12 Quotes Related to THINKING from Eckhart Tolle “Unmanageable” thoughts specifically related to addiction:
I would say about 80-90% of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and negative nature, much of it is harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true.
This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel you have the ability to stop.
Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever you're addicted to (includes all involuntary compulsive mental-emotional habits and reactive patterns) you are using to cover up your pain.
“Unmanageable” (compulsive) thoughts related to everything else:
The more you are identified with your thinking, your likes and dislikes, judgments and interpretations, which is to say the less present you are as the watching consciousness, the stronger the emotional charge (pain) will be whether you are aware of it or not.
The greatest obstacle to experiencing peace and the radiant joy of being is identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction…this incessant mental noise prevents you from finding the realm of inner stillness, peace, and joy.
The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict.
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments and definitions that blocks all true relationships. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man, between you and God.
The fact is that virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices in their head all the time, the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to top…it’s not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them (and others) and drains them of vital life energy.
The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. Let me ask you this, can you be free of your mind when you want to? Have you found the “off” Button?
Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker.”
So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought…as you listen to the thought you feel a conscious presence---your deeper self---behind or underneath the thought as it were. The Thought then loses power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.
When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream---a gap of “no mind.” At first the gaps will be short a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you… with practice the sense of stillness and peace will deepen… In fact, there’s no end to its depth…You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within you: the joy of being (of being connected with your Higher Power.)
“The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds. The Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of your mind. It is your only point of access into the timeless presence of God.”
“(When) the realm of Being, accessed through the portal of the Now, opens up, suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the Sacred, that which cannot be named.”
“As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out of present moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love---even the most simple action.”
“When the compulsive striving away from the Now ceases, the joy of Being flows into everything you do. The moment your attention turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace.” But the reverse is also true – is it not? – that when my compulsive thinking takes charge again and leads me away from the Now then I lose my connection with the Present Moment and I begin to feel restless, irritable, and discontent.
“An amazing realization is that in the present moment there is only what is, but there are no problems. And if your attention remains in the Now, you no longer inhabit a world of problems.”
“Being is accessible to you NOW as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it. You can only know it when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the NOW, Being / (God) can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.”
Unless and until you access the frequency of presence, all relationships, and particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and dysfunctional.
They may seem perfect for a while, such as when you are “in love” but invariably that apparent perfection gets disrupted as arguments, conflicts, dissatisfaction and emotional or even physical violence occur with increasing frequency Love can turn into savage attack, feelings of hostility, of complete withdrawal of affection at the flick of a switch. And this is considered normal.
Relationships do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. We use relationships or somebody to cover up our pain.
For love to flourish, the light of your presence needs to be strong enough so that you no longer get taken over by the thinker or emotional pain body and mistake them for who you are.
Can you change an addictive relationship into a true one? Yes, by intensifying your presence by taking your attention more deeply into the Now.
The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way.
For presence to become deeply rooted, it must be tested in the fire of relationships.
Listening is the greatest thing you can do for your partner. Listening gives the other space to be.
Love as a continuous state is as yet very rare---as rare as conscious human beings. Brief and elusive glimpses of love, however, are possible, whenever there is a gap in the stream of mind.
Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict-ridden as they are now. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born in this world.
Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind. I am talking here primarily of emotional pain…Resentment, hatred, self-pity guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, and so on, even the slightest irritation, are all forms of pain.
There are two levels to your pain: the pain you create now and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body.
As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of past pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This includes the pain you suffered as a child, caused by the unconsciousness of the world into which you were born. This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your mind and body.
The emotional pain-body has two modes of being: dormant and active. It may be dormant 90 percent of the time. In a deeply unhappy person it can be active 10 percent of the time. Some people only experience it in certain situations such as intimate relationships, or situations linked with past loss or abandonment, physical or emotional hurt, and so on.
Anything can trigger it, particularly if it resonates with a pain pattern from your past…even a thought or an innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.
Some pain bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless, like a child who won’t stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters. Some are physically violent, many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people around you or close to you, while others may attack you, their host.
Thoughts and feelings you have about your life then become deeply negative and self-destructive.
The pain-body doesn’t want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is. The moment you observe the pain-body, feel its energy within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in, I call it Presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body. You have found your innermost strength.
Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in whatever form---it may be the awakening pain body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, a need to have some drama in your relationship and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.
Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that is there. Don’t think about it--don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Stay present and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Allow the pain to be transmuted into peace.
Power of Now Lab Notes from Dr. Bruce
Overview:
(1) The Purpose of these Practices
(2) The Obstacles to Practice
(3) The Benefits of the Practices
(4) The Duration and Use of These Practices in Daily Life
One-Minute Thoughtless Awareness Practices
(1) Observing the Breath without thought
(2) Observing an Inner Body Sensation without thought
(3) Listening without thought
Power of The Now