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By Eckhart Tolle yoga & spirit The joy of being is the joy of being conscious H ere is a spiritual practice that will bring empowerment and creative expansion into your life. Make a list of a number of everyday routine activities that you perform frequently. Include activities you may consider uninteresting, boring, tedious, irritating or stressful, but don't in- clude anything you hate or detest doing; that is a case either for accep- tance or for stopping what you do. Your list may include traveling to and from work, buying groceries, doing your laun- dry, or anything you fi nd tedious or stressful in your daily life. Then whenever you are engaged in those activities, let them be a vehicle for alertness. Be absolutely present in what you do and sense the alert, alive stillness within you in the background of the activity. You will soon fi nd that whatever you do in such a state of heightened awareness, instead of being stressful, te- dious or irritating is actually becoming enjoyable. To be more precise, what you are enjoying is not really the outward action but the inner dimension of consciousness that fl ows into the action. This is fi nding the joy of being in what you are doing. If you feel your life lacks signifi cance or is too stressful or tedious, it is because you hav- en't brought that dimension into your life yet. Being conscious in what you do has not yet become your main aim. The new earth arises as more and more peo- ple discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness. The joy of being is the joy of being conscious. Awakened consciousness then takes over from ego and begins to run your life. You may then fi nd that an activity that you have been engaged in for a long time naturally begins to expand into something much bigger when it becomes empowered by consciousness. Some people who, through creative action, en- rich the lives of many others simply do what they enjoy doing most without want- ing to achieve or become anything through that activ- ity. They may be musicians, artists, writers, scientists, teachers or builders, or they may bring into manifestation new social or business struc- tures (enlightened business- es). Sometimes for a few years their sphere of infl uence remains small; and then it can happen that suddenly or gradually a wave of cre- ative empowerment fl ows into what they do, and their activity expands be- yond anything they could have imagined and touches countless others. In addition to enjoyment, an intensity is now added to what they do, and with it comes a creativity that goes beyond anything an ordinary human could accomplish. But don't let it go to your head, because up there is where a remnant of ego may be hiding. You are still an ordinary human. What is extraordinary is what comes through you into this world. That es- sence you share with all beings. The 14th-cen- tury Persian poet and Sufi master Hafi z ex- presses this truth beautifully: "I am a hole in a fl ute that the Christ's breath moves through. Listen to this music." Excerpted from A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose © Eckhart Tolle. The author will be teaching at the Living a Life of Presence event starting 9/29, along with Marianne Wil- liamson, Jack Kornfi eld and others (more info on page 2). DON'T LET IT GO TO YOUR HEAD august/september 2016 23