“Constant alertness is required to not let the ego take it over. The challenges that come into your lives – either the challenge drags you into old conditioned ego reactions or wakes you up more.”

“Everyday that you do – you use small steps. Not look to some future moment that promises some greater fulfillment – that is a delusion. The main focus must be in the doing.”

As a young individual, you can easily think about the future – a career, loving relationship and whatever else. It is easy to lose sight of the NOW.

Tolle says “To master any endeavor – you must be total in what you do.”

Thinking leads to behaviors. Negative thinking effects everything from relationships, to health, money and happiness. When you begin to notice thoughts and your excessive concern with an illusion about the past or the future, you lose your personal power.

You create your thoughts and you have the power to change them!

The first thing to do is just notice that you have them and be compassionate with yourself (you might find you are saying mean things to yourself). Let them speak and pay attention to your self-talk, once you know they are there, then you have the power to change them.

“See if you can catch, this is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind-pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are he awareness that is aware of the voice. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind. The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.”

I hear lots of women who are critical about their looks, especially when it comes to weight and body image. Notice your voice, how it effects your behavior and produces results. You are not your ego. Your inner essence is filled with love- make a choice to listen to your inner voice. .

“The ego creates separation, and separation creates suffering. The ego is therefore clearly pathological. Apart from the obvious ones such as anger, hatred, and so on, there are other more subtle forms of negativity that are so common they are usually not recognized as such, for example, impatience, irritation, nervousnesss, and being ‘fed up.’ They consititue the background unhappiness that is many people’s predominant inner state. You need to be extremly alert and absolutely present to be able to detect them. Whenever you do, it is a moment of awakening, of disidentification from the mind.”

The Secret of Happiness

All of the above are assumptions, unexamined thoughts that are confused with reality. They are stories the ego creates to convince you that you cannot be at peace now or cannot be fully yourself now. Being at peace and bein who you are, that is, being yourslef are one.

How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment.

People are attached to things all over the world and living in New York City, where nature isn’t easily found and shopping is- it can be easy to let your thoughts get attached to labels. The first thing that comes to my mind is exclusive designer labels, such as, Prada, Gucci, Fendi, etc. all the top designers.

Labeling things by what you have or don’t have does not doesn’t define who you are. People get so absorbed in their thoughts, they can become totally unaware of what really is (other people and their surroundings). The ego resists the present moment- it gives more attention to the past and the future. The ego overlooks the now.

“Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into a sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it ha unfathomable depth. All we can perceive experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.

Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also with the source of all life out of which it came.”

98% of our thoughts are useless and repetitive. Your ego is a false sense of self identification of form and has an endless desire for more. me and my story/ your personal history which you identify with your past. Most people identify with their story- their failures, successful what has happened. In your essence, that is not who you are- it is no more then a bundle of thoughts, that you believe who you are.

The ego can put you into a box and create limitations based on thoughts and perceptions. For example, going into your story and then labeling it as who you are (e.g.,”I am poor,” “I am overweight”, “I am beautiful”, “I am smart,” etc.).

Eckhart Tolle made a statement last night on the Webcast, “When you ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ You’re not supposed to answer the question, you’re supposed to leave it blank.

I encourage you to make friends with the present moment and be comfortable with who you are as you are- with nothing else defining you.

Eckhart Tolle raises a huge question, “Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness?”

Are you able to become aware that there is more than what you see and think there is? Can you be able to be okay with all parts of the whole – both good and bad? Are you looking for a deeper meaning of happiness and fulfillment?

The first step to becoming more conscious is understanding the different types of conversation in your mind. You might see a direct correlation with the thoughts you have to the results of your life. When you become aware of things you don’t like about yourself or your life you must be willing to be responsible for them.

“To recognize one’s own insanity is of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.”

Try to understand your “dark side” (or in Eckhart’s words “insantiy”).

What is your dark side? Those weird habits, those things you don’t want anybody to know about (e.g., how your pick your ear wax when nobody is looking). Are you okay with the parts of yourself that people don’t know and cannot see? Can you examine your thoughts wrapped around the truth you don’t want to admit to yourself or others? Are you truly okay and at peace with these parts of yourself?

When you begin to recognize the chatter in your mind, you then can start to break through limiting thought patterns. Get intimate with those annoying demons in your head and put up a fight. Make love instead of war with them. Get to know what the different voices sound like in your head. The voice that strives for power, the voice that’s afraid and wants to protect you from harm, the voice of desire to be great. What does the devil who wants you to fail sound like? How can you tell it to “Shut the heck up!”?

Begin to understand your ego based thoughts – fear, greed and the desire for power bring “a distortion in your perception of other people and yourself. Through them, you misinterpret every situation, leading to misguided action…”

If you’re motivated by fearful thoughts and take action based on a thought coated with fear, most likely the results will be something that you’re afraid of (e.g., failure). If your motivation has a good intention attached to the thought and a does not have an attachment to the outcome, I will move to a place of acceptance and joy in the experience.

When you understand your motive (fear, greed or desire), you can then release it. Allow yourself to detach from this motivation and move into a place of receptive stillness for growth. From here you can begin to understand and interpret information which can give you an opportunity for expansion beyond your original thought.

Being present to the moment is having healthy motivation and no attachment (thoughts like “this better work out or else…”) to the outcome.

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you and allowing that goodness to emerge.”

This can happen when you examine your inner reality. It’s already there within you, you just have to quiet the ego, rise above thought and listen.