I. You are not who you think you are

One of the main ideas in Tolle's book is: you are not who you think you are. The philosopher Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement:"I think, therefore I am". According to Tolle it is wrong to equate thinking with Being. Being is "a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructable, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you." (12, see more about 'Being' at *1 at the end of this article). This is not the same as thinking.
Identification with your mind (thinking) creates all sorts of concepts, labels, images, words, judgements and definitions that blocks all true relationship with your Being. It comes between you and yourself, the other, nature and God (15).
The problem is that many people are not able to stop thinking. The mental noise in their heads prevents them from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseperable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering (15).
Sometimes the 'soundtrack' in your head is accompanied by visual images like "mental movies".
At times these voices or movies are relevant to the situation at hand. The problem is it will interpret these situations in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a distorted view of it. These voices or movies can become a person's worst enemy. A lot of (gay) people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. That is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well of many diseases (18).

II. How to free yourself from your mind

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity, the thinker. You are more and different than your thoughts. The moment you start watching your thoughts, feeling your emotions and observing your reactions: a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You realize that all things that truly matter like beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind (17).
So start listening to the voices in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head for many years. Listen to these voices, be there as the witnessing presence. Not judging those voices. If you judge or condemn what you see or hear in your head you give them just another door to come back in (18). You’ll have to realize (without judgement): there is the voice and I am listening to it, watching it. This is the moment you make contact with your real being, your own presence which is not a thought. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking and voices many gay people suffer from.
Watch all those voices in your head from parents, church leaders and friends saying that you are a wrong or sinful being. But that is not your being! Those are only thoughts of others and sometimes of yourself. Watch these thoughts and realize you are not those thoughts!
If you start watching your unconscious dark thoughts and feelings, they will become conscious, light. "Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light" (Ephesians 5:14).

III. Give attention to the Now

Another way to create a gap in your mind stream is by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. By doing so you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.
In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and give it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself . For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs, pay close attention to every step, every movement of your body, even your breathing. Be totally present. It will help you to disidentify from your mind and become more aware of who you really are (20,21).
This is almost the same thing the Benedictine monks (from 529 A.D.) taught: Ut in omnibus Deus glorificetur. In everything you do, glorify God. Therefore do everything with great concentration and be in the Now. Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action, just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord (68).
And what to think about the meaning of Gods name? Gods name means: “I am who I am” (not past, not future but now! Exodus 4:14). Is this also the reason why many gay people almost by instinct love the song: I am what I am?! :-)

IV. Create no more pain in the present

Tolle writes that the greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is selfcreated by the mind. The pain we create is always some form of unconsciousness resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgement. On the emotional level it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and escape from it (33).
If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don’t create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it and the more likely you are to make 'a self' out of it (91).
How can I get free from the past? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Pay only brief visits to the past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation (35).
But don't we have to make plans for the future? Yes, it is good if you are aware where you want to go, but honor and give your fullest attention to the step you are taking at this moment. If you become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, it makes your life's journey no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, attain or 'make it' (58). On a large scale this is what many ideologies preach. They operate under the assumption that the highest goods lies in the future and that therefore the end justifies the means. Often the means of getting there are enslavement, torture, and murder of people in the present (think of all the terrorist attacks today).

This is what Jesus also said:”Don’t be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow. Live one day at a time” Matthew 6:34. He also taught not to live in the past:”No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit to service in the kingdom of God” Luke 9:62. Or think about the beautiful flowers that are not anxious about tomorrow but live with ease in the timeless Now and are provided for abundantly by God (Matthew 6:28).

Many gay people who have not accepted who they are suffer from fear. It might be helpful to realize that fear is always something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap and if you have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will be your constant companion. You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection, you cannot cope now with the future. So stop it! (43).
Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt. Ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death. Fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example the need to win an argument (defending the mental position with which you have identified) is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this and countless relationships have broken down.
Once you have disidentified from your mind, wether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self anymore! The compulsive and unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there. You can state clearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no aggressiveness or defensiveness about it. Trying to get power of others is weakness disguised as strenght. True power is within, and it is available to you now (44-45). This might be a healthy basis for gay people to discuss (gay) issues with their friends and family.

Some people try to overcome their fears by engaging in dangerous activities, such as car racing or mountain climbing. Slipping away from the present moment, even for a second may mean death. Although they may not be aware of it, this is a way of feeling the Now, the intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, thinking. But as shown above you do not need to climb high mountains to enter the state of Now (51). It can be as simple as climbing the stairs in your house.
Your identity cannot be found in thinking or things outside you, only in your Being. You will see this truth in the face of death. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is therefore to "die before you die" and find that there is no death (46). Or think of a life-or-death situation. Then the mind has no time to fool arround. The mind stops and you become totally present in the Now, and something more powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds (66).

VI. Problems are an illusion ?

Find the 'narrow gate that leads to life.' Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems (most lifes are) but find out if you have any problem at this moment. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now. Do you have a problem now? When you think you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation (63).
In a way there are no problems. Only situations to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted until they change or can be dealt with in the future. Problems are mind-made and need time to survive. Stop giving your problems time, they cannot survive in the actuality of the Now (64).

VII. Stop complaining

Some gay people complain a lot. They complain about false Christian teaching, their parents, society etc. According to Tolle this is not a good thing. “To complain”, he writes “is always nonacceptance of what is. It carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in power.” So change the situation by taking action (by speaking out if necessary) or leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness (82).
So if you find you’re here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options. If you take any action (leaving or changing the situation) drop the negativity first. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity (83). Anything done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, unhappiness is contagious, it spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others (79). Maybe that is one of the reasons how it is possible that humans killed one hundred million (!) fellow humans in the twentieth century alone (*2).

Gay people in some countries can hardly do anything to change their here and now. To them Tolle would say that they are not powerless. You can use this difficult here and now to become even more aware of who you are. Drop all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is what Tolle calls ‘surrender’. Surrender is not weakness, just as Jesus in taking up His cross is not showing weakness but strength. There is great strength in surrender. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power through which he or she will be free internally of the situation (83).

VIII. In the quest to become who you are, is being gay a help or a hindrance?

To my great surprise and joy this is one of the questions Tolle addresses in his book. He writes:” The realization that you are ‘different’ from others may force you to identify from social conditioned patterns of thought and behavior. This will automatically raise your level of consciousness above that of the unconscious majority, who unquestioningly take on board all inherited patterns. In that respect, being gay can be a help. Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not ‘fit in’ with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of the unconsciousness almost by force”(173). Some will recognise this by the feeling that they were or still are ‘older and wiser’ in some sense as their peers, which also can make you feel even more lonely and ‘strange’.

There is also an negative site to being gay. That is when we develop a sense of identity based only on our gayness. That is escaping from one trap and falling into another. Before you know you start playing roles and games dictated by a mental image you have of gay people of what the media make you believe is gay. But of course not every gay person has to love Star Trek, shopping, handbags etc! So being gay can according to Tolle be both: a help and a hindrance. We all have to same road to travel to find out who we really are and being gay is just one part of it. Maybe the ideas of Tolle will help you to realize who you really are and free you from haunting thoughts and ideas. I hope all who read this will find their true being. Start looking for it Now.

Blessings to all,

Inspiritus’ webmaster

*1 "Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the large number of forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructable essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt." (12,13) To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state is what many religions call 'enlightenment'.
*2 See Ruth L. Sivard, World Military and Social Ependitures, 1996, p.7