The Lost Ring (Continued)
When she started speaking again there was a smile on her face, and she seemed at peace. “The last question made me realize something important. First I went to my mind for an answer and my mind said, ‘Yes, of course you have been diminished.’ Then I asked myself the question again, ‘Has who I am become diminished’ This time I tried to feel rather than think the answer. And suddenly I could feel my I Am-ness. I have never felt that before. If I can feel the I Am so strongly, then who I am hasn’t been diminished at all. I can still feel it now, something peaceful but very alive.”
“That is the joy of Being,” I said. “You can only feel it when you get out of your head. Being must be felt. It can’t be thought. The ego doesn’t know about it because thought is what it consists of. The ring was really in your head as a thought that you confused with the sense of I Am. You thought the I Am or a part of it was in the ring.
“Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it’s the ego. And you are never really attached to a thing, but to a thought that has ‘I,’ ‘me,’ or ‘mine in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego, and who you are, the I Am, which is consciousness itself, emerges.”
She said, “Now I understand something Jesus said that never made sense to me before: “If someone takes your shirt, let him have your coat as well.”
Eckhart Tolle
from A New Earth; Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose