Okay, so I’m currently reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and it’s... well, it’s changing. It’s changing my life. It’s exactly what I need to be reading right now because I didn’t realize before this book how much I am unnecessarily thinking. Okay, and like what my thinking does to me, a.k.a. causing suffering.
And I’m reading this passage right now and I just want to read it out loud. I wanna read it out loud. That’s what I want to do. Like it’s so crazy to me that I’m like... wait, is this what I... yes. Okay. I’m just gonna rip it.
So I’m on page 182. And the little section within this chapter is called Impermanence and the Cycles of Life. And it goes.
However, as long as you are in the physical dimension and linked to the collective human psyche, physical pain, although rare, is still possible. This is not to be confused with suffering. The mental emotional pain. All suffering is ego created and due to resistance.
I underlined that for a reason. Because I’ve realized so much throughout these last couple of weeks, well, the last couple of years, let’s get real. But especially the last couple of weeks reading this book, that all of my suffering is created by thoughts that stem from psychological time. Psychological time being thinking about the past or thinking about the future. And then me resisting the present moment because I’m thinking about the past or the future. Okay?
Anyways, I will continue to read on here.
As long as you are in this dimension, you are still subject to its cyclical nature and the law of impermanence of all things, but you no longer perceive this as bad, it just is. Through allowing the isness of all things, a deeper dimension underneath the play of opposites reveals itself to you, as an abiding presence, an unchanging deep stillness, an uncaused joy beyond good and bad. This is the joy of being, the peace of God.
A caveat, when he says the word being, he’s talking about God. When I say God, I mean the universe, nature, whoever Siddhartha Gautama found when he was enlightened under the tree, whoever Jesus was talking about. Like I’m talking about that thing. However anyone else sees it, I have no idea. But anyways, I just kind of wanted to put that out there as well.
And I just love that he said allowing the isness of all things. Just allowing things to be what they are. Because human beings, we have this... it’s an illusion, through my understanding. Of cause and effect, good and bad, right and wrong, evil and good, whatever. And he’s saying that underneath that, underneath our mind perceiving things as good and bad, cause and effect, right and wrong, whatever, is the isness of all things, which completely prevails. They prevail against this whole notion of something being good or bad. It just is. And he’s saying that is the joy and the peace of God. Okay?
Anyways. On the level of form, also when he’s saying form, he’s just talking about reality. He’s talking about being alive, being a human being. Like physical reality.
So on the level of form, there is birth and death, creation and destruction, growth and dissolution of seemingly separate forms. This is reflected everywhere, in the lifecycle of a star or a planet, a physical body, a tree, a flower, in the rise and fall of nations, political systems, civilizations, and in the inevitable cycles of gain and loss in the life of an individual. There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of failure, when they wither or disintegrate, and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise, or for transformation to happen. If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refusing to go with the flow of life and you will suffer.
I’m going to read that again. If you cling and resist at that point, a.k.a. when you cling and resist to transformation, when you resist these cycles of life, then you will suffer. Period.
And it’s so true because it’s so much resistance moving on.
It is not true that the upcycle is good and the downcycle is bad, except in the mind’s judgment. So true. Growth is usually considered positive, but nothing can grow forever. If growth of whatever kind were to go on and on, it would eventually become monstrous and destructive. Dissolution is needed for new growth to happen. One cannot exist without the other. The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level, or experienced some deep loss or pain, to be drawn to the spiritual dimension.
I can concur.
Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. In this world, which is to say the level of form, everybody fails sooner or later. Of course. And every achievement eventually comes to naught. All forms are impermanent. You can still be active and enjoy manifesting and creating new forms and circumstances, but you won’t be identified with them. You do not need them to give you a sense of self. They are not your life, only your life situation.
And I circled this part here because I’ve talked about this so many times with, again, anyone who will listen to me, about manifesting and creating. And I’ve been struggling with it because when I am in the process of creating or manifesting or dreaming or whatever, I have realized now, the suffering that I have been causing myself by doing that has been because I am attaching them to my life. And not recognizing them as impermanent. Not recognizing them as, they will change. I think I’m like addicted to trying to find permanence. And trying to make something permanent, which is ludicrous.
I will continue.
Your physical energy is also subject to cycles. It cannot always be at peak. There will be times of low as well as high energy. There will be periods where you are highly active and creative, but there may also be times when everything seems stagnant, when it seems that you’re not getting anywhere, not achieving anything. A cycle can last from a few hours to a few years. There are large cycles and small cycles within these large ones. Many illnesses are created through fighting against the cycles of low energy, which are vital for regeneration. The compulsion to do so, and the tendency to derive your sense of worth and identity from external factors such as achievement, is an inevitable illusion as long as you identify with the mind.
Me. I just can relate to this so much. Like pain body... like these are, like your body physically will like make you sick, make you feel hurt, make you feel weak, give you this autoimmune disease or whatever. And I think it’s because it’s just forcing you to stop when like you don’t want to stop, because you are resisting a cycle that you’re in. I’m realizing this about myself.
Anyways.
This makes it harder and impossible for you to accept the low cycles and allow them to be. Thus the intelligence of the organism may take over as a self protective measure and create an illness in order to force you to stop, so that the necessary regeneration can take place.
Do you hear that? The intelligence of the organism, a.k.a. the intelligence of our body, will literally give us a sickness, an autoimmune disease, a mental health disorder, a something, to force us to stop what we are doing. It’s so crazy to me.
