Written on February 24, 2008 by Tom Stine
It is my pleasure to welcome you to Tom Stine dot com. The video above offers a short introduction to the site and what you will find here. Enjoy!
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?
A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.
So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.
Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
The disappearance of this fundamental question [How do I know the state of an enlightened one?], on discovering that it had no answer, was a physiological phenomenon, a sudden ‘explosion’ inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body. And with that ‘explosion’, the illusion that there is continuity of thought, that there is a center, an ‘I’ linking up the thoughts, was not there anymore.
on February 25th, 2008 at 3:54 am
Way to go Tom. Great into video. It really sets the scene for your blog.
on February 25th, 2008 at 11:15 am
It sounds like you’re off to a great start, Tom. I’m looking forward to following along!
on February 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
The video was good. It’s away to get you out there and being different. Good job
on February 25th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Thank you all for the comments. It was fun putting the video together. I definitely want to do it again!
on February 27th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Tom
good to see you continue sharing your experiences with a new site. I look forward to reading & watching them because you are one of the few people applying the Sedona concepts and willing to share how that works for you with all of us. That helps me let go of whatever comes up in my own life and I thank you for that.
rgds
Mike
on February 27th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
LOL, Ok, are you going to change the comment about Oprah now since you’ll be doing the Eckhart Tolle webinar? (lol)
Very good video Tom, and that’s cool that you enjoyed making it. I haven’t done any video blogging yet but I’d like to have fun with it, too, like you did.
on February 27th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
@JoLynn I really should change my Oprah comment in the video, but editing what I had thought of as a “finished” work is not something I relish. I’m guessing that video will go quicker next time, but the first one took a while. It was lots of fun, don’t get me wrong. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. And, another friend called this afternoon to tell me all about Oprah and Eckhart. Either my friends are all conspiring against me or….