I’ve been reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
Been loving every single second of it so far. It’s an immensely popular book about spiritual enlightenment and I can see why. Every single page teaches me something new, allows me to think about life in a new way. And it makes me aware of ‘problems’—and solutions—I didn’t even know existed.
I could go on for a while about the new insights I’ve gained because of this book, but I want to shine a light on one particular sentence I found intriguing while reading.
This one:
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“The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind”.
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In the book, Tolle talks about how the mind creates a false sense of self. You think of ‘you’ as being the same as your past and future, your feelings and emotions, or even your accomplishments and life situation.
And you can see this everywhere around you. People’s sense of self is often defined based on their achievements/failures.
You hear things like, “I am an engineer” instead of “I work as an engineer”.
All of these examples are things which are created by the mind. Social constructs.
But never anything real.
So the sentence above refers to the fact that your sense of self—your being—can’t be created by the mind. Because after all, it’s your mind that came up with the mistaken sense of self in the first place.
Finding your actual sense of self, your actual being—the solution to your problem—can’t come from the mind. Your mind can’t understand it. You have to feel it instead. Because deep down you do. Deep down you already know all of this. But your mind is working against you—as it most often does.
Now I’m not saying I’m an expert on any of this myself.
I’m sure my explanation has some errors. I’ve just entered this new world myself. I’m actually still struggling with trying to ‘understand’ it—using my mind to solve the problem my mind created.
But I like this saying because it applies to everything. Not just spirituality.
All our problems are self-created. Whether in life or business.
But the way they’re created all differ. More specifically, what created them differs. And often times—or so I’ve experienced—I spend way too long trying to solve a problem by using the exact same type of thinking that originally created the problem itself.
An approach doomed to fail from the very beginning.
So remember this.
Every time you have a problem, come across an obstacle or encounter a tough life situation. Think about what created it. And do your utmost best to avoid that same line of thinking. Search out different perspectives. Look for methods outside the ones you already know.
You’ll find that those problems immediately simply cease to exist on their own or you’ll be able to fix them almost straight away.
And if you struggle with writing simple emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day, then you might want to check out another perspective on that topic.
I’m talking about the perspective I teach right here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME