Wide Awake Living Newsletter

Eckhart Tolle and Oprah:

What can we do for Life?

When I was a youngster, John F. Kennedy said “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. This inspired a generation into a more creative approach to life—a movement from an attitude of entitlement into one of service to something greater than our own personal well being.

On last Monday night, in a web-cast with Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle (which has, 6 days later, already been listened to by 1.5 million people) we were asked to expand this inspiration beyond nationalism, beyond looking out for the good of our country above other countries. This naturally follows in a world where one of the main forms of conflict is between countries. Our world is now being brought together through technology and communications, and by individuals noticing a unity in which we are all connected. In this web-cast, and in his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle specifically is suggesting “Rather than asking, ‘What do I want from Life?’, a more powerful question to ask is, ‘Life, what do you want from me?’”

It is a crucial time in the human history where we are confronting a world situation that has the possibility of causing at least mass destruction if not self-annihilation in the long run. It seems that maybe life is experimenting in the way it is developing the human race. It seems that for some reason it has been important that life include the amazing cognitive abilities that humans have developed and continue to develop, as a part of itself. The risks of this experiment are the intractable issues that we see all around us in the modern world. Our cognitive abilities are running amok in a sense. Our ability to conceptualize, to have thoughts and ideas as we know them, has created in each of us a false sense of self as being someone separate from all other lives. This in turn creates self-centered behaviors that happen, often out of fear, and without reference to what is good for the whole. If each of us stays simply looking out for our separate personal selves in the way that we have been doing for thousands of years (relating to life as the mind-constructed version of ourselves), we may not have much of a future any more.

The world situation and all the intractable problems that modern society is presenting us with are a wonderful pointer towards the possibility and necessity of awakening out of this bundle of ideas about who we are and into living a life that is an expression of what Life wants, not what we personally want. This is also so beautifully expressed in the Christian tradition as “letting go and letting God”. Whether we use Christian or other religious terminology or not, this shift is an essential step that needs to be taken, if we value our survival as a species and the survival of our beautiful and precious planet. Religions have been pointing to this for a long time, and it is our generation for whom it is now becoming the critical issue behind all of the other issues that plague our world and disturb our personal lives by doing so. In these circumstances life seems to be saying to us, “awaken now”. This is the time to come finally into the fruit of the religious teachings of the many traditions, and to stand in the radiance of the one life that shines through them all and through each of us.

How many people?

And blogging...

How amazing that 750,000 people tuned in to Eckhart and Oprah's first session of their webcast, even though it had an obviously detrimental effect on the technology as those of you who were watching it are very aware. Now Oprah tells us that a million and a half people have downloaded it from her website in the next 5 days. Wow! And the numbers just keep going up from there... I recently was able to be with Eckhart in person near San Francisco, and someone asked him about who was teaching the class, he or Oprah. He reaffirmed that they were teaching it together, and then spoke so beautifully about his gratitude for this unprecedented event in human history that Oprah is making possible that everyone broke out in spontaneous cheering!

Does Oprah's advertising about "get ready to be awakened" bother people a little? I wrote about my feelings about that on the Wide Awake Living blog at www.wideawakeliving.com/wp in the "Readiness to Awaken" post. Come visit. Scroll down to see older posts. At the top, I have just today posted a piece of writing that I wrote in response to the second webcast, about changing the focus of your life to the present moment.

I have been learning about blogs lately, and hopefully learning how to make it a place where we can have an online community of support and inspiration. The difference from the main website is that you can comment on anything I write by clicking on "comments" at the bottom of each entry or "post" and in that way we can have an ongoing conversation. At this time we are mostly talking about this web-cast thing, but it will continue from there and I am open to questions or suggestions as to subject matter that people want to talk about. Email me and let me know if you would like to steer me in the discussion.

And, yes, the above daffodil and poppy are currently blooming at Stanford. I hope it enheartens all those who are still in the grip of winter.

One other thing that I wanted to mention is that today I am making it possible for those of you in far away countries to download a copy of "Life Beyond Belief" as a pdf file. It is not an instant download (I am not technically capable of that at this point) but when I receive your payment from Paypal, I will simply email you the book. The cost will be $10 with no shipping of course. The Paypal link is on the order page of the Wide Awake Living website.

Are there friends or colleagues who might be inspired by this newsletter? Share the inspiration! Click to Send this newsletter to a spiritually oriented friend in any tradition

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