I haven't been watching Oprah during the live event of Eckhart Tolle, interviews about, The New Earth, on Monday nights, but I have been watching after the fact when it is a good time for me to watch. And I have been just recently listening to Elizabeth Lessor take questioners on the radio online (http://www2.oprah.com/xm/ane/ane_main.jhtml), and find this radio show, tho short, to be very valuable. I think many people may be more drawn to something that isn't such a big deal, when it comes to calling in or asking questions. I mean Oprah is big exposure, and you will always be on that film with your questions, right ( for posterity)?
Also it isn't dominated by Oprah who doesn't really understand this very well but whose job it is to make it easy to understand??? (that has to be a real problem in itself, and besides in every crowd there is someone who tries to restate what a Guru type says, as if he isn't adequately expressing what needs to be expressed) But Oprah has a good heart, (as we all do), and she is trying to get to the bottom of this, the thing is, just because she has been successful doesn't mean she knows what she is talking about.
Eckhart is still using vocabulary that is elusive, which will elude us.
But isn't he a great guy? Aren't YOU a great person?
First, I am aware of the fact that the mystery that all this is wrapped in, using words that are so difficult for us to understand, like "ego, and observer, or witness." Vague terms to say the least,
I wonder why these words are being used. They’re ambiguous.. I mean, where is this so called ego? This is just a process of the left brain, this thinking and remembering, and even manipulating to get what we need.
I believe that down the ages wise men and medicine men and so on have used some knowledge in a way to create a mystique, when there is really no mystique at all. But as a result they have a job in their culture, usually a very powerful one.
I did love what Elizabeth said to a caller that the sort of out of body experience was the witness witnessing what the ego was saying. (I would say it was the sensory part of the brain, the right side, aware of the problem solving part of the brain,( left side, being quiet, and the sensory side noticing the difference). Isn't that easier to understand than trying to understand a concept like ego, or witness?
I myself moved in and out of this space of left and right brain activity for many years, most often I was in the right side, calm, and sensory, and it was like I was away, well, it was like left brain was on vacation. It is a big change, (it feels otherworldly, because it is rare that we experience this after we begin using the left side of the brain as we become aware of ourselves in these structural terms that language applies to) and I have to say that I am predominately back in the left brain, not the ‘be here now right brain’. It makes no difference really, at this point anyway. So maybe no one wants to hear what I have to say because I am not exactly always being the witness, or maybe I am, but I still complain, etc. But I don’t act like I am enlightened. I simply AM.
When you live out of the left side of the brain, you intellectualize everything, you problem solve, and you worry, weigh things, remember things, categorize, manipulate, etc.
The right side of the brain is a sensory part of the brain. Our earliest memories are not of left side brain, but that experiencing was sensory; right side, seeing, feeling, touching, tasting, hearing. That is what we do when we aren't thinking, and trying to solve problems, etc.
For instance, my first memory I see my brown legs hanging over a bed ( you know how your legs are too short to dangle?) on white sheets that smell like fresh air, and cotton, I see a woman with brown arms carrying a tray containing a carnival glass pitcher with beads of perspiration al over it, filled with water, and matching glasses. I had no thoughts connected with it, I was three years old and was in Mexico for the first time, staying in a hotel there (all the way from my home state of Pennsylvania) From this memory I surmise I was hot and the bed was comforting, the senses were comforting. I surmise this memory wasn't a memory about something stressful for my body, and which would overwhelm my sensory brain's functions.
However, lets be honest, many children and adults run into more stress at a certain age than they are ready for. Look at schools; they assume every child is supposed to learn the same things in the same time. This isn't the way we are as human beings. We all have different experiences happening in and out of school, and are more or less sensory, more or less prone to stress.
I think we have to experience both sides of the brain to understand one another and to help one another, and to mature. I don't like the way Eckhart and Oprah use terms that sound judgmental concerning those who complain, or whatever because they are simply trying to figure their lives out, to understand themselves, which includes the stressors, the brain activity that overwhelms. We simply need to understand brain function better.
I think, in other words, that there is another way to explain this to impart this idea of awareness, consciousness, etc., and to further peace of mind, inner perception and, externally on earth, which is created by our inner peace).
I normally don't write for others to make comments, because it isn't important to me, as I write and post for my own enjoyment, but I do hope that if you have any questions, or comments, you will feel comfortable to email me, or comment and I will answer the best I can, or refer you to some other book to find answers.
If you want help to stop brain activity, and it being easy to do, I am so happy to help you. I wouldn't turn anyone way who I could help, and I do have some experience with this that is very pragmatic and helpful.
Also studies in creativity show the right side of the brain is not ‘creative’, the frontal lobe is creative, and it acts as a receiver, not as a source.
So whenever we are more in sensory brain, we are also freer to download information from the frontal lobe receiver side of the brain. So in a way there is a mystery, and in a way there is no mystery at all. It is simply a mystery to the left side because it is not able to sense and create. It can only use certain data and try to explain that, but it is cut off from creativity and sensory input.
