Originally Posted By: Revlgking
Originally Posted By: samwik
I've always seen it as a fundamental problem that people don't sit back and "tune in" enough...
Sam, I have the feeling that you caught the essence of, the meaning behind, what I wrote--inspired by things I have read over the years. Other than putting the ideas together in my way, I make no other claims.

Interestingly, in Aramaic--the language of Jesus, and other semitic languages--the word we translate as 'pray' does not mean 'to ask' the gods, or God, for favours. It means 'to tune in to' , or 'connect with', the ultimate reality; that which is beyond the illusion of mere matter.

BTW, without judging the need for the material world--the world of body and mind--Eckhart Tolle, and many others like him, including the ones you mentioned, recommend this approach.
All those who have a direct experience of the absolute recommend a relationship with it. To tune into it.
However if you have never driven a car it would stand to reason you wouldn't be very effective at becoming proficient at driving by thinking about it, even if you thought about it alot.
So thinking about communing with God when you have no direct experience of God even if you think about God alot will not bring God closer to you.
There is a term called praying without ceasing, and it is in reference to constant contact or awareness with God/Presence/Absolute.
The surface of the mind is cluttered with thoughts, some 50-60,000 of them according to Stanford research. Non of those thoughts are attuned to God or the absolute. If they were there would be no illusions cast upon the world and there would be no separation of God and human awareness of God.

One of Tolle's inadequacies is that his awakening was not due to a systematic approach but rather an instantaneous moment of awareness, which gives him no point of reference to get there. What he speaks about is much like what Krishnamuri spoke of. Truth without the awareness of the approach to it.
What appeals to the ego and most of humanity when these people speak of their experiences is the possibility of instant gratification, or the possibility of it just happening to them as well.
Unfortunately Krishnamurti wasn't able to understand why no one else experienced what he did and as a result could not explain how one would get from where they were to his experience of God.
Tolle hasn't that missing piece of the puzzle, the same missing piece that Krishnamurti was without.

Tho it does make people feel better to be doing something rather than nothing, it does not help to connect God to experience just by keeping busy with thoughts of an imagined presence of being. As I mentioned once before, Religion has been our greatest example of that hope, and misconception.

Just a thought, but if the presence is all around you, in you and through you always, and you have not seen, felt or been aware of it. What would you look for by inventing an action such as self prescribed meditation? What would you tune into if you knew not what it is that was missing from your daily experience?

I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!