Top 5 My Inner Medium Posts of All Time!

As I continue to develop the idea I call The Passionate Why the amount of time I am able to give to this blog is dwindling. So I thought I would do a quick list of the 5 most successful posts I have ever had (in terms of views) since I started this way back in 2013.

I have never been someone who got tons of views on my blog(with one exception just below) so this is hardly a way for me to boast. But it is fun to take a trip back in time and see which one’s were seen by the most readers.

Here we go!

1 – The 7 Best Online Resources for Spiritual Growth

With almost 6000 views to date this one really surprised me. It started out getting just a couple of views per day but all of a sudden it took off and I had no idea why. I was getting 10 views per day and it was still growing! Finally I checked out the search terms that people were using to find it and the top one was “Spiritual Videos”. So I plugged that into google and to my amazement I was a page 1 result on a pretty generic search term. I was excited and I have no idea how it happened. I have been as high as number 4 and if you do it right now I believe I will be 5th. It is simply a summary of all the places I visited online to learn more about spirituality and to help heal myself. I guess other people found them useful too.

2 – The Honest Guys – Guided Meditations

Number 2 is a distant second at 163 views 🙂 These two guys put together an amazing YouTube channel that I once visited much more than I do now. I guess that is a good sign. They are such a helpful duo and their channel never has any negativity in the comments. Very rare on YouTube!

3 – A Passionate 5 Minute Video on the Self by Eckhart Tolle

At 152 views this is probably my favourite video that I have ever posted. Eckhart covers so much ground in such a short period that it is awe inspiring. He covers Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Dalai Lama. There also seemed to be more energy behind his words here than is normal for Eckhart. If you haven’t already you should watch it, just wonderful!

4 – Simply This – A Must Read Transcript of a Satsang with Mooji

A somewhat surprising 113 views for a short post linking to another site. Mooji posts some of the transcripts of his Satsangs online but I rarely read through them. For some reason I gave this one a look and I found it very powerful so I shared it on my blog. Mooji has played such a huge role in my spiritual development I can’t even begin to describe. I even managed to get my wife to listen to him! His voice really helps her fall asleep 🙂

5 – When You Are Steadfast in Your Abstention of Thoughts of Harm

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I love quotes, posting my favourites of others and even making my own. At 99 views this is the only quote that cracked the top 5. It is a very nice quote by a spiritual teacher I don’t know very well named Patanjali. The idea that a simple quote has the power to convey centuries of spiritual teachings fascinates me. To me spirituality is not about content, or concepts, or knowledge. It is about what is the witness to all of those.

Well there you have it. I may still post on here occasionally but in the meantime I hope to see you over at my new home. Cheers and have a great weekend!

On Vigilance and Being Present

In the video below Gautam Sachdeva ends with some excellent advice originally stated by Nisargadatta Maharaj. He says to read the Bhagavad Gita from the point of Krishna.

After hearing that I thought, perhaps I could read “I Am That” from the perspective of Nisargadatta himself. So I picked up the book, turned to a random chapter and started reading.

Whenever Nisargadatta would be responding to a questioner I would read as if his wisdom were coming from me. I didn’t have to think about the words, or totally understand them, I just had to act as if they were spontaneously arising in me. Actually, that’s probably how they came to him anyways.

To my amazement it had a profound impact. The words he spoke came from such depth that by simply saying them, without polluting them with my thoughts or analysis, I was taken on a wonderful ride. It was as if new levels of consciousness were revealed to me.

Please watch the video below and heed his advice!

The Foundation For All Abundance

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

– Eckhart Tolle

Travelling At The Speed Of Truth

My mind was blown this morning when I found this article after googling “Why does time slow down at the speed of light?”

But it turns out that time doesn’t slow down at the speed of light, it doesn’t exist at all! The article goes on to say that “Everything in the Universe travels at light speed. Always.” Only it is our combined speed through both space and time that is considered. The faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time.

I found another article on the topic of light speed that really got my mind melting. It’s a blog post on the site ‘Ask A Mathematician‘ Speaking about relativity it states the following:

“Whenever there’s a “time effect” there’s a “distance effect” as well, and in this case we find that infinite time dilation (no time for photons) goes hand in hand with infinite length contraction (there’s no distance to the destination).”

