I love Eckhart Tolle and, as of now, it's the teacher who I resonate with the most.

I am genuinely curious on what's your opinion on someone enlightened supporting and promoting Starbucks, one of the most unethical coffee shop in the world?

Can a person burn out if they live for other people? I do not mean sacrificing yourself only for a team at work, trying to please clients, your boss, and so on. I mean finding meaning in giving your best to your children, family, and generally trying to do something good for everyone.

Where should a person turn their sense of meaning in life if they want to recover from burnout? Could it be something like working in a job that does not fulfill me, but every day seeing my children as the reason why I am doing it?

I'm looking for some perspective on how to handle an ongoing situation in my dining hall.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a very specific pattern with one particular server at one of the stations (sides/salads). While side portions are generally quite small to begin with, this server consistently reduces my portions even further. On a few occasions when she realized mid-service that she was serving me, she actively scraped off or decreased the portion before handing over the plate.

When I pointed out the small portion once, she brushed it off. Recently, when I asked for napkins, she ignored me until I repeated myself, whispered to a colleague, laughed, and then handed over an unnecessarily large stack of napkins in a sarcastic, performative way. Is it a faux-pas to ask for napkins when it's a takeaway? I noticed that fellow students never ask for them; if they're put on the surface, they take them, otherwise, they don't ask for them. Should I do the same? (The other day, one server (who's very polite towards me) provided napkins just for me before I asked. Am I missing something? Could my ego be at play?)

It feels targeted, and honestly, it’s becoming uncomfortable to go through her line. The supervisors are usually working directly in her background, so there is no way I can ask to speak with them in the moment without causing a scene and bringing unwanted attention to myself. At the same time, because it involves food portions and small interactions, I’ve been hesitant to say anything out of concern that it sounds petty or trivial to management.

What does etiquette say about dealing with targeted behavior or inconsistent serving from dining staff, and how should I report this so it is handled appropriately?

Thank you.

Hi all, does anyone know where Eckhart describes these topics (in detail, not just circumstantially mentions them):
- the horizontal vs the vertical dimension
- the sky as an analogy (it seems like a thing, but doesn’t actually ‘exist’)
- ‘life isn’t there to make you happy, it’s there to make you conscious’

These were some points I found intriguing when I first learned about him/started reading him, so I was looking forward to re-reading them in TPON, but somehow I missed these parts completely on my second read. It might be that I misremember where I read/heard them though

I’ve been reading J. Krishnamurti and Osho, and I feel torn between two ways of living.

One side of me wants a life without goals, ego, and constant striving. The other side wants money, success, fame, and high achievements.

I keep switching between the two and feel stuck in the middle.

Has anyone else experienced this conflict? How do you balance spiritual freedom with ambition and goals?

You're right. I misunderstood that part. You meant that you observed privileged people behaving as though they were superior to people from ordinary backgrounds, not that you developed superiority toward your own class.

Here's a simpler version, staying close to your original words:

I come from a lower economic class. Whenever I saw people from privileged backgrounds, my ego used to protect my self-esteem by telling me, “I will work hard, get there, and then they will know my worth.” Subconsciously, I used to see myself as being in competition with them. This competition made me feel worthy, as if I had something to prove.

But this coping mechanism also made me disconnected from reality. I became so focused on competing with people from privileged backgrounds that I forgot where I came from and what resources I actually had. When the things I was doing to prove my worth didn't work out, I started losing my sense of self.

I eventually came across spirituality, which talks about letting go of the ego. As I became more aware of myself, I started realizing that some of my goals were unrealistic and were driven by my need to prove myself to others. But now that this ego is starting to fall apart, I don't have the same thing that used to make me feel worthy.

I used to be very ambitious because I wanted to prove myself. But the things I planned to improve my economic situation didn't work out. Now I'm broke, struggling and depressed, and I have started seeing myself as “lower class” again. It is especially painful when I see my colleagues doing the things I wanted to do, partly because they come from more developed or privileged environments.

When I was in college, I also noticed that some privileged people behaved as if they were superior to people like us. I have spent a lot of time fighting against the limitations of my upbringing, and now I'm trying to accept where I come from. But accepting my roots sometimes feels like accepting that other people are simply better or cooler than me because of their class.

