by ShawnVenne on May 25, 2010
Below is a video clip I created. It is a clip from a talk given by Eckhart Tolle in his cd “Even the Sun Will Die”. I have been listening to this cd for a few years now and had not really got what he was talking about until last week. I was walking to work and listening to my mp3 player when I heard what Eckhart was saying for the first time. I will not give you my interpretation but let you listen to it yourself and be open to what it says to you.
(This is one of my first attempts of working with Premiere so please forgive me)
Love
Shawn
by ShawnVenne on May 3, 2010
Have you ever thought about protection? I don’t mean getting a bodyguard or health insurance. Have you ever consider how much time and energy we spend protecting ourselves? I have been pondering this a lot recently. I have spent a great deal of my life protecting myself from imagined harm. So what is this imagined harm? Do I think someone is out to get me or my family? Do I fear a home invasion or getting mugged? No not at all. So what do I fear? What am I spending so much of my precious life protection? Well oddly enough it is my identity. My sense of self. The precious, fragile and elusive construction known as “me”.
I was recently at a retreat and the retreat leader was working with someone and the subject of protection came up. He asked them if it that moment they could actually find a one that needed protection. I don’t recall what their response was, but I searched and could find no one there. Up to that point in the retreat I had been consistently searching for the elusive sense of self and having no luck in finding it. It actually became more and more elusive as the retreat went on. However, it wasn’t until that very moment that I put together the realization that I could not locate a solid separate self and therefore there was no self there to need protection.
That realization sunk deep into my being. I’m not sure how to explain it, but imagine if you were working very hard everyday and that the majority of the money you earned you deposited into a hole in the ground. You did this because you were entirely convinced you needed to do so in order to stay safe and survive. You could not quite remember when or how you arrived at this idea but the idea was there so you believe it and do it. Not only are you throwing away most of your money, you are also throwing a great deal of your energy and also a great deal of your time and life. Then one day you questioned the belief and just decided to stop.
There was no-self to be protected. What a relief! Thoughts of all the ways I protect myself in my life ran through my mind. For the rest of that day I just watched.
I have been continuing to watch. Sometimes the old belief that there is a self to be protected arises. I believe it for a short while and eventually I come back to watching it. Then, I rest as that which is beyond any need of protection and realize I have always been at rest as that.
Love
Shawn
