Nikolay Georgiev

I watched today the 3rd episode of the Eckhart and Oprah webcast. I can’t really say that it was the best until now, because in every episode there is something one can learn, but I was very good and I would like to comment on the following quote from the webcast and share some experiences:

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. Then the implication, of course, is there is another way of dealing with things, with situations. Make peace with it. And then action - Take action. The action then comes out of a different state of consciousness. The action comes out of presence. Presence. It’s no longer reaction. It comes out of presence and not out of you being defensive about it. And the action is much more powerful and effective when it’s not defensive and not negative.

Is there something in your life that you resist? For example you don’t want to see somebody, you don’t want to feel so exhausted, you don’t want to do something that you don’t like.

It is about the things that we resist and fight against, and the more we do it, the more we make them alive in us and in the others. It is like putting out some force to something outside ourselves and it is getting back to us.

Why when we resist something it continues to persist? I don’t know how to explain it in a way that won’t be disapproved or resisted and that is not what I want to try. I will just give one imaginative example.

Let’s say that there is an apple in a room. Resistance to the apple would be “I don’t like apples”, acceptance of the apple would be “This is an apple”, love to the apple would be “I love apples”. Now imagine yourself spending the whole day with each of those thoughts towards the apple. What would be the result? If you spend the day saying to yourself “I don’t like this apple” you just enforce your dislike of it and you do not become free of it. If you just accept the apple as it is, this is how you will spend the day. And if you admire the apple, you may have a wonderful day :) In all of those cases you have strengthened your one thought and it persisted during the day. Your continual attention made it persistent in your mind.

Okay, so until now you have expressed your feeling toward one apple. Now image that the whole room was filled with apples. How would you feel when you resist, accept or love the apples? Pretty obvious. If you resist all the apples, you will be full of dislike. If you accept them, then you will maybe just stay between them. And if you love them, you will maybe eat them all and get an apple orgasm. You can decide on your own what you would like to think of the apple.

And this is only you. If you are with other people, then they may catch your thoughts and they may feel towards the apple in the same way that you do, and in this way there will be more than one people through which the thought of the apple persist.

So this imaginative example covers one part of the resistances that we make in our lives. It can show us that by resisting things, we don’t always get free of them.

Recently I resisted a meatball, because I consider myself vegetarian. So I was looking for something to eat and there was a plate with potatoes and a meatball. At first I saw it and said to myself, “Oh potatoes, great”, but then I saw the meatball and thought “too bad, this is meat”. Then I looked at the other plates, but they wasn’t good. I thought again of the plate with the meatball, I wanted it, but there was this resistance coming from the “vegetarian laws” and I left the thought of it again. Then I said to myself, “What is that? I’m resisting this plate. I want it and I resist it. Oh, come on, I’ll do what I want to do now”. So I didn’t resist anymore and took the plate. And how was it? The potatoes were good, but the meatball was a little bit heavy for me and I didn’t like it. But ok, the good thing is, that now I know that I don’t want to eat such a meatball and the next time there will not be so much resistance like “I don’t have to eat it”, but there will be more knowing like “I know how it tastes” and the following non-reaction.

Another very good example of resistance and non-reaction is from my childhood. I and my brother, who is 2 years younger than me, used to fight very often. In some cases our parents would separate us, but when they weren’t present we were left alone. Both of us fighting. I don’t really remember why we had those fights, but they happened. I would fight and he would fight back. At some point of time he stopped fighting against me. I hit him with my hands, legs and feet and he would just protect himself and say something like “And what? You can fight all day long and you will achieve nothing” and at first I just continued to hit him, but then it was not interesting to hit someone who does not hit back and during the fight I was losing my appetite for hitting. And this happened many times. Occasionally he would hit back, but most of the time, we would not. My interest to fight him of course diminished with time and maybe that is one of the reasons why we stopped fighting at all. Now when I look back at these situations, it is clear how bad could be if he resisted me, and how his non-reaction or not fighting back allowed me to experience something different than the lust to fight.

As a final example, but not a personal one, I would like to just mention the people who are dying, but resist death. I’ve read such stories from near death experiences and from people who accompany the dying people. When a dying person resist the death he feels something like pressure in his body, like he is holding on something very strongly, his life. But there always comes a moment of acceptance of the death and he becomes more lighter, his acceptance allows him to experience the death and make the transition much more easily.

Few weeks ago I started reading the book of Eckhart Tolle “A New Earth”. It is about the Ego and the present moment, the Now. What I like about Eckhart is that he uses very simple and suitable words for explanation. For example he uses the word Being for God, awakening, enlightenment, salvation, liberation and so on, because the word Being explains nothing and thus it is an open concept. It is impossible to form a mental image of it and nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. Further he uses the words form and formless to describe the physical and the spiritual.