And basically since we are human and have a brain, and live in this world that is problematic, the left side of the brain will involve itself. It is limited, however.
Now whatever you are; the ambiguous I AM, or the ambiguous EGO, simply you are energy. (Einstein said that matter and energy are the same thing)., you do come into contact with difficulties and I believe that stress can cause that voice to become very strong, that left brain to be very stimulated. Habitual ways of thinking come into being as a result, and we all know that habits are difficult to break. It basically takes 21 days to break a habit, and the most comprehensive habit to break is the habitual thinking by the left side of the brain.
I think it is much easier to pinpoint this reality while my left brain is processing .. (making me a banana), realizing I have cognitive dissonance in my left hemisphere, and sensory input in my right hemisphere, being outweighed by the left hemisphere, and simply realize, “ my brain is doing this, my left brain is overloaded, instead of saying, I am a complainer, or whatever judgment we might make about a self, when it is merely the brain doing this, We can dis-identify once we can pinpoint it as brain activity and leave it at that..
Don't get me wrong, I love Tolle, just think he is adorable, and certainly is making the most of what he experienced, and me, I am just muddling through life like the rest of you after 8 years of being awake, and falling back asleep (if I use their terminology) but the truth is the reason I did this was because I didn't understand what was going on. I was very young and alone when I experienced this "awakening" or breaking the habit of left side dominance. When I began to get confused about it, no one had any answers that made any sense, and 'I, also have read more spiritual books than should be legal,' to quote Elizabeth Lessor's words on the same topic of having read so many books. If you are still reading them, however, you probably aren’t at peace, and of course this is something we go in and out of al our lives..don’t fight it, it is all ok.
I always felt that each of us have to write our own books, we have to find our own way through the maze of our own brains. ( see our own way to truth and peace)
If I write my truth, and lecture my truth, I am doing no more than anyone who is exercising the left brain over and over in whatever they might be repeating..left brain talks, right brain lives.
Most books are way too wordy, likewise as Oprah said when Eckhart asked for a moment of silence on TV, she said this isn’t usually done on TV. Books are usually wordy. TV is wordy. Movies, especially bad ones are very wordy.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote a very small book called Science and Health, and was told it needed to be longer. Yet, a wonderful Christian Science practitioner I met, Mrs. Willoughby said a few words to me that sounded completely crazy, but I realized I had no better idea. It wasn't complicated, and I used it in unison with what the original ‘Be Here Now’ person, Ram Dass gave us all in the 1970’s.
Ram Dass wrote ‘Be Here Now’, (get a copy) it is a classic book and most of his money is donated to help people. Mrs Willoughby said to me, "you aren't meant to carry these burdens, just give them to the Lord, and she raised her hand over her head, as if to give it away. I left thinking she was a nut, but I did instantly realize I had no better idea (concerning my worries). So I began noticing when I was worrying to do as she and I gave it away, ( so to speak, I shifted my attention form the left brain thought processes. As Ram Dass suggested, I brought my attention to what my hands were doing at the moment. (seeing, touching; sense awareness)
I didn't ever sit down to meditate, I lived this, moment to moment, I struggled, but I broke the habit, Yet at that time, I was not aware it was a habit of my brain, so a mystery was still in place.
I progressed realizing it as a brain thing, yet the ‘mystery’ was still in place, and I had no one who wasn't into some mystery belief to turn, afterall, I lived in the middle of Texas. (A little girl from Pennsylvania, in the exact middle of Texas). I awoke, by all standards, completely, yet there was a doubt in my mind, and as a result of not understanding completely, the left brain was still involved, to a small degree, which grew larger as time went on because this is what happens when we don't value that left side of the brain and understand the difference between it's role and the role of the right side, and frontal lobe.
Furthermore, people who might know this better can capitalize on it to make a living off of the rest of us. Well, we do all have to make a living, I suppose, and yet, I don't believe those who truly understand will do this. I believe the ones who truly understand will struggle to live and share information freely for the good of all mankind. As Christ did, as The Buddha did.
Having said this, I also want to say this work of mine is copyrighted because I don’t want someone to use it in their book to sell to people when it is free here for all to read and to see and to be able to use.
So how do we use this information to get free of a bad habit of left brain activity?
I want to explore this, I am sure there are others exploring this. I want to recommend a book, The Brain That Changes Itself. I recommend it because it is honest, and not about mystery, or spirituality, or religion, but simply about our brains and how they work.
I am not saying that we are not more than our brains, I am however saying that we are energy, in the form of matter, and when we die we remain energy, but in another form, a form of pure energy.
Anyone who is able to shift their habits of being imbalanced by left-brain activity is capable of downloading the reality of what they are from the energy we intrinsically possess. It is there waiting to be experienced, once we balance our thinking; sensory input and creative intuitive universal communication we believe is miraculous, yet, is really quite ordinary, the way life really is when we are balanced in our brains, THAT being our ’natural’ condition.
