Playing with my new headphones, hmm very different mix to the speakers, so go set up the equaliser in itunes: how does Stevie Ray's 'Wall of Denial' sound, wooww too much bass, now lets try some Balligomingo 'falling', cellos a bit tiny where is its whole voice?... tweak a little more. Now, oh yeah, Jeff Buckley...

And so he sighs, and picks that telecaster, and it builds...

Its new Jeff. My little headphones have illuminated Jeff, they have brought him back right into my mind, I can commune with Jeff in a whole new intimate way, I am there with him, he breathes anew, he lifts me up with him to that place beyond sound.

I had to check, do I have some other version, how come it sounds so very clear and present? No, its just the new aural perspective. A new window into someone whom I, and everyone else I know, will know, and will not know, loves. Isn't life spectacular sometimes. A little shift in perspective, and a whole new world opens...

And what does he sing so sweetly, what does he breath into soul...

Words of course by Leonard Cohen

i heard there was a secret chord
that david played and it pleased the lord
but you don't really care for music, do you
well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth
the minor fall and the major lift
the baffled king composing hallelujah

hallelujah...

well your faith was strong but you needed proof
you saw her bathing on the roof
her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
and she tied you to her kitchen chair
she broke your throne and she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the hallelujah

hallelujah...

well baby i've been here before
i've seen this room and i've walked this floor
y'know i used to live alone before i knew you
i've seen your flag on the marble arch
but love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

hallelujah...

well there was a time when you let me know
what's really going on below
but now you never show that to me do ya
but remember when i moved in you
and the holy dove was moving too
and every breath we drew was hallelujah

well, maybe there's a god above
but all i've ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

hallelujah...

First: like you I am a learner. I’d like to breath easier, be a better human, and I don’t have a big beef with Eckhart. But I think his work is partial to our life, it is not the whole thing. I do not intend to diminish anything he posits, because his perspective is almost entirely spiritual, except we are humans, and we are not entirely spiritual. And this is what I am exploring. I am open to feedback on all this – what do I know?

I love Eckhart dearly and sincerely. He has us tuned in, and our left-brain switched off, and here were are in the ever present Now. Now is where it is at, make no mistake, if you don’t know what Now is you better find out now. Otherwise you won’t have a clue, you’ll be thinking about sex, or food, or a nice glass of Brunello. Yum. And there, I just lost it, I was thinking sincerely pleasant thoughts, and here I am in the pain-body again, where did Now go? What is this pain-body thing? Where did my fantasies go? My desires?

My actual problem with Eckhart and sex, is that making love is a lovely thing to anticipate. But anticipation is not in the Now. You see the problem. Eckharts book leaves us out to dry on this horny question. Ahem.

But to begin my story, have you read ‘A New Earth’? In it, Eckhart Tolle makes a brilliant and mostly eloquent drilling down and expose of our one dimensional unconscious life, and following the Buddhas path, takes us through our pain barrier. He trains us for the great trek out of the wilderness of our empty life, and, and…Except just as we get to the punch line, there is no sense of what to do next, or rather now, except be in the Now.

And that’s my problem, and probably yours too and perhaps for similar reasons. The path that our lives have taken - where I am writing this and you are reading it, is that we have suffered and tried to overcome the suffering, at some point recognizing that we are our own agents consciously and unconsciously and are getting mixed messages about what the best way out of all the shit is. But that is not my problem with ET, he does point the way, and he is beautifully on the mark with the approach and method - Get out of your own head. But what do we do when we need our own head. Its not just there for decoration!

What do we do when Now is not a good time, like when we have to actually do something like plan, think or take action. Planning your meals for the week, what car to buy, whether to chat with the cute girl at the party?

But being all in the Now, leaves something out, something lively, something earthy and sucks the fizz, sparkle and life-force kind of right out of us. It all becomes too serious, too utterly demanding, and too friggin boring if you ask me. There is a pithy statement: he has the stink of Zen. You know your gonna smell spiritual and compassionate if you take this book directly to heart. And you will want to wear the t-shirt too. And I will avoid you at a party. I would avoid me, if it was me.

‘A New Earth’ ejects us out the other end of our pathological Ego, unborn, in beginners mind, where Ego is seen as a bad thing, a painful thing, something you DO NOT WANT anymore. That’s repression that is – help, help I’m being repressed! That just becomes Shadow, as C.G. Jung called it. ET explains that the Ego as the cause of suffering. Or is it. Its not that ET has gotten it wrong, he hasn’t, he just doesn’t point anywhere past the Now with as much clarity as he did exposing the Ego’s corrosiveness in the book.