At the beginning of the book he describes the Ego. The Ego is a false sense of Self based on mental concepts. False sense of Self means that you are identifying yourself with something that is not you and the mental concepts are the way you make this identification - through thoughts. When you identify one thing with another, you are making them almost the same. Thus when you identify yourself with something, you blend your sense of Self with this thing and it becomes part of yourself.

So what? What is wrong with identification? If you identify yourself with something and you lose it, then you will suffer. For example if you identify yourself as a good looking person and at some point of time you are not that charming and your skin is getting older, you will suffer, because what you thought of yourself in the past as a good looking person, now does not seem to be true.

The Ego has content and structure. The content of the Ego is whatever you identify yourself and the structure is how the identification exists. For example you may identify yourself with things (my house, my ring, …), with your body (beautiful or ugly person), with your characteristics (great or shy person), with some roles (student, parent, teacher). The identification can happen through thoughts containing “me”, “mine”, “more than”, “I want”, “I need”, “not enough” and so on. Such thoughts are the structure of the Ego and they keep the identification alive. The content is interchangeable and no content can be satisfiable as long as the egoic structure remains.

In the book there are many good examples showing the suffering from different identifications: identification of a growing kid with his toys, of consumers with products by the advertising industry, of a woman with her ring, and more.

How can we become free of such identifications? Eckhart says that the first step is to be aware of the identification. When you are aware you should not try to resist it, because resistance means that you do not accept what is happening right now and you are against the life itself. But if you are aware and just feel the identification as it is, acknowledge it and do nothing and let it be for this moment, you are watching this identification and thus you are separating yourself from it. By creating this space between you and the content of the identification, it’s structure loses its power, you become less identified with the content and with time the identification will just drop away.

Eckhart Tolle and Oprah are doing a 10-week webinar/class on “A New Earth” starting on 3rd of March and ending on 5th of Mai. Every week they discuss one chapter from the book. You can watch it live every Monday night or download the webcast archives. The second week there were 800,000 users watching it live and 1,600,000 people have downloaded the first episode.

This is actually how I picked up the book. I was sceptical at first, because there were so many people talking about it in internet, but I decided to take a fast look at the book and decide for myself. The first chapter was ok, but the second chapter hit me with its description of the Ego. Then I watched the first episode of the webinar and I liked it. It was interesting to watch how Eckhart and Oprah communicate with one another. Oprah was giving many normal and important questions and Eckhart explained them good. Also there were people who joined the webinar live through Skype or were giving questions from their computers. There was even a thirteen-year-old girl who spoke with Eckhart and it is amazing that so young people are interested in such topics.

I’m happy about this book, because it gave me some good knowledge about the ego and the present moment and would recommend it to people, who want to learn more about them. Also the webinar would be a great guide to reading the book.

Here is one quote from the book:

How spiritual you are has nothing to do with what you believe, but everything to do with your state of consciousness.

Can thoughts and intentions affect the physical world? The science tries to prove it. I read 2 articles about that and will try to summarize their content.

The first article is “Modulation of DNA conformation by heart-focused intention” or “Local and non-local effects of coherent heart frequencies on conformational changes of DNA” from the HeartMath Institute. They have experimented how people can alter the DNA molecule external from the body through intention. When the people were in a heart-focused and a loving state, their heart rate variability (or heart rhythms) was more coherent and they could unwind the DNA. The people who were not in a deep state of love, couldn’t change the DNA. There was one person who was upset and frustrated who changed the DNA, but winding it.

1. When the researchers FELT gratitude, love and appreciation, the DNA responded by RELAXING and the strands unwound. The length of the DNA became longer.

2. When the researchers FELT anger, fear, frustration, or stress, the DNA responded by TIGHTENING UP. It became shorter and SWITCHED OFF many of our DNA codes! If you have ever felt “shut down” by negative emotions, now you know why your body shut down too. The shut down of the DNA codes was reversed and the codes were switched back on again when feelings of love, joy, gratitude and appreciation were felt by the researchers.

Another interesting thing is that one of the individuals, Doc Childre, who had shown consistent ability to generate extended periods of heart coherence, was given the task to affect three different DNA samples simultaneously by unwinding two of them and leaving the third one unchanged. And indeed he has done that by sending simultaneously specific intentions to the DNA samples. He could also affect DNA sample from distance 0,5 miles away.

“Effect of conscious intention on human DNA” is the other article by Glein Rein in 1966. He describes an experiment with tumor cells. The healer Leonard Laskow could cause an 39% inhibition of the tumor cell growth by intentions of natural order and harmony of the cell’s normal rate of growth (before they became tumor cells) and 18% inhibition by visualizing only three cells remaining. And when he visualized many cells, the result was 15% increased growth of the tumor cells.

The author also points out various success of various healers. Some could influence the DNA, but couldn’t intentionally wind or unwind it and others could influence it on certain days.