Sharing GOD's Secret

It was 2007, and I was on my way to the airport. On a long business trip to Europe or Asia, I always pick up a couple of books to while away some time on the plane. I found "A New Earth" by an author I had never heard of before. The title looked intriguing so I bought it. Later as I passed the security line I saw "The Power of Now" by the same author; it was then when it clicked; yes, I had heard of Eckhart Tolle, the new spiritual author on the block. It turns out the "A New Earth" was a symptom of my own awakening. Today, nine years later, I am one of the millions of initiated light-workers Eckhart Tolle had with his book in mind.

The irony was that when Eckhart Tolle submitted his first book, "The Power of Now", to a publisher it was rejected on the grounds that this idea is as old as spirituality itself. True, how nice that another publisher brought it on the market as it quickly lid a fire in the New Age community. So perhaps we should just remind each other from time to time of the ancient wisdoms that apparently have to be rediscovered by each individual spiritual traveler for herself. GOD's "secret"  has been out there for millennia, ready for everyone to discover it. "The Power of Now" is one catchy phrase, but there are so many others. The Old Testament is full of spiritual insights, as were Jesus' teachings. The Sufis know it, as does Taoism, Buddhists and Hinduism. 

The note below zooms into a little book that is a spiritual master piece, "To Have or to Be", by Erich Fromm. The author was foremost a psychologist, with a passion  for the Talmud, spirituality and socialism as well. Erich Fromm knew GOD's secret, just to fall in love with life; to do something with your life that is both purposeful and passionate; to learn to recognize the distracting whispers of the ego that keep you from the WAY. Erich Fromm also realized that magic tends to happen when we wrestle with life on a path that is of GOD. Lastly I would add that enlightenment is not something that you aspire to get one day; enlightenment is a state that you can enjoy moment by moment, as long as you use some of these insights below as your milestones. Everyone can be a light worker. Hope you join us too!

God's Secret - The Problem Statement

Problem Statement: Separateness 

Adam and Eve, what is the sin they have committed? To face each other as separated, isolated, selfish human beings who cannot overcome their separation in the act of loving union. The sin is rooted in our very human existence. Being deprived of the original harmony with nature. Being endowed with reason and self-awareness, we cannot help experiencing our separateness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Problem statement: Me, Myself and I

Our picture of physical reality does not correspond to what is "really real" and, mainly, in the sense that most people are half-awake, half-dreaming, and are unaware hat most of what they hold true and self-evident is illusion produced by the suggestive influence of the social world in which they live. Knowing , then, begins with the shattering of disillusionment. Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to "see" reality in its nakedness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Mental greed - and all greed is mental, even when it is satisfied via the body - has no satiation point, since it's consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Everything and anything can become an object of craving: things we use in daily life, property, rituals, good deeds, knowledge, and thoughts. While they are not in themselves "bad", they become bad; that is, when we hold onto them, when they become chains that interfere with our freedom, they block our self-realization. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

But if the greedy person thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but simply annoying; generally one has contempt for them. But factually, greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as illness. To be driven by irrational passions is to be mentally sick. To the degree that we achieve optimal growth, we are not only (relatively) free, strong, rational, and joyous, but also mentally healthy; to the degree that we fail to reach this aim, we are unfree, weak, lacking rationality, and depressed. (Erich Fromm quotes Spinoza in "To Have or to Be")

Problem Statement: Having, not Being

Greed is the natural outcome of the having orientation. It can be the greed of a miser or the greed of a profit hunter or the greed of a womanizer or the man chaser. Whatever constitutes their greed, the greedy can never have enough, can never be "satisfied". (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

What is fully describable is our persona - the mask we each other wear, the ego we present - for this persona is in itself a thing. In contrast, the living human being is not a dead image and cannot be described like a thing. In fact, the living human being cannot be described at all. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I? Nobody but a defeated, deflated, pathetic testimony to a wrong way of living. Because I can lose what I have, I am necessarily constantly worried that I shall lose what I have. I am afraid of thieves, of economic changes, of revolutions, of sickness, of death; and I am afraid of love, of freedom, of growth, of change, of the unknown. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The fear, then, is not of dying, but of losing what I have: the fear of losing my body, my ego, my possessions, and my identity; the fear of facing the abyss of non-identity, of "being lost". (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