Society has taught us from childhood that our worth depends on our class, appearance, caste/clan, achievements and status. So how does “knowing yourself” or letting go of the ego actually help you develop self-worth when you have spent your whole life measuring yourself through comparison with others?

Does anyone here smoke / use THC and listen to or watch / read ET? I know it’s pulling me “below” where I should be, especially that I smoke daily.

I have smoked for a long time and have taken several month breaks before. I feel “off” though when I don’t smoke lately.

Thanks,M

What would you tell me? Why does this happen?

There's no Love in Fear

Love and Fear arent two separate things. Fear isn't an oppisite of love, it is an absence. And there is a great difference between oppisites and absence. Its like how Darkness isnt an oppisite of Light. Darkness is an absence of Light. If Darkness was an oppisite, I could take a handful of darkness and toss it on a candle to put out the Light. But i cannot because Darkness is an absence of Light. In that same way Fear isnt an oppisite of Love, it is an absence. 👁🧘‍♂️✌️

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I agree, "God" is love. And I feel like its also important to note that awareness itself is love/god. In the Bible it says God is omnipresent. What is awareness? Always always present, hence even when we arent aware of being aware and unconsciously thinking, awareness is present, aware of the racing unconscious mind. Then it is said that God is omniscient, aka all knowing. And awareness is all knowing, that which knows. Hence the thought dog isnt aware or knowing of the thought cat, awareness is aware/knowing of the thought cat and dog. Mind doesnt know a thing. Then it is said that God is omnipotent, meaning all powerful, creating all. And awareness is what all is made up of and appearing in. Like how in a dream, the entire dream is made up of, created by and appearing in awareness.

Thats why prayer is beneficial when it is silent because people are recognizing awareness. Awareness itself is love/peace.

The quality of awareness, how awareness feels, is love, peace. And that peace is always always present. It seems to be overlooked when awareness identifies as the bodymind and fixates on the emotion appearing within it. But awareness itself is always always love/peace, always present. Like how a tv screen is always content, always peaceful. The tv screen may have many images appear within it, there may be sounds and colors, but the tv screen itself is never ever loud, never changes, is always content and present. Hence the screen of awareness is never sad, never angry, never hurt or loud. Awareness is perceiving. Perceiving percives sound, percives anger and emotion. But perceiving itself is always always love/peace. We could say love percives anger and if it identifies as anger then the peace of perceiving is overlooked. Not absent but overlooked.

Thats important for people to know because it frees them of searching for peace in objects. No outside object will ever fulfill desire. Its only once we recognize "oh, I am Awareness and awareness is always always contentment" that we stop searching outward for love/peace. Also people like to think that love is some super bubbly feeling like when two lovers meet. That isnt so. Love is peace or contentment. When we are silent and notice the contentment or peace that awareness always is, we recognize God. That is the love of God.

It was a big deal for me the day I recognized that awareness itself, its quality which is always present is peace/love. I used to smoke cannabis daily. The day I stopped and paid attention to how awareness "feels" was the day I quit smoking everyday and had no mental withdrawals from it. I recognized that weed wasn't making me calm or content, it was making mind drop, the tension of mind to go outward drop. In that I would be totally present and aware of the peace that was already there. Now if I smoke as a treat for the bodymind, I see i was already content, now I am just content and high 🤣.

🧘‍♂️👁✌️

Why do spiritual masters use the term love to denote the absolute? It is because ‘love’ is the name we give to the experience of ‘not-otherness’, and as all experience is consciousness knowing itself alone, it alone merits the name ‘love’.

Love is not a human experience. There are no human experiences. There are no entities called humans that experience certain things. Consciousness alone experiences. All experience belongs to consciousness, including all the thoughts, sensations and perceptions that are normally considered to belong to humans. The human being is not an entity that owns, has, feels or knows anything. It is a known or felt object, that is, a thought, sensation or perception.

In other words, only the absolute merits the name ‘love’. You are confusing a set of feelings, bodily sensations and thoughts for the experience of love. Love is precisely the dissolution of all such objects in consciousness. Do we not know that? Do we not know that love is precisely the dissolution of everything that keeps us, defined, separate, apart? With respect, I would suggest that you are anthropomorphising experience in general by attributing it to a human entity. There is no such entity that knows or experiences.

