The Power of Now...

I have begun reading a book by Eckhart Tolle - "The Power of Now". It is an extremely well-written book and easy to follow while at the same time containing profound "truths"... It starts very dynamically with the following paragraph:

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cup. "I have nothing to give you," said the stranger. Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on?" "Nothing," replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it as long as I can remember." "Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger. "No," said the beggar. "What's the point? There is nothing in there." "Have a look inside," insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.

I am the stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside the box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.

From The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

Monsters, Dirt and Pulling Things out of the Closet

I had a little more time today and decided to search the Internet... I came up to another one of those Tori excerpts which I find really interesting and useful so I have copied it here! Monsters, dirt and pulling things out of the closet.

I made a decision to stop being unconscious. And how you do that is you give yourself the keys to the unconscious room and you walk in and you go, 'What's up?' and all the little monsters come out with their party hats. [Sacramento Bee - May 8, 1992]

I think there’s so much emphasis on pushing things away, instead of pulling them out of the closet. A lot of times I just notice that people try to hide their dirt for as long as possible. Monsters, dirt, whatever you want to call it, the stuff that you censor and that you don’t really want to share with people. I think you can only do that for so long before you start losing your mind. I’m finding a lot of freedom right now in just looking at things that I really feel. We’re not encouraged to do that, and I think that that’s what makes people sick inside of themselves. You kind of want everybody else to think that you’re okay. Well, you’re okay if you have monsters! That’s what people don’t understand—everybody has many many voices going on inside of themselves. Now there is one voice, though, that is more of the ringleader, more of the innermost voice that isn’t trying to beat you up, or trying to make you feel like you can go slaughter 67 people and it’s okay. You know, the voice in there that goes, “hang on a minute, Tori, we’re really feeling lonely right now.” That inner inner voice is, to me, the most important because it can start being a bridge between all these other voices in your head. Everybody has them.