Eckhart Tolle - Part 1

I took a nap today, and woke up with what I'm calling "interesting fears." Without saying everything about my existence and what's coming up (all quite benign), I get a few worries that creep up on me. So I'm busy being busy in my mind about that. It's dwelling on the future instead of the now, to use the little I know of Eckhart Tolle's vocabulary.

But after I wake up, and it's a nice, though blustery, Saturday afternoon, and it's a little warm, and I'm all alone except for the pets, and there's no sound, it's like a thought morass. A swamp up there with interesting places to slip in.

Using the word "interesting" two times like that is itself interesting, to me. Because I was listening to a CD lecture by this same Eckhart Tolle while laying down, willing to doze off, which happened. The CD -- I'll eventually listen to it again because I dozed off maybe 20 minutes into it -- was the first of a series of talks given at Findhorn Retreat. And he uses the word "interesting," right at the beginning, as what their time at Findhorn won't be. There's an audience there and they laugh. Now, since I have earbuds I can hear everything, I'm listening for the laughter of the audience. My mental picture of them is of people wanting to go along with what Eckhart has for them, yet also looking for the interesting. Hence, every little titter in the audience appears to be someone looking for a reason to stimulate an outburst of laughter from the others and an encouragement to Eckhart Tolle to say other funny things, thereby making it interesting.

But he says at the beginning it won't be interesting, and the reason exactly why that is is escaping me in part. Let me hack it out: because interesting means analysis, like analyzing an oak tree instead of being with the oak tree. But what's wrong with analysis? I guess it's a mental digging (future oriented) instead of a mental awareness (present oriented), thereby postponing the joy/stillness instead of being in the already-always-there stillness. The topic for the retreat, I think, is stillness.

Right at the beginning, Eckhart Tolle has this very low-key delivery, and I'm thinking, Yeah! But then it becomes more conventional a presentation. But like I said, I'm busy dozing off not too far into it, waking up once and it's over with, dozing back off, then waking up with "interesting fears." I might have exorcised some of them by writing this.