My 'A-ha' moment

I've been re-reading a favorite book of mine called 'A new Earth' by Ekhart Tolle. And the other night while I was reading my scriptures, a phrase from his book came to mind.

I was reading different passages about the virtues and nature of Jesus Christ, not just his teachings and works. But who HE was as a person. And as I gave thought to what he identified with, which was nothing, it made the guilt of what I identify with seem heavy.

Ekhart Tolle talks about 'Ego' as identification having a form. Meaning, who we 'think' we are is based on what we are surrounded by. I tend to identify with my gender, or being a mother, or my religion, my family, my health, my checkbook, my home, and more. We create around us a false reality to allow ego to survive in how it 'thinks' our life should be. And sometimes what we 'think' is reality comes from resentments of what we think we deserve that we see others having. Or what we think others do not deserve.

If you're with me so far, thanks! I promise there is a point.

So in contemplating about how we 'think' I started understanding the wisdom of the commandment "Thou shalt not covet." It isn't because it's mean spirited towards someone else. I mean, it is. But to covet is to establish one person as superior and the other inferior. To judge the fruits of someone else's works against your own. Which in turn, feeds the ego to determine how reality should be to survive the tumultous world that we live in.

So back to Ekhart Tolle's book, he said something that I contemplate often. "I am not the thought. What liberation to realize I am not the voice in my head. [or the feelings i acquire.] Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness prior to the thought, the space in which the thought- or the emotion or sense perception, happens."

So if I am not my home, my religion, my gender, my many things that I do and act by every day, but I am the thought preceeding those things, the wisdom of "Garnish thy thoughts unceasingly" becomes very valuable. And to shed the tendency to covet, and judge others, I have tried to give more weight to the thought of it first, and turn those thoughts into admiration for that person's hard work or sacrifices that gave them acquisitions of which I might tend to covet.

In everything of this world, there is a spiritual and a physical element. The tangible, and the ethereal. The creation, and the birth. In physical birth, there is a transition period before something comes from the spiritual world, into this world. Much like the dark and the light, the greatest stillness and silence in the world is in the darkest part right before the dawn. The calm before storms. The thought preceeding the reaction or the identification. That is where spirit speaks, where God lives.

And it all came back around for me when I read in Exodus, as Moses spake to God, and God told him to tell the children of Israel that he would deliver them out of Egypt. Moses asked God "What is his name [who sends Moses] what shall I say to them?" "And God said unto Moses I AM THAT I AM, and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."

His name is his nature, he is omnipresent. In all things, the beginning AND the end, no time or identification of any one thing, he is eternal. Jesus Christ taught "At that day ye shall know that I am in my father, and ye in me, and I in you." (John 14:20)

The place of my origination is stillness, from which all creation originates. -Wayne Dyer