Three key lessons I learnt from Oprah's favorite book

There is a certain level of readiness and mindset that is required to embark on reading A New Earth

I hate to sound 'culty' or 'exclusive', but a disclaimer on it's heaviness is certainly paramount.

Find a quite space to read this, you will gain nothing from a skim.

“I know for sure that there is no real meaning to life without a spiritual component. Spirit, to me, is the essence of who we are. That essence doesn't require any particular belief. It just is." - Oprah winfrey;

Let's get right into it;

1. Submission/ Surrender

Like alot of us do, I had a negative bias towards the concept of 'Submission' before I read A New Earth.

To me, there was a perception of loss or a negative shift in perceived 'power'.

Eckhart defines submission as yielding.

Yielding means the inner acceptance of what is.

He says -

'When you yield internally, the external yields to you"

A new dimension opens up when you are in acceptance of what is.

You are in alignment with and supported by the the Source.

Circumstances and people become helpful, cooperative and coincidences begin to happen.

Suddenly life is on your side, just as you have yielded to it, does it yield to you.

The opposite of submission is resistance.

We are currently in the midst of a society beset upon resistance, with the (cancel, triggered, critical and fight culture) as the predominant atmosphere.

This all spiraled by the double edged sword that is social media;

There is always something to fight for, to fight about and to resist.

And yes I know what you are thinking, because I thought it too,

"Should we just shutup in the pretext of submission?

"What if we do have things to fight for?"

I would say;

Choose your battles and fucks wisely.

It takes alot of energy to fight, make sure it's worth it.

If you do choose to fight, remember that;

Unconciousness or egoic behavior cannot be defeated by attacking it.

When you do defeat it, the unconsiousness simply moves to you.

Read that again.

Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell.

Inner resistance creates outer resistance.

The energy you give out is duly returned, where everything now goes against you and life becomes unhelpful.

Think of your energy and essence as a boomerang.

If resistance is inner contraction then submission/surrender is an inner expansion.

2. Detachment from the Ego

Eckhart dives deeply into the manifestation of egoic behavior in our lives.

If you are bent on preserving your ego, then you might as well close this tab and watch some YouTube videos instead.

This is for you who is tired of the suffering that comes from egoic cycles.

To break these cycles, we must be aware how the ego manifests;

Ego Manifestation in Thoughts & Feelings

I've always been a 'sensitive' person.

This inevitably comes with feeling 'too' deeply, 'caring too much',and in a big way, a strong association of self with emotion.

This made me an very defensive person and as you know a key characteristic of the ego is that it likes to takes everything personally.

I was constantly in the job of protecting my feelings, which manifested poorly in my relationships and in how I handled situations of conflict.

I was completely identified with my thoughts & feelings and in turn felt like anything contrary to my thoughts and feelings was an attack on who I was.

Case in point -

During a discussion on abortion, when a person brings on an opposing view, it becomes easy to react irrationally and turn it into a brutal confrontation, if you're identity is one with your opinion/thought.

Where infact, that discussion is an opportunity for understanding and expansion if the ego is checked.

If I am completely identified with thought, my thoughts represent who I am.

Therefore, any thought against my thought becomes a threat to my identity.

I then fight to the death to protect my 'identity' even if it means hurting others.

Eckhart's book reminds us that our thoughts and feelings are separate entities from who we really are.

The anger you feel, the pain you feel, the offense you take is valid and must be experienced.

But what is more important is to step away and create space from these thoughts and feelings and to recognize their impermanence and separateness from who you really are.

So, pro-life/pro-choice then simply becomes a thought that you can change, let go of or hold on to, with a reduced egoic stance of defense.

Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness of them.

Ego Manifestation in Attachment

As I write this piece, I am currently the Project Manager of a Femtech...but by the end of the paragraph you will realize that I am not.

One of the most common egoic traps is the attachment of your identity to form;

what you do or what you have- the tangible.

It's natural to unconsciously tie your identity to the thing that you give yourself to.

Whether it is you as an artist, a wife/husband, or a CEO.

If you commit of yourself enough, it starts to look alot like self.

Eckhart reminds us that

'We can participate in the dance of creation and be active without attachment to it.'

How?

It's simple....Mine, my, me, I am

The ego is at play any time we take posession and attachment by using 'me, mine, my.'

Note the subtle differences in the below statements;

I am a Femtech Project manager vs I do project management for a Femtech.

This is my boyfriend vs we are partners.

My team vs the team I work with

My car vs the car I drive.

Their is an element of space created with the statements that have no (my) and with that space comes non-attachment.

The ego shrinks in non-attachment, and with the detachment from form, births the rise of the formless, who you really are.

I am....

So I am not project manager of a femtech, i just am.

Ego Manifestation in Separation

This is perhaps the biggest and most common manifestation of the ego, right next to attachment.

Viewing yourself as a separate entity from everyone else or someone else.

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right and others being wrong or separatness in any form.

"I would never do that.".... "the lazy" "the greedy" "the wealthy"..."that would never happen to me."

The book tells us that the ego is strenghthened by increasing the otherness of others, the mental position of 'rightness' and superiority.

Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.

There is no others, we are one, from the Source. More on this on the 40 rules of love.

We are only human

To love is to recognize yourself in another.

3. Presence

I'll make this one short.

I am slowly mastering it, and it is one of those lessons that are imprinted in my heart so deeply, that words fail to describe the exact trueness of it.

I will leave you with a compass that guides me into being fully in the Now ;

If you cannot bring yourself into acceptance or enjoyment of what you are doing in this very moment....STOP

If you cannot accept that this is what I must do, neither can you enjoy what you are doing, then you are doing a grave injustice to this one life that you have.

This was a heavy book, but also a friend during a muddy patch I was on.

I'm not sure what it will be to you, but we can find out!

Support me by buying a copy of the New earth here!

Till next time!