We need, after this books main point of stressing the mind of ‘Now’, to go to the next phase of our journey. To the non-pathological Ego. As C.G. Jung stated, to build our ‘Container’. Or as Genpo Roshi would say to become a ‘Human-Being’. The cause of suffering is also our cause of salvation. Our Egoic mind needs to be seen as our friend but only after serious effort at studying the Ego and it’s many ways (voices and shadow). Our Ego that is, not anyone elses. This is what zen practice seems to be all about, as the goal. This is what Jungian analysis is also all about. To build up the strength to seemingly surrender the Ego, allow the Self to be the Big Boss, and then come down off the mountain to daily life, where the Ego knows its way around. But back to Eckharts demand for Now.

For example, with the Now perspective, there is no later. Think about trying that when you get off the phone with your new hot lover whom you will see later that evening. In the Now there is NO anticipation. No anticipation of making love with your partner. Or even anticipating an cold drink after a game of sports, having an ice-cream at the beach, or trekking up a hillside and watching the sun come up. With Now, there are no love songs, no where the fuck have you been its two o’clock in the morning!, no tears at death. Now is alert, Now has no fear. It is beautiful, but it’s not a passionate lover who wants to get hot and sweaty with you. It is passive. It doesn’t need to do anything.

Now is not Home. Now is essential. It is not the essence. The essence is to bring the Now together with the Ego and holding them in unison and learning how to do that. This is Home. This is being a human being. This is understanding the Power of Now, and washing dishes. This is not needlessly worrying about your partner being late, until perhaps you should make a phone call. Its not the Now that makes the phone call. It’s the human being, it’s the part that IS attached to your partner (Now is NOT attached). The Ego actually would care very much if she got hit by a bus. Now sees it as an energy in the firmament.

So this question and answer from Eckhart’s website, takes a specific perspective to a specific question. He does not answer the question, he maintains the perspective of Now. This is fine for a spiritual teacher to do, because he is pointing in order that we figure out our own answers. But it would be nice once and a while to see what he would do too, I am from Missouri, don’t tell me, show me! Telling us that we ‘may find sex enjoyable’, is a bit funny. May find? Oh my word. Lets just say that sex in general is enjoyable. But if you have a dysfunctional perspective, it’s not just affecting your sex life. The question has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with who you are, and to a great degree, how well have you practiced understanding yourself. The question is about discipline.


Thus if you read A New Earth, realize that its job, like that of the first phase of zen practice, is to bring you to a first enlightenment. That you are not just Ego.

There is an alternative practice called BigMind that I feel goes further than ‘A New Earth’. What BigMind does extra, is to very quickly in the space of a day give you the pleasure of a Kensho experience (a first brief enlightement, or epiphany, in the moment of Now) and then deflating the Now, and then presenting the Ego back to you, to take home with you floating on a cloud of Now. But that doesn’t last, as Genpo Roshi will say. You have to live with the Ego again

…except you have been awoken - you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…

This Zen Koan
First there is a mountain (ego - self)
Then there is no mountain (BigMind, No Self)
Then there is a mountain (integration of both self and No Self)

My point in the end is that I have made all these mistakes myself, and I’d rather point them out, like pot-holes in the road to a fellow cyclist. Not so much suggesting you avoid the experience of doing all this yourself, but not getting stuck focusing on some misinterpretation of a glorious and timely book.

As my favourite zen teacher Doen Sensei would say ‘Have fun, be a little nicer, appreciate your life, dont be afraid, we are all just passing through’.

Things are pretty awful at work. Not much business. I thought about losing my job, even though I am very employable, my ‘scared’ voice spoke up and clamped its hands on the adrenaline pump and gave me a jolt. But you know, I have been practising being mindful for quite a while now, so I thought I'd take this one on, and not just 'do something'.

So I thought… hmmm lmy 'control' mind wants control again, lets examine this…This is a kind of blow by blow - like minutes of a meeting...except the committee was in my head!

-    when a negative thought (my job my future!) invokes self/ego it seems to close down the mind space where opportunities and ideas that would otherwise be liberating would flourish – the change process is not easily welcomed by the self/ego.

-    Words like disruption came to mind, the negative mind just fills my head with pessimism.

-    This creates anxiousness

-    This then leads to some sort of survival mind taking over, speeding up breathing, limiting options to fight or flight. This is felt immediately.

but then i held that and decide to 'think' that the problem was someone elses, to see if that would change how I felt...

-    ...and so if it is not you, but someone else having this problem, you the observer are not overwhelmed with anxiousness, and can think of alternative ways out of the situation with given experiences and the resources available to them.

- Though this is difficult to do if you are projecting your fears onto the other and then feeling overwhelmed on their behalf. This would be a sort of pathological empathy. Not understanding but appropriating.

I have found some of this very helpful.
And this
And this
And this
And this