Eckhart Tolle on Spiritual Practice

‘I wouldn’t say that the practice itself has the power to liberate. It’s only when there is complete surrender to the now, to what is, that liberation is possible. I do not believe that a practice will take you into complete surrender. Complete surrender usually happens through living. Your very life is the ground where that happens. There may be a partial surrender and then there may be an opening, and then you may engage in spiritual practice. But whether the spiritual practice is taken up after a certain degree of insight or the spiritual practice is just done in and of itself, the practice alone won’t do it.’

– WIE: Ripples on the Surface of Being – An Interview with Eckhart Tolle

Like I said, meditation schmeditation >;)
(Via coolmel)

Meditation schmeditation – on the other hand: maybe that’s just your ego speaking, because it doesn’t want you to sit and shut up for a few minutes!

Every single one of the “spritual teachers” hopes that his/her method is the one that will save x amount of people and starts preaching that method. Take the guy you are quoting: he might think what made him “get it” was his “surrender to the now!”. So, maybe he trademarked that phrase “Surrender to the Now” and is traveling around telling people just that.

But this phrase “Surrender to the Now” is just his conception, his idea of what happened. Just an idea, just another method, just another finger pointing at the moon. Might work for some people, not work for others. A lot of it is just accident-like. Meaning – when all of the ingredients come together in the pot the result can be tasty – or not.

Some methods make the accident more likely than others and all of those methods involve dissolving the ego, softening up the ego, making it translucent or whatever terms we want to use. Meditation is just a great practice to dissolve the ego – that’s all. So is love and service/devotion…

Maybe because I am a musician, practicing is very natural to me. Nothing happens between a musician and his instrument without practice. I feel that anything to be done well needs to be practiced and that practice in itself is liberating.

“practice alone won’t do it”

That’s just very silly, IMO. Nothing “alone” or isolated will likely do anything. It is one of the funniest human traits… we love to latch on to the one thing that will make us happy, make us successful etc. blablah. A very masculine trait, I think.

“practice alone won’t do it ” – that’s a lot like saying heating the pans won’t cook a meal, or cutting the vegetables won’t cook a meal. Yeah, damn right. But without the fire under the pans ya can’t cook…