"Thinking acts like a veil," observes the late spiritual teacher, William Samuel. "Look at a flower. We see it now. We behold its form now. We are aware of the flower, right here, right now; but suppose we think about something else while looking at the flower. Think about that big bill that is past due and worry a little. What seems to happen to the awareness of the flower? We are not as aware of it as before, are we? We are looking at it with eyes that hardly see. It seems fuzzy, hardly noticed, but the same rose is there; the same beauty, the same form the same grace and magnificent delicacy is right before us to be beheld and enjoyed, but we hardly see it. We are too busy worrying about the bill. We are too busy thinking.""Nothing is either good or bad, but our thinking makes it so."
-- Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 --
"The bill is not now," Samuel points out. "All that is now is the awareness of the rose. The rose in all its loveliness is now. The bill is nothing more than a memory that is not in this now-awareness unless we choose to put it there."
"We see that thinking is like a film spread over the eyes; like a mist that covers the whole face of the land, like a veil; like looking at the flower - and everything - through a mirror darkly."
. . . . . . . . . . . .
That it is our thinking that colours our life, that it is our thinking which makes things appear to be "good or bad" is a universal truth, much older than Shakespeare. It is one of the central truths of the ancient Ashtavakra Gita, and it is the central message of modern spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle. "Thinking without awareness, is the main dilemma of human existence" Tolle observed in his best-selling book, "A New Earth."If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free, and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound. Here this saying is true, "Thinking makes it so."In the video, below, Tolle talks about our collective addiction to the excessive thinking that robs us of all peace and beauty.
[Ashtavakra Gita, 1.11]
No comments:
Post a Comment