“Master, why don’t you ever tell us stories about when you were young like us too?  What were your adventures, your delights, your challenges? Who were your friends and what were they like?”

“Bizah, I don’t go to the past these days unless I need to do so. I find that I have all I need right now, here in the present moment, to teach you what I have learned and you still need to learn.”

“Also, that young boy I was no longer exists – except in memory, which can be sweet but also distorting.”

“Master, when I run, I don’t know if I should just run until my body tells me to stop or to set some time and distance goals for myself each day.”

“What do you want to do, Bizah?

“Just run until my body tells me I have had enough that day.”

“Then do that.”

“Master, you said that if I run long enough, I will come to the time when I feel I am being run. How is that?”

There is an ancient story of a holy man who decided it was his time to move on to heaven.  He went to knock at heaven’s door.  God responded, “Who is there?”

The holy man answered, “God, it is me.” 

God answered, “Go away, there is not room here for you.”

Daily Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Whenever you hear public figures, whether in politics or in the media, attacking other people, you already know they aren’t the right people to lead us into what Eckhart Tolle calls A New Earth and Jesus called “the kingdom of God.”

When we have a need to attack our fellow humans, we are coming from what Eckhart refers to as “the little me,” the ego, which is a highly unconscious state. No answers lie in unconsciousness.

When fear takes hold, it’s so very easy to draw back from bold initiatives. We tend to conserve, horde, protect.

But this kind of reaction doesn’t come from our essence. It isn’t a present, centered response to the crisis we are in.

On the contrary, the fearful mentality that’s taken hold of so many is a betrayal of our true being.

In essence, we are creatures who naturally care for one another. This is because we are self-manifestations of the infinite Presence that’s the heart of reality, the very definition of which is love.

Having lived in Louisiana for 20 years, mostly in the New Orleans area until shortly after Hurricane Katrina, and having fished in the marshes, it was easy for me to see how a member of the US Congress became choked up and couldn’t deliver his speech recently. This is a sad, sad situation for everyone involved, the wildlife, and the ecosphere itself.

It’s possible that the real Robin Hood was a Yorkshireman from Barnsdale. I like to think so, since I’m from Yorkshire. Whatever the case, he’s a character in literature and games to whom people have been endeared for a very long time.

That’s probably because there’s a bit of the Robin Hood in all of us, in that in our heart we really don’t buy into the oppressive systems of our world but long to be caring toward our fellow humans—long for A New Earth, when higher consciousness will reign, not power and greed.