Since time and distance go hand in hand not only does the photon not experience time, it does not experience distance either!

From the perspective of the photon it is everywhere in the universe at the same time!

Wow.

Just wow.

If a photon does not experience time nor distance then they also could not have had a beginning. Photon’s must have always existed. And without a beginning, there will be no end. At least from the photon’s point of view. We may well see a big crunch (not literally of course), and then a subsequent big bang. But this can mean nothing to the eternal photon.

What exactly does it mean to not experience time? Does it mean to be frozen at a particular point in time? We have all heard the story of the man who left earth travelling near the speed of light for 3 months only to return and everyone is 50 years older. This seems to hint that time is getting compressed.

However, in the distance analogy above I inferred that to not experience distance means that the photon is everywhere. So if the photon does not experience time, is it not in every time rather than a single, infinitely compressed point?

In spirituality we often speak of the light of consciousness. It is that part of your true self that doesn’t experience time, and doesn’t experience distance, but it is the pure witness to both.

Is there a link between this light of consciousness and this eternal photon light described above or is this analogy meant purely metaphorically?

Perhaps they are mirrors of each other. As photon light illuminates the universe it is reflected as a form through perception within my consciousness. But does it do more than that?

To perceive an object, or form, the light first enters our eyes, shapes our minds, and then creates an image.

Think about it for a moment. This series of eternal photons that exist everywhere, and at every time, has penetrated our bodies and shaped our perception of absolutely everything!!!

This certainly hints at much bigger things about light than just physical properties. When Eckhart Tolle underwent his transformation one of his first realizations was that there was much more to light than we could ever imagine.

I am drawn to think that light may be the ultimate source of our true selves, of infinite wisdom, and of peace and joy. Jesus said “I am the light of the world”. And if he was, then we all must be.

Enlightenment on Death Row

In the Eckhart Tolle clip below he mentions an American woman, Karla Faye Tucker, whom while on death row for two brutal murders underwent a intense spiritual transformation and became an incredibly peaceful being. Listen to Eckharts description first (I have started the clip at the right time) and then I have included an interview with Karla in another clip just below that.

Sermon On The Body – Eckhart Tolle

From page 116 of ‘The Power of Now’:

What you perceive as a dense physical structure called the body, which is subject to disease, old age, and death, is not ultimately real – is not you. It is a misperception of your essential reality that is beyond birth and death, and is due to the limitations of your mind, which having lost touch with Being, creates the body as evidence of its illusory belief in separation and to justify its state of fear. But do not turn away from the body, for within that symbol of impermanence, limitation, and death that you perceive as the illusory creation of your mind is concealed the splendour of your essential and immortal reality. Do not turn your attention elsewhere in your search for the Truth, for it is nowhere else to be found but within your body.

Do not fight against the body, for in doing so you are fighting against your own reality. You are your body. The body that you can see and touch is only a thin illusory veil. Underneath it lies the invisible inner body, the doorway into Being, into Life Unmanifested. Through the inner body, you are inseparably connected to this unmanifested One Life – birth less, deathless, eternally present. Through the inner body, you are forever one with God.

A Collection of Quotes for These Troubled Times

“If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds. Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within. Those who abhor war must get war out of their system. Without peaceful people how can you have peace in the world? As long as people are as they are, the world must be as it is”

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

-Gandhi

 

“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”

– Ramana Maharshi

 

“When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity– what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.”

“Once you have conceptualized a person, violence becomes almost inevitable. This is because you are not seeing them as a human being anymore. It becomes impossible for you to have any kind of empathy with another individual who does not fit into your collective mind structure.”

– Eckhart Tolle

 

“There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.”

– Albert Camus

 

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

-Albert Einstein

 

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

-Martin Luther King

The Link Between Psychedelic Drugs & The Spiritual Experience

Below is footage from the 1950’s of the effects that LSD has on a seemingly ‘normal’ young woman. Watching it and hearing her words she seems to be describing a very intense spiritual experience. Her sense perceptions are heightened as she talks of seeing every molecule, she is immersed in a feeling of oneness with everything including the interviewer, duality no longer makes sense to her as she was asked if the experience was pleasant or unpleasant and couldn’t respond. Please watch as it makes for very interesting viewing.

