All Things Relating To Consciousness

How is possible to remain in a state of consciousness day in and day out? I find that becoming unconscious is an adaptation to managing the multiple streams of input that fly into my brain daily. When you deal with many people over a limited amount of time, can you remain on a conscious level all the time. I guess if you are a Buddhist monk, you can. The remainder of us have to try and always remember to watch our minds, and remain in the present. But it is a hard thing to achieve. Either that, or just cut down on your daily interactions. One thing I know I can do is to stop checking my emails 6-7 times a day. That's just a habit, a fear of missing out on something that might be important. Truth is that rarely do I get an email that might alter my day. I am going to try and resolve to check my email maybe twice a day at most. Now off to meditate and de-clutter my brain!

RELATIONSHIPS

It seems to me that part of the problem with society and the way we have no association with other people is that we have forgotten how to communicate with people on a human to human level. I am in Arizona at a conference, and I cannot get any body to just answer to my simple "hello" or "good morning." People look at me as if I am trying to steal something from them! Yet they communicate with others they have never met or crossed paths with using blogs and Internet chat rooms. It makes no logical sense (and here I am writing a blog). A very smart person once told me "You can multitask computers and work, but you cannot multitask relationships. It goes against the definition of a relationship." I think that's part of what this whole Eckhardt Tolle/Modern day Buddhism thing is about. Oh well, off to cathc my plane back home. Excellent conference here on Advances in Venous Disease. I will write more on that on my medical venous blog http://dvt2009.blogspot.com/

Reading Books Over and Over

Each time I read these books iIget something else out of them. I am not sure if I am just not paying attention the first time I read them or I just don't get them the first time through. I just finished reading "The Miracle of Mindfullness" by the Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He is an exiled Buddhist monk who lives in Paris. The first time I read the book I thought it was simplistic and naive. But I reread it over several times and I am amazed how many ideas that struck me as simple initially were actually pearls of wisdom.

Anyone read any of the Eckhard Tolle books such as "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, or "The Power of Now?" At first reading I thought is was complete mumbo-jumbo put out by some new age fairy. Then I looked all around me, and I slowly realized there is some element of truth in some of the things he talks about. It really does explain a lot of current phenomena that seem illogical and ridiculous to me. Take for example what masquerades as "Reality T.V." My daughters lap that stuff up, and all along I kept telling them why don't they live their own lives rather than watching someone else live theirs. Then it dawned on me that my kids are not "living in the present" as Tolle would suggest. They go day to day absolutely oblivious to what is going on around them, and to the rest of the world. They don't enjoy the "art of being" a term coined by the Austrian psychologist Eric Fromm.

My opinion is that Eckhard Tolle's work is "Buddhist Light" much like my friends call Pastor Joel Osteen "Christianity Light".