...accept what is. Since mind and resistance are synonymous, acceptance.. reconnects you with Being.

Pause thought as an initial reaction to...anything. Experiences at work leap to mind, where the temptation to respond immediately in discussions is very strong, like an itchy trigger finger. Practice being the last to speak.

"Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?" —Marcus Aurelius

This was a nickname of mine as a child. That's funny.

The ultimate effect of all the evil and suffering in the world is that it will force humans into realizing who they are beyond name and form.

Through forgiveness, and allowing the present moment to be as it is.. you dissolve discord, heal pain, dispel unconsciousness – without doing anything – simply by being and holding that frequency of intense presence.

..so-called bad things that happen.. are.. ego-created.. "drama"

No doubt. Many forms of entertainment thrive on the dramatic. The SAG-WGA strike of 2023 looks like an exemplar of a situation.

Buddha taught.. your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one. Only the illusion of time separates them.

The concept of a "moment" and "enjoying/disliking the moment" which can last for several points along a "time" line: one can be happy and unhappy in the same "moment" then. Pondering the idea that multiple emotions happen simultaneously feels like time does not exist in the moment...

Consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought things. The more you seek happiness in this way, the more is will elude you.

The collapse is an event to anitipate, no doubt. Is seeking happiness in a career that is about making things, feeding into and supporting an unconscious consumer society?

Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is your natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or struggle to attain.

Since unhappiness and happiness are one, we can receive joy from anything and everything.

"All that arises passes away." —Buddhist monk. I have learned to offer no resistence to what is; Thus I have found peace.

Word.

Once you have identified with some form of negativity.. You will then ignore, deny, and sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane.

Identifying with an adversarial "team" like a politcal party or nationality, may cause both parties to go insane...

Negativity is totally unnatural. No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it.

Preach!

Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen.. look on it as a voice saying, "Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present. Attention. Here and now. Wake up."

This behaviour discourages others from commiserating, and instead of look on the bright side of life.

Instead of having a wall of resistence inside you that gets constantly hit by things that "should not be happening," and let everything pass through you.

Purpose-driven people might be looking for a way to help, frustrated by the apparent immediacy or urgency of the situation, when in reality, being aware is an offer of help in itself, which may or may not be taken advantage of by the situation, and that is what it is.

Offer no resistence. It is as if there is notbody to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable.

Feels like resistence is also a cool form of "invisibility" in a way...

At the level of Being, all suffering is an illusion. Suffering is due to idenitification with form.

Meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving..then a moment comes when all thoughts die. Yet you are still there.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

Your perception of the world is a reflection of your consciousness: There is no objective world out there.

Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.

An infinite number of completely different worlds exists — all depending on the perceiving consciouness. Every being is a focal point of consciousness, creates its own world, and [is] interconnected [with other beings].

In a way, you don't need the world anymore. You don't even need it to be different. At this point, you can help others [just be]cause. Only those who have transcended the world can bring about a better world.

Your healing influence is primarily based not on doing but on being. Everybody will be touched by your presence and affected by the peace you emanate, whether they are conscious of it or not.

Your peace is so vast and deep that anything that is not peace disappears into it as if it had never existed. This breaks the karmic cycle of action and reaction. You eliminate unconsciousness from the world.

Who you are is always a more vital teaching and a more powerful transformer of the world than what you say, and more essential even than what you do.

Evils are the effect of unconsciousness, but you cannot eliminate them unless you eliminate their cause. True change happens within, no without.

Empathy and a desire to help need to be balanced with a deeper realization of the eternal nature of all life and illusion of pain. Let your peace flow into whatever you do, working on effect and cause simultaneously.

You cannot fight darkness or unconsciousness. If you do, the polar opposites will become strengthened and more deeply entrenched.

Stay alert and very present. Cause: your primary focus. Teaching of enlightenment: your purpose. Peace: your most precious gift to the world.

Are world leaders willing to adopt this focus, purpose, and gift giving quest, for the benefit of Earth?

