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From A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I am reading this book again with a web class being offered through oprah.com. Each week we read a new chapter, answer leading questions, and participate with other people from all over the world as we explore living more consciously. yum.

Chapter 5 – The Pain Body

Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is the moment it arises doesn’t completely dissolve and lives on in you later coming up as illness, addiction, drama.

In intimate relationships, pain-bodies are often clever enough to lie low until you start living together and preferable have signed a contract committing yourself to be with this person for the rest of your life.

You may wonder whether this is your partner’s real face that you had never seen before and whether you made a dreadful mistake in choosing this person. It is of course not the real face, just the pain-body that has taken possession. It would be hard to find a partner who does not carry a pain-body, but it would perhaps be wise to choose someone whose pain-body is not excessively dense.

Although the body is intelligent it cannot tell the difference between thoughts and reality. Every time you think of something negative or some problem your body will have a response to it.

You cannot expect someone to act beyond their level of consciousness. You must let go and forgive those who’ve hurt you. It’s never on purpose.

It’s all about experiencing negative emotions when they come up. Letting go of the repeated, painful stories we tell ourselves over and over again and make part of our identity.

A deliciously unorthodox approach to igniting your divine spark by Sera Beak.

After all, you’re not merely a human who’s struggling to have a spiritual experience. You are, in truth, a spirit, having a human experience.

Spirituality is not separate and distinct from you and your everyday life. Igniting your divine spark is a simple perspective shift. An internal nod.

Know this: Igniting my divine spark has also kicked my ass five ways from Sunday. My ordinary perceptions are constantly challenged. My limits are made clear and, then broken open. I cannot play safe or dumb or keep myself cocooned or judgmental. My unhealthy patterns, issues, and parts of me that are not in alignment with my divine spark come up for confrontations all the time. In order to learn who I really am, I have to learn who I am not. It’s not always pretty. It’s definitely not always fun. Truth sets me free, but it can sometimes hurt like a thousand bee stings and a bad colonic. I have ended what have felt like good relationships, moved across the country, made risky career moves, gotten pretty ill, changed my lifestyle, and experienced extended periods in which I’ve been lonely as hell and sexually disinterested, all in response to my spiritual path. My sense of self has expanded and contracted like a schizophrenic accordion. I have questioned everything, and I have felt nothing. I have told the universe to fuck off, and I have fallen down weeping at its compassionate response.

Learning how to live my truth, out loud and on purpose with inner authority, is worth it. Merging my humanity with my divinity is worth it.

You know those people you meet whose eyes are sort of vacant and dull, lifeless? Those who are just slumping along life’s crowded highways, not ever really reaching deeper into their soul’s pockets? What about the opposite type, those whose eyes dance and beam and cry and flash? The ones who seem to glow, despite their imperfections, who tend to attract good friends and good happenings like a magnet, who seem to beam out a calm and fearless sense of self? Well, which would you rather be?

An article in Adbusters #76 by Stan Chung. It’s a short story questioning the concept of marriage while telling the story of a couple divorcing after 25 years of marriage.

It’s nothing new to say that men and women can fundamentally misunderstand each other’s needs, but it may be interesting to begin mapping out a new territory for marriage, especially if marriage is to survive beyond children and mortgages and sleek waistlines.

Is it any surprise to you that, according to a recent piece in The Globe and Mail, the majority of divorces above the age of 40 are initiated by women?

Is it any surprise to you that marriage is one factor that statisticians say has proven to increase our life spans? Just as we spurn it, we discover it’s the best thing for us.

As more and more people separate, choose to live alone, or decide not to be married in the first place, marriage becomes the exception not the norm.

Traditional gender roles have changed but many couples are still confused because they don’t know what the new rules are. What does he do? What does she do? Who decides about the position of the toilet seat? How do we find the right balance between our own needs and the needs of our partner?

Baby-boomers are not only facing retirement surrounded by issues such as “the meaning of my life” and the “legacy of my life,” but they also have to pay for the Darn Good Life, and we all know it ain’t cheap.

When people feel a lump on their body, they see a doctor as soon as possible. When people sleep next to what they think is a lump, they’ll wait five, ten, maybe 25 years to do something.

A weekly newsletter on wisdom from Yoga Journal.

It’s important to have a daily meditation practice, to have a developing ability to see thoughts clearly, and to reside in our bodily experience. But having deep experiences during meditation is not enough. If we want to know how we’re doing in our practice, we have to examine our life. Unless we begin to connect it with the rest of our life, our practice—however strong, calm, or enjoyable—ultimately will not be satisfying.

The real measure of practice is whether, little by little, we can find our edge, that place where we’re closed down in fear, and allow ourselves to experience it. This takes courage, but courage isn’t about becoming fearless. Courage is the willingness to experience our fears. And as we experience our fears, courage grows. Noticing our edge and trying to meet it also allows us to develop compassion, not just for ourselves but for the whole human drama. Then, with an increasing sense of lightness and curiosity, we can keep moving toward a more open and genuine life.

Click here for the whole article.