Cultivating the Awakening Mind

After meditating on the advantages of solitude and having calmed your discursive thoughts, you should cultivate the awakening mind.
Dalai Lama (Andrews McMeel; 2018)

Why are all most of your  quotes from Eckhart Tolle or the Dalia Lama?

Hmmm!  I do read, listen to and study  a lot more than the quotes on my desktop calendar or the teachings of Eckhart Tolle. lol I am actually all over the place with my interests and what intrigues me in the area of waking up.  As  I have said before I began this process way before I even heard of Eckhart Tolle and while I was still fearful of any religion other than Catholicism.  It began back when I was 19 after  picking up a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale.  There have been many, many different books, messages, lectures, and teachers since then.  But...yes there is a but...I am very fond of Eckhart Tolle's message and the way he delivers it.

After reading the first few lines of The New Earth a decade ago..I was completely blown away.  It was like...Yes!!!! This makes so much sense. Where have you been all my life?  I was so excited with the message .  It resonated in every cell of my being, finally putting all the pieces of my own seeking into a conceptual map that made sense to me.  Not only that,  I felt it to be true. It was literally life changing. 

I ran around for months trying to tell people about what I learned, so sure that once they heard it put the way he put it...they would understand and be so awed!!!  They weren't lol.  They literally thought I went over the deep end. They didn't get it at all!


Still...I did and I was hooked.  My seeking took off even faster and more intensely after that.  It changed direction from a more secular, psychologically based understanding to a deeply spiritual one. People I knew stood back, with their arms crossed and shook their heads as they watched me delve into this. I began to explore eastern philosophy and went a little deeper into my own yoga practice.  I began to slowly disentangle from years of conditioning through which I operated.  I knew there was no going back...only forward and forward I went.

So even though I have studied many different teachings and am determined never to be lost in  the teacher of a teaching...I have yet to find a messenger put this very universal message into a package for delivery  the way Eckhart Tolle does. It resonates with me. So I read or listen to him for a few minutes almost everyday. And of course, since his message has much of its basis in Buddhism...I studied Buddhism a little more deeply...thus the Dalia Lama quotes.  I am not a Buddhist, nor am I an Eckhart Tolle groupie ...or even a follower.  I am merely someone who finds peace in the message these individuals share.  I bring their wisdom and their words into my writing. Actually, they are often the basis or the inspiration for most of my writing here.

That is why I quote them often.

All is well.