Posted 11/29/2006 by Josh Hinds

The Most Important Dimension of Human Existence
by Eckhart Tolle

We’re here to find that dimension within ourselves that is deeper than thought.

This teaching isn’t based on knowledge, on new interesting facts, new information. The world is full of that already. You can push any button on the many devices you have and get information. You’re drowning in information.

And ultimately, what is the point of it all? More information, more things, more of this, more of that. Are we going to find the fullness of life through more things and greater and bigger shopping malls?

Are we going to find ourselves through improving our ability to think and analyze, and accumulate more information, more stuff? Is “more” going to save the world? It’s all form.

You can never make it on the level of form. You can never quite arrange and accumulate all the forms that you think you need so that you can be yourself fully.

Sometimes you can do it for a brief time span. You can suddenly find everything working in your life: your health is good; your relationship is great; you have money, possessions, love, and respect from other people.

But before long, something starts to crumble here or there, either the finances or the relationship, your health or your work or living situation. It is the nature of the world of form that nothing stays fixed for very long — and so it starts to fall apart again.

The voice in the head that never stops speaking becomes a civilization that is obsessed with form, and therefore knows nothing of the most important dimension of human existence:
the sacred,
the stillness,
the formless,
the divine.
“What does it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose yourself?”

It has been said that there are two ways of being unhappy: not getting what you want, and getting what you want.

When people attain what the world tells us is desirable — wealth, recognition, property, achievement — they’re still not happy, at least not for long. They’re not at peace with themselves. They don’t have a true sense of security, a sense of finally having arrived.

Their achievements have not provided them with what they were really looking for — themselves. They have not given them the sense of being rooted in life, or as Jesus calls it, the fullness of life.

The form of this moment is the portal into the formless dimension. It is the narrow gate that Jesus talks about that leads to life. Yes, it’s very narrow: it’s only this moment.

To find it, you need to roll up the scroll of your life on which your story is written, past and future. Before there were books, there were scrolls, and you rolled them up when you were done with them.

So put your story away. It is not who you are. People usually live carrying a burden of past and future, a burden of their personal history, which they hope will fulfill itself in the future. It won’t, so roll up that old scroll. Be done with it.

You don’t solve problems by thinking; you create problems by thinking. The solution always appears when you step out of thinking and become still and absolutely present, even if only for a moment. Then, a little later when thought comes back, you suddenly have a creative insight that wasn’t there before.

Let go of excessive thinking and see how everything changes. Your relationships change because you don’t demand that the other person should do something for you to enhance your sense of self. You don’t compare yourself to others or try to be more than someone else to strengthen your sense of identity.

You allow everyone to be as they are. You don’t need to change them; you don’t need them to behave differently so that you can be happy.

There’s nothing wrong with doing new things, pursuing activities, exploring new countries, meeting new people, acquiring knowledge and expertise, developing your physical or mental abilities, and creating whatever you’re called upon to create in this world.

It is beautiful to create in this world, and there is always more that you can do.

Now the question is, Are you looking for yourself in what you do? Are you attempting to add more to who you think you are? Are you compulsively striving toward the next moment and the next and the next, hoping to find some sense of completion and fulfillment?

The preciousness of Being is your true specialness. What the egoic self had been looking for on the level of the story — I want to be special — obscured the fact that you could not be more special than you already are now. Not special because you are better or more wretched than someone else, but because you can sense a beauty, a preciousness, an aliveness deep within.

When you are present in this moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future. Then true intelligence arises, and also love. The only way love can come into your life is not through form, but through that inner spaciousness that is Presence. Love has no form.
________________
Bestselling author Eckhart Tolle has emerged as one of the finest spiritual teachers of our time. He is the author of many books, including The Power of Now, A New Earth, Stillness Speaks. This article is excerpted from his most recent work, a book and DVD package called Eckhart Tolle’s Findhorn Retreat.

*Reprinted with permission from Eckhart Tolle’s Findhorn Retreat: Stillness Amidst the World, © 2006 by Eckhart Tolle, Eckhart Teachings Inc.,. Published by New World Library, www.NewWorldLibrary.com.

