A New Earth

Okay, so I’ve been pondering the theory of peace that Eckhart Tolle writes about in his book. He asks, “Do you want peace or drama?” and he goes on to discuss the fact that the “ego” as he calls it, thrives on the drama.

I was quick to think, “No, that’s not me. I hate the drama, I don’t thrive on it! I hate being so easily angered/frustrated/impatient/bored/annoyed/insert any negative adjective here.” Then I decided to try a little experiment. Every time I felt the surge of frustration/anger/annoyance/drama, I stopped in my tracks, took a breath and said, “I choose peace.” I am still in awe every time I say it, and I feel an immediate deflation in my core. It’s as though the negative feelings evaporate. I am beginning to feel the separation of the “I” and “Me” that he talks about. It feels like air being released from a balloon…I suspect that the more I deflate the ego with recognition, the less elastic it will become, and eventually it will fail to inflate…perhaps it will even burst due to it’s weakness. A balloon will remain intact as long as it has air in it. It only begins to weaken with repeated inflation and deflation. This is how I envision the ego. This balloon inside that exerts pressure and discomfort…it’s like living with a toothache. At first it is bearable, but eventually the pain niggles at you enough that it begins to degrade your mood and your outlook with it’s persistence.

I was partially right when I said, “That’s not me! I hate the drama.” More accurate words would have been, “That’s not I! I hate the drama! However, Me loves it, and I will no longer allow Me to dictate how I will live.”

In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle discusses the flower. He says, “Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit.”

I have often thought that my babies were a window into the Presence (as Tolle calls it.) I believe that having come fresh from God, they still retained the memory of pureness from where they came. Which brings me to this.

When my oldest was just two, she toddled over to a tulip that had just come up in the yard. She knelt down and smelled it, looked up at her Daddy with the most angelic peace upon her face and said, “It smells like love!” I was so struck in that moment, never having thought of a flower in those terms before. My husband and I looked at each other, dumbstruck, knowing that we had witnessed a glimpse of that which cannot be described with mere words. My baby had taught me, in that moment, to appreciate the beauty of a flower in a new way, a deeper way, and through her, I had a peek into the realm which time makes us forget.

Reading this book reminded me of that moment, and perhaps validated what I had felt all those years ago.