibration rise and i am able to see who i truly am. for me, this is living on purpose. being on purpose is a feeling, a knowing, a vibration.

so if you’re stressed, worried, angry…perhaps try what i do and practice being present. ask yourself ‘what is wrong with this moment right now? what actual problem exists right now? not a week from now or five minutes from now, but now. you’ll discover that you can then respond to life and create what you desire, rather than reacting to life as it happens to you.

how often are you living on purpose?

resentments, eckhart tolle and the present

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“my parents should have never let me go to that camp for a whole two weeks when i was six.”

“i should have taken better care of my hamster.”

“my boyfriend dumped me for my cousin. i’ll never forgive her for that.”

“i wish my wife wouldn’t have talked me into buying that honda. the ford would have been much better.”

resentments.

one of the most popular articles on this blog is  letting go of resentments.  a suggestion there on is about meditation:

meditation, especially buddhist meditation, is often all about letting go. in insight meditation, for example, one experiences feelings and thoughts like clouds on the horizon of our awareness. they come, they move from here to there, they disappear. i find this particularly useful because practicing this kind of meditation helps us realize that we are not our feelings and thoughts, and that we don’t have to be ruled by them. it’s the other way round: they are part of us, they belong to us, we decide what to do with them.

meditation is about being in the present. lately, i’ve been looking quite a bit at eckhart tolle’s ideas, and how they relate to resentments. here’s one thing

… there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past…you are not fully here. you have not quite woken up yet. in the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life….if you are one of those people who have an issue with their parents, if you still harbour resentment about something they did or did not do, then you still believe they had a choice–that they could have acted differently. it always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion …

and

negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego. (once again, let’s leave aside the discussion about what the ego is and how “bad” it is – a discussion, though, that seems to be overdue here)

lastly, here is one of the many things he says about being present

ask yourself what “problem” you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or fove minutes from now. what is wrong with this moment?

we can probably all agree that resentments are problems. it turns out that resentments are all about the past. look at the examples at the beginning of this entry. and it makes sense. re-sentment is feeling something all over again (and over and over and over again, as i said in the earlier post).

so if we stayed in the present, we wouldn’t have to be bothered by resentments, right?

eckhart tolle again:

when the compulsive striving away from the now ceases, the joy of being flows into everything you do. the moment your attention turns to the now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace.