I am relaxing at Los Angeles Airport, waiting for a connecting flight to Phoenix, Arizona on my way to Jack Canfield’s Breakthrough to Success seminar. On the flight from Sydney I devoured about a third of Eckhart Tolle’s intriguing book titled A New Earth. Although tired from the flight, my mind is abuzz with realisations re-affirmed by Tolle’s idea of deriving peace and happiness through a process of accepting what we do, enjoying it, and ultimately feeling enthusiastic about it, which lifts our consciousness towards the real us.

Tolle rightly identifies that when it comes to judging or criticising others, what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself. Some people are addicted to reacting or getting angry about situations and people. By reacting angrily or complaining about various things we strengthen our own egoic sense of self. We feed the basis of ego, which is the feeling of superiority over others. These reactions and anger over time may become resentments which if reinforced over long periods of time can turn to grievances. Tolle observes that collective grievances can survive for centuries in the psyche of a community, tribe or a nation. They shape future generations by limiting their ability to break away from the past riddled with grievances. In Tolle’s words grievance is baggage of old thought and emotions. The past itself is not capable of tripping us up in the present if there were not for the habitual grievances and fears we carry from the past.

Tolle concludes that whatever we fight, we strengthen, and what we resist, persists.

True happiness can be attained by achieving both our material and non-material goals. They are not mutually exclusive. But we have to be aware of dangers of excesses. We should neither be excessively spiritual or material.  To have balance in each area of our lives is the key to maintaining a steady momentum of progress and not losing faith in our selves.

I am more than ever convinced that humankind’s evolution towards progressive thinking starts from within each individual. “To change the world” is not an ideal I aspire to accomplish in my life time, simply because I know it’s not an ideal. The world is changing anyway. I want to contribute to this process by fulfilling my purpose of empowering and inspiring everyone I come into contact with to work on themselves and find happiness first and foremost for themselves within themselves. This process can achieve any goal we set for ourselves. And inevitably it can create a life that leads to those around us deriving happiness from engagement with us.

I am more than my wishes, goals and dreams, I am determined to inspire to learn and teach. I have firm belief in the path I’ve chosen. And the world and everyone in it are parts of it too.