Saturday 15 February 2014

But this made me laugh

 A friend posted on Facebook this excerpt from Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth.  I love it - it makes me smile; all that human posturing!

"Here are some ways in which people unconsciously try to emphasize their form-identity. If you are alert enough, you may be able to detect some unconscious patterns within yourself: demanding recognition for something you did and getting angry or upset if you don't get it; trying to get attention by talking about your problems, the story of your illnesses, or making a scene; giving your opinion when nobody has asked for it and it makes no difference to the situation; being more concerned with how the other person sees you than with the other person, which is to say, using other people for egoic reflection or as ego enhancers; trying to make an impression on others through possessions, knowledge, good looks, status, physical strength, and so on; bringing about temporary ego inflation through angry reaction against something or someone; taking thingspersonally, feeling offended; making yourself right and others wrong through futile mental or verbal complaining; wanting to be seen, or to appear important.  Once you have detected such a pattern within yourself, I suggest you conduct an experiment. Find out what it feels like and what happens if you let go of that pattern. Just drop it and see what happens. De-emphasizing who you are on the level of form is another way of generating consciousness. Discover the enormous power that flows through you into the world when you stop emphasizing your form identity."

Eckhart Tolle, in "A New Earth"

Was delighting in it and thinking how funny it was.  Read it out to the Badger, who found it very true but couldn’t see why I thought it funny: which in itself felt encouraging after I’d only just been saying how I don’t find things funny any more.  Well apparently I’m laughing at things other people are not.  That could explain it . . .



2 comments:

Rebecca said...

I KNOW that I laugh at things other people don't find funny.....(This knowledge doesn't help me much with the "form consciousness" thing however.) Just another thing I guess I'll have to let go of. Just "drop off" laughing at things others don't find funny...

Pen Wilcock said...

:0) xx