After seeing that I recalled a video with Eckhart Tolle where he compares the use of acid with being fully immersed in the now. Check that out below (I have started the link where he begins talking about acid):

Another interesting video on the topic is by Jason Silva from the Shots of Awe channel on YouTube. He compares psychedelic hallucination with imagination and that modern technology is basically how we manifest these imaginings into reality. Enjoy!

You can only teach that which is part of your own experience

This is a wonderful video clip from Eckhart Tolle on the true nature of spiritual teaching. You can find the clip by following the link below to his website.

I have a desire to share my realization

Am I in control of my thoughts?

There is no difference in being aware of a tree and being aware of a thought.

So why is it so easy to align my identity with the contents of a thought and not the condition of the tree? The tree could be beautiful or ugly, tall or short, alive or dead, sturdy or weak, and it does not affect the “I” in any way.

A thought on the other hand can be kind or harsh, pure or impure, moral or immoral, and the “I” is always drastically affected. We align our identity with the thought and then cast judgment upon it. This judgment will either make us want to hold on to that thought or run far away from it as fast as we can. This conditioned reflex to become one with the thought is based solely upon the following statement.

“I am in control of my thoughts”

In the pursuit of our own bliss it now becomes imperative to either prove or disprove this statement above. In beginning this investigation the first and most obvious question is this: Who is this “I”?

If we are going to know the “I” we must first understand our own capacity to ‘know’. Knowledge in the conventional sense is perception analyzed with thought to create concepts. The bottleneck in this process is perception itself. What can not be perceived can not be turned into a thought, and thus not turned into a concept.

Digging deep into the act of perception we can see that there are actually three things required: the perceived, perception, and the perceiver. In the example of the tree we can understand that the tree is the perceived, eyesight is the perception, and then what is the perceiver? My first instinct is to say that it is the brain.

But is my brain also perceived? I can’t see my own brain, though I suppose I could with some major surgery and a mirror. I could also touch it through similar means. So then, can the brain be both the perceiver AND the perceived? I mean, it is the brain that translates what has been perceived through eyesight into an image.

So the brain must be a part of perception and NOT the perceiver.

Who is this damned perceiver then? The celebrated YouTube guru Mooji knowingly points seekers by asking “Can the perceiver be perceived?”. Nisargadatta Maharaj says “The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.” Initially this leaves us with a most unsatisfying conclusion. If I can not perceive the “I”, then I can never truly know who I am.

Getting back to the original statement we are examining, if I can never know the “I” then it would be nonsensical to assume that this “I” is in control of my thoughts. In fact in not knowing the “I” it is meaningless to lay claim to “my” thoughts at all.

That leaves us with “control”. Can thoughts be controlled? Do you know the next thought that is going to pop into your mind? It seems that we often get the thoughts we want the least. Through resisting a thought, that for all intents and purposes appeared randomly in your consciousness, we empower it. Continual resistance trains your brain to think your most undesirable thoughts at a most distressing frequency. It is only when you give up this control unequivocally that you release it.

A resisted thought is like a prisoner in our brain.

Eckhart Tolle rhetorically asks “What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is?” Such a thought is being denied it’s own existence and therefore can not run it’s course into nothingness. It is the nature of things to come and go.

The idea of control is problematic on many levels. We can’t define that “I” who is doing the controlling; the thoughts that I want to control can’t even be “my” thoughts without a known “I”; and any attempts to control thinking seems to have a substantial negative effect.

Lets modify the primary sentence in question. Lets toss out the first word “I”, and along with it the last two “my thoughts” as we know them to be either false or unknowable. The middle phrase “in control of” seems to be rife with issues so lets drop it as well. That leaves us with just one word, “Am”. Seeing a similarity to ‘Amen’ I performed a quick etymology check revealing it’s intended meaning as “so be it” or “truth”.

Let us conclude with the only truth to be found in our initial sentence; Am. There is an obvious temptation to use the phrase “I Am” which is extremely popular in spiritual texts and discussions. But in this context I see “I” and “Am” as two words carrying the same meaning. There is no “I” apart from being, and no being apart from “I”. Perhaps the best way to express this is to write it: “I, Am”.