The Other Me (Hearing God pt 1)

The first thing that comes to mind is Eckhart Tolle's speech on this subject, concerning the question "Who is this "myself" that I cannot live with?" I remember rejecting outright everything he said because of some of his views on Christ. However, now, a year or so later, I am starting reconsider this point. It came at a moment that was not even of terrible importance, but it opened my eyes to it nonetheless. As you may have read in earlier blogs, I have a habit of getting a large pizza at least once a week and eating the whole thing in one sitting. As I was on my way back to my apartment from a walk on Saturday, I was planning some things out. One resolution I made was (for financial as well as health reasons) not to get a pizza after church the next day, but instead to eat something I already had at home, most likely soup. Immediately I thought back to other times where I would make such resolutions, but then when the time came to enact them, I didn't want to and went against it.

Why? If I am, at this point, intending to go through with something, why is it that I am suddenly wishing something else at another time? It seems, indeed, that Mr. Tolle has a point; there seem to be multiple entities at work, and these can often be in conflict. "We are not our thoughts." In a book I am slowly getting through, Christ, The Eternal Tao, the author describes the same situation. The spirit, the mind, and the flesh are all at work, and each has its own will. It is the place of the mind and the flesh to be subservient to the spirit, and the spirit to be subservient to God. What hinders many of us from communion with God is that we don't understand how this works, or the need for it, and may be trying, as is natural to people who have grown up in a society based on the glorification of rational thought, to simply intuit our way to communion with God, to, as Winnie-the-Pooh would say, think think think our way through faith. The answer is far more complicated, and the answer is far simpler. The answer begins with self-observation, stepping back more and more often to observe one's own thoughts and emotions. By doing this we can hold on to the thoughts which are godly and destroy the thoughts that are not.

Stay tuned.