Posted 11/15/2006 by Josh Hinds

Allowing Setbacks to Spur You On
by Denis Waitley

The knowledge era's new leaders, many of whom are immigrants and women, are managing change by conceiving innovative organizations and novel ways to attract and motivate employees. They are learning to be proactive instead of reactive, and to appreciate the full importance of relationships and alliances. They also have a healthy aptitude for risk and perseverance, and know how to gain strength from setbacks and failure.

Life's Batting Average

Baseball's greatest hitter grew up near my neighborhood in San Diego. When Ted Williams slugged for the Boston Red Sox, my father and I kept a record of his daily batting average. And when I played Little League ball, my dad told me not to worry about striking out. In Williams's finest year, dad reminded me, the champion failed at the plate about 60 percent of the time.

Football's greatest quarterbacks complete only six out of ten passes. The best basketball players make only half their shots. Even with satellite mapping and expert geologists, leading oil companies make strikes in only one out of ten wells. Actors and actresses auditioning for roles are turned down twenty-nine in thirty times. And stock market winners make money on only two out of five of their investments.

Since failure is a given in life, success takes more than leadership beliefs and solid behavioral patterns. It also takes an appropriate response to the inevitable, including an effective combination of risk-taking and perseverance. I meet many individuals who are seeking security at all costs, and avoiding risk whenever and wherever possible. Knowing that certain changes would make success much more likely for them, they nevertheless take the path of least resistance: no change. For the temporary, often illusory comfort of staying as they are, they pay the terrible price of a life not truly lived.

Parable of the Cautious Man

There was a very cautious man,
who never laughed or cried.
He never risked, he never lost,
he never won nor tried.
And when he one day passed away,
his insurance was denied,
For since he never really lived,
they claimed he never died.

In other words, missed opportunities are the curse of potential. Just after the Great Depression, Americans, perhaps understandably at the time, took many steps intended to minimize risk. The government guaranteed much of our savings. Citizens bought billions of dollars worth of insurance. We sought lifetime employment and our unions fought for guaranteed annual cost-of-living increases to protect us from inflation. This security-blanket mentality has continued in recent decades as executives awarded themselves giant golden parachutes in case a merger or takeover took their plum jobs.

These measures had many benefits, but the drawbacks have also been heavy, even if less obvious. In our eagerness to avoid risk, we forgot its positive aspects. Many of us continue to overlook the fact that progress comes only when chances are taken. And the security we sought and continue to seek often produces boredom, mediocrity, apathy and reduced opportunity.

We still hear much about security, especially from federal and state politicians. But total security is a myth except, perhaps, for those six feet underground in the cemetery. We may indeed ask our government for guaranteed benefits. But we must be aware that when a structure starts with a floor, walls and ceilings will follow. And herein lies a paradoxical proverb:

You must risk in order to gain security, but you must never seek security.

When security becomes a major goal in life – when fulfillment and joy are reduced to merely holding on, sustaining the status quo – the risk remains heavy. It is then a risk of losing the prospects of real advancement, of not being able to ride the wave of change today and tomorrow. Had the founders of Yahoo, Amazon.com and America Online been concerned with immediate profits and return on investment, we would not be enjoying those Internet services today, each of which has a greater market capitalization than IBM or General Motors.

-- Denis Waitley
____________
Written by Denis Waitley. To receive Denis Waitley's Weekly Ezine click here now!
Copyright (c) Denis Waitley International. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted 11/01/2006 by Josh Hinds

Grab your FREE copy of the Goal Setting Report: "13 Secrets of World-Class Goal Achievers."

My friend Vic Johnson, an internationally recognized expert on goals and host of the television show "Goals 2 Go," has made a limited number of "preview" copies available before the report goes on sale to the public. Since you're reading this right now on my site you're in luck because you can grab a free copy if you'd like (unless of course you happen to be reading this to far in the future when it's no longer available for free -- more the reason to get it now right?).

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To your goal setting success,
Josh Hinds