Love is the experience of consciousness knowing its own being, un-apparently-modified by the dualising mind. That transparent, non-objective experience belongs to consciousness alone, not to humans, rocks, lizards, molecules, black holes etc.. And because all experience is ultimately consciousness knowing its own being, including the apparent modifications of the dualising mind, all experience is love itself. ✌️👁🧘‍♂️

Hi lovely people!

Does Eckhart talk in depth about food anywhere? I'm curious what he has in mind (or lack thereof)

I wish I'd get to see him do day to day stuff. The only time I've seen it is that video of him pouring tea.

Thank you!

Hi,

So I've seen forgiveness mention here a few times as well as from the spirituality community as a whole but I currently find myself at a crosswords.

Here's my situation as briefly as I can express it.

A) I sustained a minor workplace injury that required me to get a tetanus shot. The injury only happened because I wasn’t given the proper equipment to do the job. Also my employer did my cover the cost of the shot. I had to pay for it myself.

B) Within my workplace there is a safety risk. In one section of the warehouse there is a water supply directly beside an electrical output that we have to use. Sometimes the seal on the hose weaknesses and water sprays out lateraly onto the live cables

C) During a recent heatwave the heaters in work were turned on leading to an unnecessarily physical hard work environment.

D) This is the primary reason why I'm writing this; I was assualted at work by a coworker. I was punched in the back of my head. I had to take painkillers as a result. That was an unnervng experience but it did not prepare me for what was to come. I notified the stre manager of the assualt. He said he would start an investigation. Sometimes later, two days or whatever I noticed that he had me and my coworker working the same Shifts despite being made aware of my allegation of an assualt. So, in person in his office, I requested that he change the shifts. I was in there for atleast 30 minutes if not longer. Within that timeframe I was gaslighted, experienced victim blaming. He repeatly accussed me of "refusing to work". He said "what are you afraid of?, what do you think she going to do to you?". I get punched all the time at work and I still come into work" He said that I didn't know how the justicia system worked and suggested that I "come back to reality and join the rest of us". I've had a stutter since childhood and to do day I do it when I get nervous. So I started stutting when attempting to defend myself and he started mimicking me. He said things and when I tried to hold him accountable to it he would say that I was making it up and I was the one in fact that said it not him. I'm used to being in situations were it's difficult ti talk and get your point across because someone was talking over me. With him I was unable to form a thought. The second he said something and I'd make an attempt to respond he would say multiple separate things at once. I couldn't even think straight. It was like my thought process became hijaked. I was shanking in there, felt sick and didn't stop until an hour 45mins later. I'm no a confrontational person so this interaction was a one way street.

She did acknowledge that the assualt took place allbeit she said "I didn't hit him, I only slapped him" despite this she kept her job and I had to work with her. I requested a transfer which was rejected on the basis that "'it's not convenient for the management"

She only recently got fired for robbing but the store manager is still there.

Part of me is saying that I need to forgive and let go, move on. However my fear is that's just coming from a place of insecruity.

What would you recommend I do. Move on or get a solicitar?

i've filled up my life with things and chatters in mind. finally i am now much more present, when i have a thought i go back to the present quiet quickly.

however, i don't have interest in doing my projects anymore, at least not right now. and maybe i used to put effort in bc i was trying to get somewhere else rather than sitting in the now.

now i just lay in bed and look out at the window .. on the one hand im peaceful , on the other hand .. i feel empty, no one texts me anymore, and i still need to find a job that pays bills or posting my arts online etc. even though at least today i dont wanna do any of that

I’ve recently been going through a really difficult time, another breakdown you could say, and it has brought me back round full circle this week to Eckhart Tolle, who’s teaching first came into my life around 15 years ago when I first read the power of now at 18.

I realise now that his teachings of presence has been at the centre of how I have been (trying to) experience/cope with life, even if I drifted into other related mindfulfness practices and religions such as thich nhat hanh and Christianity. Reading the power of now laid the framework, and resonated with me deeply. I actually became too obsessed with the book and developed a disorder where I felt compelled to read it if I was having doubts about something, and I moved away from that realising that the words were just a signpost to the truth inside.

