Good morning and welcome to Soul Soup.
I'm Dr.
Jeanette Freeman and we're here to dish up a little food for your soul and work for your heart this morning.
So thank you for tuning in.
We are continuing on our class series on The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle,
Looking at this book and deepening our experience of the present moment and our experience of the presence.
And today we are looking at chapter 9.
Beyond happiness and unhappiness there is peace.
So right from the very beginning there's a question,
Is there a difference between happiness and peace?
And from Eckhart Tolle's perspective he's saying that happiness,
From his definition now is,
Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive and inner peace does not.
So there's a question on,
Do we really know what is positive?
So happiness being dependent upon things going our way.
So I can invite us to consider.
Eckhart says,
Do you know what positive is and negative?
Do you have the total picture?
There have been plenty of people for whom limitation,
Failure,
Loss,
Illness or pain turned out to be their greatest teacher.
It taught them to let go of the false self images.
It gave them depth,
Humility and compassion and made them more real.
So whenever anything negative happens there may be a deeper lesson concealed.
Seen from a higher perspective,
Conditions are always positive.
To be more precise they are neither positive nor negative.
They are as they are.
And when you live in complete acceptance of what is,
Which is the only sane way to live,
There's no good nor bad.
There's a higher good which includes the bad.
Seen from a perspective of the mind.
However there is good and bad,
Hate and love,
Like and dislike.
So this first part,
Beyond happiness and unhappiness there is peace,
Is our,
Is only our experience when we can allow what is to be there.
So the practice,
The practice to experiencing peace,
One of the portals,
One of the practices,
Is that I can surrender and allow what is here to be here,
Allow what is happening to be here.
The mind,
That aspect of us that thinks,
Is always in judgment,
Comparison,
Resistance.
It is constantly saying,
I like that,
I don't like that,
I like that,
I don't like that,
Get rid of that,
I want that.
It's going away from pain,
Moving towards pleasure.
The mind is constantly in judgment.
The fact is,
In order to really experience peace,
Peace is found under the mind.
Peace is found in the experience of the presence.
Peace is found within,
Through the experience of the present moment,
Through the now,
That is found under the mind.
So today's practice is to allow everything to be as it is.
In this chapter Eckhart Tolle talks about the cycles of life and the understanding of the impermanence,
The impermanence of conditions,
The impermanence and the cycles of life.
That is important to step back and see because that allows us to say it is what it is without being so upset when we're in a cycle that's,
We could say a down cycle.
That there's up cycles,
There's down cycles.
On the level of form he says there's birth and death,
Creation and destruction,
Growth and disillusion of seeming separate forms.
It's reflected in nature,
It's reflected all around us.
And our peace allows the is-ness of that.
A deeper dimension underneath,
He says,
The play of opposites reveals an abiding presence,
Unchanging deep stillness.
This is the joy of being.
So there are cycles,
There are cycles of success when things just come to you and thrive,
There are cycles of failure where they wither and disintegrate and you have to let them go in order to make room for something new.
And we know that if we cling and resist at those points,
It means we're refusing to go with the flow of life and we suffer.
So this practice of realizing that sometimes there's happiness or unhappiness,
There's good,
There's bad,
There's all these ups and downs that our mind will cling to and try to change and not be happy with.
But underneath all of that,
There can be peace when we can allow what is happening to happen.
When we can allow what is happening to happen.
It's like the analogy of the lake,
That you are a lake and that you are,
That conditions of your lake or even the conditions of your mind are like the surface of the lake.
Conditions change,
They come and go,
There's boats going out,
There's all kinds of weather,
There's this stuff happening at the surface.
But deep underneath in the deepest part of the lake is stillness.
And through allowing what's happening on the surface to simply be there without being so distracted by it or in resistance to it,
We are able to go deeper into our own lake.
Deeper into the center of us,
Deeper into that part of us that is still.
And that is allowed through allowing what is there to be there.
Allowing what shows up to show up.
Allowing life to come and go.
Without the minds,
Without believing the minds,
Constant judgment,
I like that,
I don't like that,
That's good,
That's bad,
I want that,
I don't want that.
In order to trust,
In order to flow with life,
In order to surrender to the flow of life and to experience that peace,
We step back and we can realize that life comes and goes,
Is up and down,
And underneath all of that we can be at peace.
