A New Earth
“Awareness is the power that is concealed in the present moment. Universal impulse is the evolution of consciousness. We are a manifestation of the universe to bring that power into this world.”
Eckhart Tolle from A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
One of my favorite things to do is wander alone in the wilderness behind my house. I often walk along listening to inspiring podcasts that provide health, healing and spiritual messages. I guess you could say, I just really enjoy these kind of conversations and continue to learn from them. This past week while on the trail I found myself sharing moments with Oprah and Eckhart as they discussed chapter 3, Core of the Ego, from his book A New Earth first published in 2005. It’s not a new book, but a timeless reference that I highly recommend.
Eckhart explains that the core of the ego is a form of unconsciousness. Ego is a false sense of who you are. Ego is living from your story and opinion about yourself. Ego lives in a state of not enough. Ego takes everything personally, compares oneself to others and is defensive. For millions of years our species, like the animals, lived in oneness with all of life. Then thinking evolved in humans and we began to identify ourselves as the mind. Mind gave rise to the ego.
For thousands of years thinking brought us to differentiate, to separate from one another and other life forms. We lost ourselves in the mind that created perceptions based on this separation. From an early age our reality is conditioned to fit into the limited, ego-based separate self of human concepts and untrue beliefs. We are, in essence, trained to believe that we are not the same but different from one another, thus it becomes much easier to judge others as them, not me. This is war and injustice, cruelty to life and even to oneself when the ego turns inward with negative, judgmental thoughts such as, “I’m ugly.” “I’m a failure”, etc.
Oprah asks, “So if we are not this constant stream of thinking and ego than what are we?”
Our true self is formless consciousness. There is no separation between ourselves, source (creation) and life (which I have come to know is pure love). It is our life’s purpose to discover the difference between the true self and the human mind. This is awakening. As we awaken, we know and live from the truth that there is one spirit in all life forms. We are life, all of life itself.
Eckart says that just as we evolved into ego states, we are now evolving away from them through millions of people just like us that are indeed, waking up and taking conscious action to manifest a more loving and peaceful world.
Our collective waking up matters because WE are the new Earth!
“You are consciousness appearing as a person for a little while.” Eckhart Tolle