The Third Way To Truth

Ethics and inner values without religious content [a spiritual practice and teaching] are like water, something we need everyday for health and survival.  Ethics and inner values based on a religious context are more like tea.  The tea we drink is mostly composed of water, but it also contains some other ingredients-tea leaves, spices, perhaps some sugar or, at least in Tibet, salt-and this makes it more nutritious and sustaining and something we want everyday.
-Dalai Lama (Desktop Calendar, Andrews McMeel, 2018)


We are all going to reach the truth eventually about what is really important and who we really are.  That's a given.  There are three ways we reach this truth, according to Eckhart Tolle (Omega 2).  We can  become "enlightened" :

• at the moment of our death
• after enough intense suffering to create a hole in our sense of little self
• and through spiritual teachings and /or practice when we are ready.

Death will take us to  the Truth:

Of course, the first one is the hard way.  But most of us will go through life in a bubble of ignorance or denial, thinking we "know" that which we do not know.  We will have this idea of who we are which usually entails our body, the personality by which we are known by others, our active minds, the roles we played, the things we did or owned etc etc.  When we breathe that last breath, however, all those things are not going to matter a lick are they? We are not going to take them with us are we?  The truth is definitely going to shine on us then as we meet head on the Grace of God. We will be enlightened then.  :)


Suffering  can take us to the Truth:

The second way is also a hard way.  We can suffer.  We can live in a mental experience that the world is bad and out to get us.  We can spend our days in our heads supporting this belief by collecting grievances, complaining, building an argument against the now and in turn against life, we can blame and point fingers and we can suffer such great unrelenting pain as we realize that no matter how hard we try to fix and control things out there we still feel like crap!

We can go through our lives like this until we get to the first way of being enlightened....or.... we can finally crack and break open from the suffering long before our time here is up.  Such intense suffering can actually be the door way to the truth without us having to die first.  When who we thought we were falls to pieces around us, we can see who we truly are.  When the things we sought after are taken away, lost or never found...we can see that they were never important in the sense that they never had the power to bring us to the peace we actually longed for. Suffering can turn us toward the only place healing can be found...the mind, the inner self. Suffering then can be beautiful...a portal to the very thing death takes us to...God.

Teachings can take us to the Truth

The third way is actually the best and easiest way but few of us will take this path to enlightenment until we are faced with death or extreme suffering. There are teachers and teachings all around us speaking of this Grace and where to find it but we too often shut them out.  Our ego's do not want us listening to them because they have another agenda.  And we, without enlightenment of any kind , cannot see that we are not our egos.  We become what they tell us we are, not what God reminds us we are, when we are ready to listen. So all this spiritual stuff may become  just a bunch of "woo-woo nonsense" because it doesn't support ego's path for us....which points us 'out there' instead of 'in here'. We cannot learn what is there to learn until we are ready.  Too many of us are just not ready. If we do not learn at least some of the basics we will not see a spiritual practice as important to our understanding of life and Self.

By the Grace of God

Luckily, according to Tolle, the Grace of God is going to step in in one way or another to help us learn what we are here to learn. (Omega 2). This little self that keeps us from truly understanding the greater Self has a self destruct mechanism in it. It is going to eventually dissolve in one big Kaboom at the moment of our death or piece by piece throughout our days  through what we call suffering from life events.

When cracks in this false self appear, Grace shines through leading us to truth of what is really important.  Why?  Because we are ready.  We need to be ready and willing to learn.  We can begin on the path to  enlightenment then. What those teachers  and teachings are expressing starts to make sense...and not necessarily to the mind...but to  the greater Self that runs the show that makes its appearance more and more frequently.  We see where they are pointing to and we go inward for further understanding.  If we are lucky, suffering will be replaced by the peace of this understanding, long before our time here is up.

Well that is what I get from all this.  But it really is not important what I believe...you need to start questioning what you believe and why? Don't you think?

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle (March, 2017) Omega, 2. Namaste Publishing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37b6-C2QUdg