Eckhart says in this book,
A Buddhist monk once told me,
All I've learned in the 20 years that I have been a monk,
I can sum up in one sentence,
All that arises passes away,
This I know.
And what he meant of course was this,
I have learned to offer no resistance to what is.
I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions,
Thus I have found peace.
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace,
Ease,
And lightness.
This state is then no longer dependent upon things being good or bad.
Your inner dependency on form is gone.
The general conditions of your life,
The outer forms,
Tend to improve greatly.
Things,
People,
Or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them while they last.
So last week I was on vacation and I had the opportunity to do some scuba diving,
Which I love.
Scuba diving requires you to be fully in your breath,
Fully in the present moment,
Fully experiencing whatever shows up.
Staying connected to your breath is the practice,
Breathing in and out.
There's no place to go.
It's about being fully present and seeing what's in front of you,
The little fish,
The wreath,
The beauties,
The treasure.
It's about going slow and just allowing whatever comes your way to be with it.
It's such a beautiful lesson and as we look at this particular lesson,
Which is to allow things to be as they are,
To allow what flows in to flow in,
To allow what flows out to flow out,
To offer no resistance to life.
In offering no resistance,
We learn to flow through life by letting go of our demand that things go our way.
It puts us in the current.
It puts us in a divine current.
It puts us in presence.
It puts us in alignment with the I AM presence to experience more peace.
And when we're vibrating at a higher level and vibrating in higher peace,
It's like saying,
I surrender.
I trust the will of the divine.
I trust the will of God.
I trust the will of a higher nature.
And I can trust that everything that I'm going through is taking me into the perfect place that I need to be,
To be blessed,
Be of service.
Our resistance to what happens puts us in a lower state of consciousness.
Resistance keeps us in suffering.
Allowing what is happening puts us back in the flow of life.
In diving,
We experience being in the current.
Without any resistance or even swimming,
But just resting,
We're taken on a current that gently guides us through the reefs,
Gently moves us to see the next treasure.
Understanding life on a current is a place of peace.
To get in the current,
We let go of resistance.
We let go of the struggle.
We can say,
For this moment,
I allow everything to be as it is.
In this moment,
I allow everything to be exactly as it is.
So let us just simply move into a short process of surrendering all resistance and moving into this presence.
So take a breath,
Returning all attention to the breath.
That's right.
At the moment we take our attention into the breath,
We move within.
And perhaps considering anything that you have been resisting,
Saying,
This shouldn't be happening.
I want this to change.
This struggle,
This relationship,
This problem,
This bill,
This worry.
What is the worry that keeps coming up?
And then just simply offering and surrendering all resistance,
Saying,
This is what is passing through the space of my mind.
This is the situation that is happening in life.
I allow it to be there.
I let go of all internal resistance right now to whatever has been happening.
I surrender all my judgment of good and bad,
Right and wrong.
In fact,
I surrender all my thinking about any of it.
And allow everything to be exactly as it is.
And turn my attention to the breath.
That steady breathing in and out.
Where I know that I am here and that is enough.
I am right here in my breath.
Allowing myself to simply come into the center line,
Right in the center of me.
I am here.
I allow everything to be exactly as it is.
I allow all resistance,
Stress and struggle to melt off of me now.
And I am at peace beyond all of the conditions in life.
In this moment,
In my breath,
In my heart,
All is well.
I am enough.
I am loved.
I am love.
I am here.
That's right.
And just setting that intention to let go of resistance.
To let go of worrying about the cycles of life that we're in.
And to know that my deepest intention is stay connected to the breath.
To let go.
Surrender to know that I can trust the currents of life.
That beyond all conditions of happiness or unhappiness there is peace.
And it is found right here in the present breath of now.
Thank you so much for tuning in with us today.
And for your practice of the present moment and of the presence.
And the practice of experiencing and coming back and returning to your I am that I am.
The I am nature.
Remembering that my words of I am are creating my truer reality.
I am that I am.
I am the one that sees.
I am the one that is here.
I am the presence that lives.
I am the presence of joy.
I am the presence beyond all conditions.
I am here.
All is well.
And so it is.
So thank you for being with us.
We appreciate your connection or donations or sharing this word.
I'm Jeanette Freeman signing off for now.
Many blessings my friend.
