Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Do you think of yourself as wounded?

If you have recovered from feeling wounded, and now help others who are wounded, do you think of yourself as a “wounded healer”?

Michael Brown points out in The Presence Process, which we will in the June issue of the Namaste Publishing newsletter (you can sign up for it free on this site) offer for the first time in audio format for instant download, that our true being has never been wounded and hence there is no need for healing.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

The other day, after Prince William of Wales returned to work as a rescue helicopter pilot, he and his crew were called to a judge who is seventy years old and an experience mountain climber. The judge had a heart attack while hiking and had to be winched up by the helicopter and flown to hospital.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Eckhart Tolle asks whether we experience frequent, repetitive drama in our close relationships.

The simple fact is, he says, in many of our lives “relatively insignificant disagreements often trigger violent arguments and emotional pain.”

What’s really going on when disagreements escalate into arguments and people end up getting their feelings hurt?

Eckhart explains:

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Have you ever wished that someone in your life would change? It’s a pretty common feeling.

Something the person does bothers us, perhaps several things, and we just wish they would quit behaving this way.

So, how do you get someone to change? Most of us have found that nagging, criticizing, and scolding don’t do much good, but we don’t know what else to do to get a person to alter their ways.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

You’re in a conversation with someone, when someone else walks up and begins talking to them.

Suddenly this secondary conversation takes center stage and it’s as if what you were talking about had no relevance.

The new individual on the scene may even walk away with the person you were talking with, as if you never existed.

Since situations like this occur regularly in many people’s lives, there are two aspects worth considering.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Have you ever considered that in most of our relationships as humans, we use people as a means to an end?

We tend to think of being “used” as a negative thing. People say, “You used me!” or, “I don’t like being used.”

But is being used necessarily bad?

In his books on relationships, clinical psychologist Dr David Schnarch points out that there’s nothing wrong with being “used” by someone as long as they use us well.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Have you ever met someone who, when you first encountered them, you didn’t like at all?

But then something happened that caused you to see them differently. Perhaps they became your friend or even someone you married.

“Master, yesterday Akina and I got into a terrible argument about which of your teachings was the most important.  I thought it was to drop ego and Akina thought it was to trust that the force that runs the Universe is benign, is always wanting our greatest good.”

“I got so angry at Akina.  I yelled at him, I called him names, and I even wanted to punch him in the face because he couldn’t see things my way. Today I feel awful about that.  Master, why did I get into such a state?

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

What Eckhart Tolle calls the “ego” isn’t who any of us really is. It’s just a made-up sense of ourselves that we carry around in our head.

Yet this self-image, which bears little resemblance to our authentic inner being, can be quite resistant to dissolving even when we are keenly aware of it. Not because it has any intrinsic power, but because it springs from our insecurity and feels it has to compete to prove we’re “someone.”

Daily Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

What kind of relationship do you have with yourself?

There’s a lot said and written about how we relate to ourselves, treat ourselves, and whether we show unconditional love to ourselves. We are urged to improve on the way we have learned to treat ourselves—to love ourselves more.