The cyclical nature of the universe is closely linked with the impermanence of all things and situations. The Buddha made this essential part of his teachings. All conditions are highly unstable and in constant flux, or as he put it, impermanence is a characteristic of every condition, every situation you will ever encounter in your life. It will change, disappear, or no longer satisfy you.
Impermanence is also central to Jesus’ teachings. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal.
I don’t know if anyone is following, but stay with me.
As long as a condition is judged as good by your mind, whether it be a relationship, a possession, a social role, a place, or your physical body, the mind attaches itself to it and identifies with it. It makes you happy, makes you feel good about yourself, and it may become part of who you are or think you are. But nothing lasts in this dimension where moth and rust consume. Either it ends or it changes or it may undergo a polarity shift. The same condition that was good yesterday or last year has suddenly or gradually turned into bad. The same condition that made you happy then makes you unhappy. The prosperity of today becomes the empty consumerism of tomorrow. The happy wedding and the honeymoon become the unhappy divorce or the unhappy coexistence. Or a condition disappears so its absence makes you unhappy. When a condition or situation the mind has attached itself to and identified with changes or disappears, the mind cannot accept it. It will cling to the disappearing condition and resist the change. It is almost as if a limb were being torn off your body.
Preaching to the choir. Like this is what my mind does. My mind attaches itself to something, anything, doesn’t even matter. And when that thing inevitably changes, a.k.a. the law of the universe, my mind... oh my god. I am completely distraught. And it’s nonsense. It’s a waste of time to be doing so. Moving on.
We sometimes hear of people who have lost all of their money or whose reputations have been ruined committing suicide. Those are extreme cases. Others, wherever a major loss of one kind or another occurs, just become deeply unhappy or make themselves ill. They cannot distinguish between their life and their life situation.
That is my journey. That’s the journey I’m on right now. Distinguishing between my life and my life situation.
Continuing on. He says, I recently read about a famous actress who died in her 80s. As her beauty started to fade, she became ravaged by old age, and she grew desperately unhappy and became a recluse. She too had identified with a condition, her external appearance. First the condition gave her a happy sense of self, then an unhappy one. If she had been able to connect with the formless and timeless life within, she could have watched and allowed the fading of her external form from a place of serenity and peace. Moreover, her external form would have become increasingly transparent to the light shining through form. Through the light shining through form, her age’s true nature... so her beauty would not really have faded, but simply become transformed into spiritual beauty. Maybe. Obviously. However, nobody told her that this is possible. The most essential kind of knowledge is not yet widely accessible.
So much of our suffering, y’all. So much of our suffering is this. Like if we just allowed the thing to change, however it may be. Like something else is on that side and then that thing is going to change. So like not getting attached to the next transformation.
Oh, I’m gonna continue on.
The Buddha taught that even your happiness is dukha, a Pali word meaning suffering or unsatisfactoriness. It is inseparable from its opposite. This means that your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one. Only the illusion of time separates them. A.k.a. the mind, the ego. Okay? This is not being negative. It is simply recognizing the nature of things so that you don’t pursue an illusion for the rest of your life. Nor is it saying that you should no longer appreciate pleasant or beautiful things or conditions. But to seek something through them that they cannot give, an identity, a sense of permanency, and fulfillment, is a recipe for frustration and suffering. A.k.a. anytime you’re pursuing anything in life thinking that it’s going to give you any sense of permanency, any sense of, ah this is it, or fulfillment... it’s a recipe for disaster. Why? Because the law of impermanence. All things change.
Now, I just find... I’m going to continue reading on, but I find this so f*****g interesting because I have been thinking so much about social media, advertising, and how all this is connected to like the mind. And he goes on to say, the whole advertising industry and the consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things.
Oh my god. Seriously. Because I just, I realize so much, like me consuming social media, me being online, me existing in society. I mean there’s billboards everywhere, everything is an advertisement. Everything is telling you that you need something. We live in a consumerism society. We live in capitalism. Even if you were not in a capitalistic society, this is still happening. There’s still billboards. There’s still advertising. Yes it’s social media, but yes it’s way bigger than that.
Moving on.
The more you seek happiness in this way, the more it will elude you. Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disillusionments before you realize that truth. I’m realizing it, y’all. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they will also give you pain. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy. Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state, not something you need to work hard for or struggle to even attain.
Many people never realize this. Many people never realize that there can be no quote unquote salvation in anything they do, possess, or attain. Those who do realize it often become world weary and depressed. If nothing can give you true fulfillment, what is there left to strive for? What is the point in anything?
Trust, I’ve been asking these questions a lot. Because it’s true. It’s like okay, if all this is a bunch of BS, like what in the hell is the point? Because I know there has to be a point. But it’s like, finding a point means striving, and striving means that’s gonna change, which means more suffering. So I’ve literally been like, oh my god, what in the hell?
So I will continue reading on.
The Old Testament prophet must have arrived at such a realization when he wrote, I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind.
When you reach this point, you are one step away from despair and one step away from enlightenment. A Buddhist monk once told me, all I have 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. 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 then is no longer dependent upon things being a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your interdependency 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. All those things of course will still pass away. Cycles will come and go, but with the dependency gone, there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
The happiness that is derived from secondary sources is never that deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter a state of non-resistance. Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace.
Signed, sealed, and delivered, baby.
That’s what I wanted to share today, and I don’t even need to go into it more. I hope you have a beautiful, magical, glorious day, and... read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
Because holy s**t.
Get full access to Just Jenna at jennamarilyn.substack.com/subscribe
