Eckhart, though clearly a dear man, appears to have fallen into a habit
of playing to 'new age" peoples' sentimentality. "Evolve or die." ?
While perhaps an evocative comment, there is no choice in this. These
are integral aspects of our existence. Each of us, a 'new' experiment
in 'humanity'. Each, leaving what they have to others to carry on with
(or drop) as our lives play out. For better or worse, also not a choice.
Naturally we tell ourselves otherwise, blessing and cursing others as we go.
KG
On 8/23/2013 7:44 AM, SURESH JAGADEESAN wrote:
> THE URGENCY OF TRANSFORMATION - ECKHART TOLLE
>
> When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the
> world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t
> work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable
> problems, an individual lifeform– or a species – will either die or become
> extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary
> leap.
>
> It is believed that the lifeforms on this planet first evolved in the sea.
> When there were no animals yet to be found on land, the sea was already
> teeming with life.
>
> Then at some point, one of the sea creatures must have started to
> venture onto dry land. It would perhaps crawl a few inches at
> first,then exhausted by the enormous gravitational pull of the planet,
> it would return to the water, where gravity is almost nonexistent and
> where it could live with much greater ease.
>
> And then it tried again and again and again, and much later would
> adapt to life on land, grow feet instead of fins, develop lungs
> instead of gills. It seems unlikely that a species would venture into
> such an alien environment and undergo an evolutionary transformation
> unless it was compelled to do so by some crisis situation.
>
> There may have been a large sea area that got cut off from the main
> ocean where the water gradually receded over thousands of years,
> forcing fish to leave their habitatand evolve.
>
> Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival – this is
> humanity’s challenge now.
>
> The dysfunction of the egoic human mind, recognized already more than
> 2,500 years ago by the ancient wisdom teachers and now magnified
> through science and technology, is for the first time threatening the
> survival of the planet.
>
> Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness – also
> pointed to by the ancient teachers – was no more than a possibility,
> realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of
> cultural or religious background.
>
> A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was
> not yet imperative.
>
> A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if
> they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice:
> Evolve or die.
>
> A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity
> is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic
> mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness.
>
> What is arising now is not a new belief system, a new religion,
> spiritual ideology, or mythology.
>
> We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of
> ideologies and belief systems.
>
> The change goes deeper than the content of your mind, deeper than your
> thoughts. In fact, at the heart of the new consciousness is the
> transcendence of thought, the
> newfound ability of rising above thought, of realizing a dimension
> within yourself that is infinitely more vast than thought.
>
> You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are,
> from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness
> you take to be yourself.
>
> What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I
> am. Who am I
> then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the
> space in which the thought – or the emotion or sense perception – happens
>
------------------------------------
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