The porch vacation season began on March 1st and involved the sound of construction from our neighbor’s yard; the beeping signal of heavy machinery backing up and fooling me into thinking I had clothes in the washer ready for hanging; our tail wagging dog, anxious to be petted; and the book “A New Earth.”
The first flower probably did not survive for long, and flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena, since conditions were most likely not yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day, however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planet … ~ The Flowering of Human Consciousness, A New Earth
I just couldn’t bring myself to be a cog in the Oprah machinery when the book was added to her book list and she announced that she and its author, Ekhart Tolle, would be teaching a web class on it. I resisted the consumer urge to be run out and buy the book, as if it was the latest IT toy or play station. I checked it out from the library instead.
Things that happened to “me” in the past, the memory of which are thoughts that further define my sense of self as “me and my story.” These are only some of the things people derive their identity from. They are ultimately no more than thoughts … ~ A New Earth
The day I got the book, my husband, Joe, told me he had one in his hand when he was at the mall returning something, but he put it back on the shelf, thinking ‘do I really need another self-help book?’ So now we have to share this one.
One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment. ~ A New Earth
I’m ahead of him, so I had to concede it for most of the weekend so he could catch up. “Don’t read it like a regular book,” I instructed. “Don’t skip around, scan, or jump ahead. Read it like passage meditation; slowly repeat the words to yourself so that the book can work as an experience, rather than an intellectual exercise."
In most ancient cultures, people believed that everything, even so-called inanimate objects, had an indwelling spirit, and in this respect they were closer to the truth than we are today. When you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore. Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one. ~ A New Earth
Periodically he or I would set the book down to talk about what it had inspired in us. So far it’s prompted some rich conversation. And we both have a little sunburn from sitting on the porch so long.