GOD's Secret - The Solution

The Solution:  At-One-Ment

There is but one way to save ourselves from this hell: to leave the prison of our egocentricity, to reach out and to one ourselves with the world. If egocentric separateness is the cardinal sin, then the sin is atoned in the act of loving: "at-one-ment" is Middle English for union. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The Solution: Purpose and Passion

The joy of a mitzvah (the fulfillment of a religious duty) is he only way to get the Holy Spirit. (Erich Fromm, quoting the Talmud in "To Have or to Be")

In order to avoid decay, we must strive to approach the "model of human nature", that is, we must be optimally free, rational, active. We must become what we can be. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Joy is what we experience in the process of growing nearer to the goal of becoming ourselves. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Activity is "wholesome" only when it is rooted in and expresses the ultimate ethical and spiritual demands.  (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Only in the process of mutual alive relatedness can the other and I overcome the barrier of separateness, inasmuch as we both participate in the dance of life.  (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

In non-alienated activity, I experience myself as the subject of my activity. Non-alienated activity is a process of giving birth to something, or producing something and remaining related to what I produce. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The Solution: The Holy Now

The active, alive man is like a "vessel" that grows as it is filled and will never be full. 

(Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Freedom in the sense of being unfettered, free from craving for holding onto things and one's ego, is the condition for love and productive being. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The mode of being exists only in the here and now. The mode of having so exists only in time: past, present and future. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Knowledge is no particular thought but rather it peels off (all coverings) and is disinterested and runs naked to GOD, until it teaches HIM and grasps HIM. (Meister Eckhart in Erich From, To Have or to Be) 

The Solution: Being, not Having

One of the main themes of the Old Testament is: leave what you have; free yourself from all fetters; be! (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Do not lay for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

There exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

They respond spontaneously and productively; they forget about themselves, about the knowledge, the positions they have. Their egos do not stand in their own way, and it is precisely for this reason that they can fully respond to the other person and that person's ideas, because they are not holding onto anything. While the having persons rely on what they have, the being persons rely on the fact that they are, that they are alive and that something new will be born if only they have to courage to let go and respond. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

To the extent that we decrease the mode of having, that is of non-being - i.e., stop finding security and identity by clinging to what we have, by "sitting on it", by holding onto ego and our possessions - can the mode of being emerge. "To be" requires giving up one's egocentricity and selfishness, or in words often used by mystics, by making oneself "empty" and "poor". (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

While having is based on some thing that is diminished by use, being grows by practice. The 'burning bush" that is not consumed is the biblical symbol for this paradox. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

We human beings have an inherent and deeply rooted desire to be: to express our faculties, to be active, to be related to others, to escape the prison cell of selfishness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Every new step contains the danger of failure, and that is one of the reasons people are so afraid of freedom. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Master Eckhart taught that to have nothing and make oneself open and "empty", not to let one's ego stand in one's way, is the condition for achieving spiritual wealth and strength. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

We should not be "filled" with our knowledge, or hang onto it, or crave it. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Living structures can be only if they become; they can exist only if they change. Change and growth are inherent qualities of the life process. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The Buddha, the Awakened One, calls on people to wake up and liberate themselves from the illusion that craving for things lead to happiness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

GOD's Secret - Conclusions

What may appear to you as a tour de force was just a little book full of ancient wisdom by a wise man, Erich Fromm. Every single line in it - very quote cited here - can lift you to that state, just as the simple title "The Power of Now" tried accomplishing a few decades later. Having this insight is huge, but living it is priceless. And that is where GOD's mission comes in. Find this path, hold HER HAND every step of the WAY and you are enlightened. If this all sounds all a bit overwhelming right now, why don't you start with a mission statement, to be one of us. GOD will do the rest. Of you only one thing is required, do your best every step of the WAY, and share GOD's Secret with others.