That's a wonderful quote, Sprocket, and I look forward to reading the book, sounds fascinating.

Thank you very much,lula...I have a rather sketchy knowledge of his creations, I like reading his proses better,uh i'm hopeful that will change because I 'll be master of my time soon lol

"Love is not only the dignity of the noble lover , but also the dignity of the noble love."

Gawd, Lady Grace, I so wish I could feel/believe the way that you and Lula do.  I guess I'm just not as enlightened as I once was.  I once wholeheartedly believed in the goodness of people and in love but that belief was sorely tested and I've become jaded.  Sad, but true. I fight daily to open myself up again, to 'see' thru new eyes, but it's been a long, disappointing road....with myself and others.    Hopefully in the next lifetime, I'll be able to live freely again.

Eckhart Tolle

excerpts from The Power of Now,  Practicing the Power of Now, and Stillness Speaks.

Having access to that formless realm is truly liberating. It frees you from bondage to form and identification with form. It is life in its undifferentiated state prior to its fragmentation into multiplicity. We may call it the Unmanifested, the invisible Source of all things, the Being within all beings. It is a realm of deep stillness and peace, but also of joy and intense aliveness. Whenever you are present, you become "transparent" to some extent to the light, the pure consciousness that emanates from this Source. You also realize that the light is not separate from who you are but constitutes your very essence.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other." You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is.

Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.

The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.

Beyond the beauty of external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are present

any expressions that are in common usage, and sometimes the structure of language itself, reveal the fact that people don't know who they are.  You say: "He lost his life" or "my life," as if life were something that you can possess or lose.  The truth is: you don't have a life, you are life. The One Life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy.

Can you sense deep within that you already know that? Can you sense that you already are That?

The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend.  No thought can encapsulate the Truth.  At best, it can point to it.  For example, it can say: "All things are intrinsically one." That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.

Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" ---  and find that there is no death.

Reincarnation doesn't help you if in your next incarnation you still don't know who you are.

All the misery on the planet arises due to a personalized sense of "me" or "us." That covers up the essence of who you are.  When you are unaware of that inner essence, in the end you always create misery. It's as simple as that.  When you don't know who you are, you create a mind-made self as a substitute for your beautiful divine being and cling to that fearful and needy self.