from Donna -- Chapter 5: The Pain-Body
5-A. On page 141, Tolle says, "Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain." Tolle goes on to describe how children are particularly vulnerable to these negative emotions and shut down their emotions, and this defense mechanism tends to remain in the adult. What experience have you had with this phenomenon?
5-B. Pages 154-160 cover the female pain-body, the national pain-body, and the racial pain-body as important collective pain-bodies to acknowledge. Why should we pay particular attention to collective pain-bodies?
5-C. Discuss the following from the chapter's end: ". . . For what you do to others, you do to yourself.
"It doesn't really matter what proportion of your pain-body belongs to your nation or race and what proportion is personal. In either case, you can only go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state now. Even if blame seems more justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding the pain-body with your thoughts and remain trapped in your ego. There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, our victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges -- the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light."
Good evening, my friends,
Those of you who are able to meet Thursday evening, please bring with you a list of book suggestions for our meetings after our April discussions of A New Earth. Also bring a brief description of your spiritual background, your present spiritual self, and what you would like to get from our group talks. I would also like to know if you are willing to be a group leader as our group grows.
I have not yet received my email confirmation and instructions from the Oprah website. I hope I am able to log on tomorrow evening since I work until 7pm EST.
I look forward to meeting all who are able to meet on Thursday.
Joyfully yours,
Donna
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4 comments:
I found another discussion of the book A NEW EARTH ... Colleen wrote about it today on her blog and her readers are making comments on the book and its ideas. Here's the link to Colleen's post:
http://www.looseleafnotes.com/notes/2008/03/the_return_of_the_porch_vacati.html
I'll come back later and leave some information about my spiritual formation. Donna, you had said bring that information to our Thursday meeting, but we could share that ahead of time, right?
Two more things:
Would you mind posting with a light-colored font against that dark background? It's awfully hard for me to read the blue or black against the dark green.
I was not able to attend the class with Eckhart and Oprah last night; what I was able to see kept starting and stopping and skipping, until I finally gave up and turned it off. Did that happen to anyone else?
Since my "description of my spiritual background and present spiritual self" isn't brief, I won't try to type it here in a comment. Use this link, instead:
http://joyfulnoiseletter.blogspot.com/2008/03/spiritual-formation.html
Did I scare everyone off by writing too much? Where are you? I look forward to meeting all of you tonight.
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