Walking at night, surrounded by thick fog. A powerful flashlight cuts through the fog and creates a narrow, clear space in front of you. The fog is life, past and future; the flashlightyour conscious presence; the clear space is the Now.

Tension arises, and the body as a whole contracts. The free flow of like energy is restricted. Unless you practice surrender in your everyday life, the [causal] resistance pattern has not been dissolved.

In a state of surrender, you see clearly what needs to be done, take action, focusing on one thing at a time. Nature unfolds without dissatisfaction or unhappiness.

If your situation is unpleasant, surrender to what is the flashlight cutting through the fog. Consciousness ceases to be controlled by external conditions. You are no longer coming from reaction and resistance.

Action may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does — do not resist what is. If there is no action [to] take [in the situation], then go more deeply into the Now, more deeply into Being.

Through surrender, spiritual energy comes into the world. It creates no suffering. Unlike mind energy, it does not pollute the Earth, and is not subject to the law of polarities, which dictates that nothing can exist without its opposite.

Science has already proven that are other modalities, so I wonder to how much this so-called law applies. Are comic books keeping consumers trapped in the illusion?

External conditions being resisted tend to shift or dissolve quickly through surrender. Is is a powerful transformer of situations and people. If conditions do not shift immediately, your acceptance of the Now enables you to rise above them [external conditions]. Either way, you are free.

Only an unconscious person will manipulate others. Only an unconscious person can be manipulated. If you resist unconscious behavior in others, you become unconscious yourself.

It is perfectly possible to walk away from a situation and be in a state of complete inner nonresistance at the same time: Let it not come from resistance, but from insight [into] what is right for you at that moment. Let it be a high quality "no" that is free of all negativity and creates no further suffering.

If you [cannot] accept what is, by implication you will not be able to accept anybody the way they are. You will judge, criticize, label, reject, or attempt to change people. If you make the Now a means to an end in the future, you will make every person you relate with into a means to an end.

The ego is cunning, so be totally honest with yourself that you have relinquished your identification with a mental position and freed yourslf from your mind. When identification with mental positions is out of the way, true communication begins.

Nonresistance means "doing" becomes nonreactive. Remember the wisdom of martial arts: Don't resist the opponent's force. Yield to overcome.

Taoism's wu wei or "actionless activity" or "sitting quietly doing nothing" is a virtue and means inner nonresistance and intense alertness.

Google translates Wúwèi (无畏) as "fearlessness" and that feels more accurate to me, as the product of having intense awareness or stillness.

The ego believes that in resistance lies your strength. Resistance is weakness and fear masquerading as strength. What the ego sees as weakness is your Being in its purity, innocence, and power. The ego plays counterfeit roles to over up your "weakness," which in truth is your power.

In surrender, you become very simple, very real. Through becoming "vulnerable," you discover your true and essential invulnerability.

Drastic upheaval, loss, or suffering [causes] your world [to] not make sense anymore. It is an encounter with death, physical [and/or] psychological. The [ego], the creator of this world, collapses. Out of the ashes of the old world, a new world can then come into being.

Acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be, taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this death, you realize there is no death — and nothing to fear. Only the ego dies.

Enlightenment consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life. It means saying yes to what is. Then you don't need pain anymore. How much more pain do you need before you can make that choice? If you think you need more time, you will get more time — and more pain. Time and pain are inseparable.

Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past [or] light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. The conditioned mind is running your life.

You cannot forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. The power of Now, which is your power, renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was done to you could touch the radient essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary.

Beyond happiness and unhappiness there is peace

Looking back at this title of chapter nine, it is a notion that continues to befuddle my brain, and inspires me toward a world that realizes the grand dichotomy is an illusion. Thanks, Eckhart!

All quotes in bold typeface, except where noted otherwise, are from Eckhart Tolle's amazing book: The Power of Now (©1999) and Mark's thoughts are his own; however, he is practicing thinking less.

Highly recommended and available online! —Mark