Inner Expansion Meditation: 15 Minute Special Teaching with Eckhart Tolle

Enlightenment today is a very famous concept. More and more people in the world are becoming interested in that concept and want to find out what enlightenment entails. When my interest in spirituality started to grow I didn’t really reflect on that word, or had any real interest to “become enlightened”. It was just another popular word that was used. After a while I began to take that word more seriously, reflecting on it and trying to find out what it really is, if such thing even exists.

At the very same time I was taking my vows of obedience, poverty and chastity in a Buddhist monastery in California, the other side of the planet was ravaged by one of the most devastating calamities of recent times. While I was “leaving home” (the direct translation from Chinese to say “being ordained”), more than 200,000 people were also leaving their homes, and lives, when the coasts of Indonesia and neighboring countries were swept by a huge tsunami. In my subconscious, the waves of my vows and those of the ocean mixed together to produce a strong realization of how fragile and unpredictable life is.

Wisdom from God prepares us to live a better life. God’s Word, The Holy Bible is literally filled with His wisdom, His ways of doing things, His answers to the issues of our lives. When the writer of the Book of Proverbs shared with us what his father, King David shared with him, he was giving us a glimpse of where his success came from.

Whoever and wherever you are, you can be a witness for Christ. And being a witness for Christ means living out the core values that propelled his life and mission. These values go beyond religious parameters. The values which Christ upheld are values of the Kingdom of God – a kingdom of compassion, justice, freedom and life. That is why, Christ or Jesus as he was historically known, always showed compassion to the outcasts and abandoned by religion and society, and justice to the oppressed and marginalized.

Are you or have you experienced a time when you wished you had started something? After a seeming failure or misstep do you remain where you are OR do you pick up the pieces? Never is a very long time to stay where you are.

Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God is at hand. This means that it exist right now. It is not going to just exist in the future but it exist right now. You don’t have to wait for it. You can get involved in it right now.

Good and evil co-exist within the same realm. Taking a cue from the biblical story of creation, in the same space where God comes to commune with the climax creation Man, also came the Devil. There is no written record of where the Devil came from or how the Devil arrived there.

We just imagine the faith of David. To bellow in the abyss; to be heard, yet not answered; not straight away. It defies human rationale. But, God is not disposed to our thinking or ways. Besides this, David still looks to the LORD.

Many spiritual seekers have become acquainted with Mahavatar Babaji, and an artist’s conception of him, through Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi”. Some claim that this same Babaji was known as Hariakhan Baba, from the early 1800s till 1922, and that he reincarnated again in 1970, in a cave in northern India, looking much younger but changing dramatically over his fourteen year incarnation. Still others believe the real Maha Avatar Babaji is a different entity altogether; one who had a feminine body in his youth, which changed slowly into an image of a balding Willie Nelson, before he left his body in 1997. This Babaji claimed that both versions of Hariakhan Baba were disciples of him. So, who is the real Babaji? Or are they all just different manifestations of the one and only Babaji?

Jesus commanded us “do not worry” he didn’t say maybe it isn’t too good or perhaps you shouldn’t do it, he commanded it. Why? Because he knows already just how destructive the practice of worrying is to every area of our lives. Jesus also said “who can add even one day to their life by worrying.” How ironic then that not only is it such a negative force but it serves no useful purpose in our lives either.

I believe that God doesn’t orchestrate the bad things that happen in the world but he does allow them to happen. Often when things go wrong we blame God because he has the power to intervene but doesn’t do so. It’s at these times that we forget about our free will. The good news is that according to scripture “God works for good in all things for those who love him”.

Self denial is weakness, so it is not normal to hate the world. But when you are feeling down and out, it is a good question to ask to start a dialogue with yourself to get yourself out of your funk and sadness ultimately.