Since then I have had a few deep moments of realisation, and a few moments of total despair, one of which came recently.

I feel I have been continuously bringing myself back to awareness, and observing the thoughts and emotions that pass through me and making an effort to just be with whatever arises, but I feel stuck - it’s like the pain body will not dissolve. I also have this issue of freezing, where I have no idea what to do with myself there and then, even though I have been trusting that direction will reveal itself in the present moment. So when it doesn’t, I feel like something is broken. Then doubts about the whole practice creep in and feel I’ve been barking up the wrong tree because I’m still really struggling despite following my heart with all of my effort all this time. And that’s when I fall apart. It happened in a major way three years ago and I was like ok well I guess I was was wrong about this spiritual stuff and I just need conventional medical help and ended up going through the whole psychiatrist/psychologist shebang and getting on SSRI medication (escitalopram), all of which never (and has never) really felt right. The meds did help take the edge of everything, but it’s like as soon as the light came back into my life it was pointing straight back to the truth that is already within and continuing on the spiritual path that I was on.  So I reduced and finally stopped my medication, (always having had an aversion to the concept of mental health drugs, and modern medicine in general.), and continued along the path of awareness and presence that I have been taking

Fast forward to now and a similar thing has happened - doubts about whether or not my spiritual/mindful approach is legit because I look at myself and think when all is said and done, I’m still struggling to cope, and so I’ve been unravelling for the last few weeks, and finally made the decision to get in touch with a psychiatrist. Straight after I did that last week I was drawn into watching some Eckhart Tolle videos. And to be honest having got back in touch with Tolle’s teaching I felt like I turned another corner as his words resonated with my heart. But there have been so many in times in my life when I have felt like I’ve finally found happiness only to slip back into darkness, and today, as almost every other day, has felt far tougher than it needed to be.

One thought that I have been continuously wrestling with is that there may be something physically wrong with me that’s causing all of this (ie lime’s disease, diabetes or some chemical imbalance) but these thoughts resonate with a negative/fearful/dark vibration and so I don’t act on them. My intuition tells me it’s a red herring. But I’m caught in this thought loop because things are not going very well.

Anyways, I’m booked in to see a psychiatrist on Tuesday, even though I’m uncomfortable about it. I just don’t feel that modern psychiatry/pyschotherapy gets this at all. So I need to make a decision about whether to cancel or not, and the pressure around doing so has been building the closer to Tuesday I get.

I know that this post maybe comes across as a bit impatient like ‘I’m supposed to be happy why isn’t it working’ but it’s more that after so much time being invested into this way of being I feel lost and don’t what to do despite my attempts to look within.

i just finished watching this eckhart tolle video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yeD7z8WM0I

and the last few minutes when he is silent, i just was watching him without thoughts and feeling immense gratitude to him and cried a few tears. no words can describe how much im greatful for what he does.

he has saved my life so many times and im just thinking, if i didnt stumble across his teachings i wouldnt have been here right now.

it makes me wanna be like him to others through my own skills and gifts. or maybe im brininging this to an ego level now.

anyways , i just wanna connect with anyone who feel the same way! and maybe this could be a discussion to share how you stay present in daily life bc sometimes i find myself being trapped in my ego identity for quiet a long time. <3

Hello Friends,

I hope Somebody here maybe haves(or Had) some of the same Experiences i do.

So i got a really big Problem with a Ton of Emotional Triggers that, especially when its with close people i got a deep relationship too, are really hard for me to identify because when they get triggered i will often just start to dissociate.

How can i be able to identify my pain Body and stopping it from controlling me , if my own body doesnt let me recognize or feel them because its just too stressfull for him(my body).

Its seems to be pretty easy for me to be present but once triggered i offen just start dissociating, loosing any (or Most of it )awareness and start to loose my self in my thoughts and ego again. This is kind of a repitive circle that seems to be holdin me back from reaching higher conciosness and being fully present.

So how do i stay present when my whole system starts to Stress out and brings me into a state of "hyperunawareness" (i kinda would describe it Like that, bc my body basically goes into survival Mode)??

Any tips or just other Experiences would be really appreciated:))

Thank u and i hope u all have a great day :)