What is the Evolution of Your Consciousness

Eckhart Tolle says: "Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness." So according to Mr. Tolle, evolution of your consciousness is the most important thing in life.

Evolution in this topic is different than evolution in the physical world where the goal is survival. In the physical world you have birth and death. The ultimate cause of death is birth. Birth and death are like 2 sides of the same coin.

Consciousness comes from the Sanskrit (ancient language of India) word 'chit' that means true consciousness. You can say that this is a new word for the word soul. The soul has no beginning or end and no birth and death.

Yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism and Scientology all have a similar way of looking at life. There is only one ocean on the earth but different parts of it have different names. Water evaporates from the ocean and become part of the clouds. The rain comes from the clouds in the form of raindrops. These drops fall back into the ocean to become part of the ocean again.

This is the analogy of the soul and God. The soul comes from God and its goal is to go back to God. Or to not use the word 'God,' the soul comes from the oneness and returns back to the oneness.

So the evolution of consciousness is the soul going back to its source. The closer it gets back to the source, the more the person feels those feelings that he wants to feel. The further away he goes then the less he feels of these emotions like happiness, love and peace.

As an example of this, you could say that the most consciously evolved people in the Catholic religion are the saints. Practically speaking different people have different levels of anxiety in different situations. As someone become more consciously evolved, the less anxiety they feel in different situations.

The more consciously evolved someone is, the less they are trying to find happiness from the pleasure of eating food. This is why you have people like Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Gandhi and others fasting for weeks.

In general the evolution of your consciousness brings you more happiness from inside of you than from outside of you. People look for peace and happiness in the world but that is not where it is at. So the more that they look there, the more frustrated that they become. The peace and happiness that people are looking for is inside of them.

Life has been designed to help people go in this direction. But if they fight it, everything becomes much harder. What people are looking for is at the center of their being. So the process is about getting rid of the other stuff that is burying the treasure that is inside of them.

What Eckhart Tolle is telling people about is not a way to exchange your thoughts or beliefs for another group of thoughts or beliefs. People do this and they do not see long term results. He is telling people about a different experience in life.

A good example of this is falling in love with someone. This is not about what you think of a person but how you feel about them. It is a unique experience that you have to feel to know what it is like. But it feels like something magical is happening.

This is such a powerful experience that people will change their whole lives over it. For example instead of living by yourself, you are now living with a wife and 3 kids that she had in a previous marriage. Also she now owns half of everything that you own. Many people will stay married for their whole lives.

Also many will get divorced and marry someone else since feelings can change. If you look up the most popular actors and actresses you will see that most are married or have been married. So they are very famous and have lots of money but they are subject to this feeling of being in love.

Part of what you learn in life is that this feeling of love or being in love has a flip side. The more that you love someone, the more it hurts if that person leaves you, rejects you or dies. The world around us is loaded with the opposites where if you have something and lose it, the pain is directly proportional to how good that thing made you feel. This also includes pets.

I remember this old woman was crying and told me that her dog had cancer and had to be put to sleep. She said that her dog was her best friend. But the evolution of your consciousness is where you can have these great feelings that come from your soul or consciousness. Some people try to accelerate this by denying themselves pleasures of the world.

For example monks and nuns will take a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience. This means that they are not supposed to have riches, relationships or do what they want. They are looking for this experience that comes from inside that Eckhart Tolle calls being in the present.

A movie that tries to show this feeling that Eckhart Tolle is talking about is a Catholic movie called Brother Sun, Sister Moon. It is about St. Francis of Assisi. This is my favorite spiritual movie.

I had this girlfriend that grew up Catholic and that was spiritual. She had a best friend that grew up Protestant that I also loved and she was very spiritual. Actually I fell in love with the best friend first and she fell in love with me. But she already had a boyfriend. So she introduced me to her best friend that I got involved with. She had me spend all day Easter Sunday with her and her best friend to meet her.

So I had arranged for these 2 women to watch this move (Brother Sun, Sister Moon) with me. They were looking forward to it since I told them how great it was. When it was over, both of them said that they did not understand it. It is about this feeling that comes from inside that has nothing to do with the world at all.

St. Francis, in this movie was having this feeling or experience that Eckhart Tolle calls being in the present but there is no mention of these words. But here is what he says at the end of the movie quoting the bible (Jesus is saying this):

Set your mind on God's kingdom and His justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well. So do not be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow will look after itself. Each day has troubles enough of its own.

Some people complain about Eckhart Tolle saying that what he teaches in not original and can be found in Buddhism and elsewhere. Well the above shows that Jesus was teaching this also. But what makes Eckhart Tolle special is not that he teaches this but he is having that feeling or experience in his life.

His critics also say that he says that even though this feeling has been around for ages, it will become more widespread in the future. Well it is nice to be positive about the future but this is not living in the present. If there is reincarnation than Eckhart Tolle could have been St. Francis of Assisi in a past life.

So if you can understand this movie, you will get a better idea of what he is really talking about. The idea is not to get caught up in the words that he uses. For example someone else can say the same thing but use different words like saying that the goal in life is to get to the point where you are feeling like you are in heaven all of the time.

As far as yoga, Wikipedia used to say (under yoga philosophy):

In all branches of yoga, the ultimate goal is the attainment of an eternal state of perfect consciousness.

In Buddhism you have the 4 noble truths. They are 1) Life is suffering 2) There is a cause of suffering 3) There is a way to get rid of this cause 4) I teach that way. Now many Buddhists have issues with the first noble truth that life is suffering.

But suffering has no minimum. So even the slightest bit of suffering is suffering. So what would you feel like if you had no suffering at all. You would feel absolutely perfect. So there is a feeling like this that exists but it is inside of you not in the world. You can also say that it feels like being in heaven. Eckhart Tolle says:

You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.

Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.

Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love – you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.

For more on this subject see Is the Key to Happiness Being in the Present Moment. Here is another article that deals with the above. Eckhart Tolle uses Buddhist examples in his books. This article tell about how close the teachings of Buddhism and yoga are. See The Heart of Buddhism.