“Take responsibility for your state of consciousness, now.” – Eckhart Tollle, “The Question of Personal Responsibility,” http://www.eckharttolletv.com/#
This is a simple statement with world changing implications. It encapsulates my personal situation: the deep desire to work for the evolution of humanity through the only means available to me: personal evolution. (I’m liking the two colon formula.)
Why “the evolution of humanity?” Because for most of my life I’ve been very concerned (and often excruciatingly upset) about the fate of the environment at human hands, and, it occurred to me one day that even if we “got it right” at one time (enacted the best laws, set aside the majority of land left unspoiled and restored lots more, and successfully curbed over population), then who’s to say the next generation (or another one) wouldn’t screw it up again? The only solution, it seemed to me, was the perpetual betterment of humanities capacity to make intelligent decisions, i.e., decisions that were in line with–rather than antagonistic to–life.
But not just from an intellectual standpoint, rather, a global evolution of our species.
What does it mean to me to take responsibility for my state of consciousness? It means that if I’m tired, I accept that I’m tired. What I seem to be doing at the moment is resisting the tiredness, creating a certain underlying feeling of dissonance, because “I have to get shit done!” From a place of accepting that I’m tired I can then choose to continue acting, or take a nap. There’s no one holding a gun to my head (except maybe part of me) saying I have to get anything done. Yet, I operate as if…
It also means that when someone pisses me off or otherwise makes me unhappy, I accept that the resulting turmoil is a bomb that went off inside of me, set by me, detonated by me, and no one except for me can really mop up the mess. Depending on the magnitude of the situation, that mess can seem daunting. However, from a place of acceptance, I can remember that I have Tolle’s instructions…methods…techniques for riding it out. (Am I mixing metaphors here? Almost…) Feeling my inner body. Coming into the present moment. Following my breath. And maybe even–as he suggests in Practicing the Power of Now I believe–allowing my little ego to be diminished, and just feeling it happen, rather than jumping to the defense.
While I’m not there yet, I can feel that this shift would reveal tremendous inner power. I would no longer be at the mercy of the world around me, rather, I would be 100% self-determined. Perhaps my physical body would still be at the mercy of the physical world, but rather than this being 99% of my concern, it would be much smaller, because I would be conscious, physical body or no.
Or not. It’s an experiment, and so far, I’m liking how the results are adding up, even if where I’m sitting at this moment is not that.
