Soul's Code

What is it like to be in a relationship with an enlightened being? Here is what Eckhart Tolle’s intimate partner, Kim Eng, tells people who always ask

BY PAUL KAIHLA — Eng answered that question as she conducted a Q&A with her spiritually-famous lover about the lessons of their relationship. The dialogue is startling for its courage and clarity and offers a rare insight into their private world.

“During my travels, one of the most frequently asked question is “What is it like to be in relationship with an enlightened being?”

A dude doing a headstand in Times Square and a woman striking a tree pose in the ocean. Meet our meditation junkies!

For the latest Soul’s Code photo contest we asked readers to submit photos of themselves doing their spiritual thing — yoga, pilates, meditation, whatever — anywhere but where we’d expect to typically see them. We received scores of terrific entries — a guy perched atop a hotel banister, a couple poised along the ridge of a canyon — so cool, that we were called to feature our favorites in a new Soul’s Code slideshow, Meditation Junkies.

We chose two winners, and we’ll send both a $50 gift certificate to SoundsTrue, a sort of iTunes for spirituality.

This week’s hottest viral email uses Sarah Palin’s resume to ridicule Republican attack lines

In the section of Soul’s Code called Email Inspirations — look way up, and in the middle of the navigation bar that runs across our banner — we curate viral emails that people are forwarding to friends and family around the world. We pick ones that have a spiritual or mind-bending psychology. Or that simply make you smile.

We went for political humor with the newest one, The Obama-Palin paradox.

A small business owner writes about returning after the storm

BY SKIP MARTIN — After weaving my way through the maze of road blocks and debris that is Galveston County post-Ike, I finally made it to the Galveston Police checkpoint.  It was more than a week before residents would be allowed to return permanently — just two days after the storm ripped through — and officials were letting property owners back for a five-hour-period that was known as a “look and leave.”

Look, I did. What I saw resembled a city, post-battle. I drove along the causeway past piles of debris — mangled boats, crumpled washing machines, the bloated corpse of a dog. State and National Guard troops, in their crisp BDUs and driving Humvees, were only outnumbered by reporters and news trucks.

As I traveled down Broadway, a main thoroughfare,  I thought how timely the demolishing of the Taco Bell had been. A small victory.

An astrologer who is also an expert in astronomy wrote a meditation after sleeping outside his California home many nights to seek relief from Indian Summer temperatures

“It started out as an escape from the stuffiness and heat in our solar-cooked house,” says the author. “Then it became more like a vision quest.”

BY HUNTER REYNOLDS — Roofless World

There’s nothing romantic or liberating about it—
this cowering in a sleeping bag watching the twinkling menace collapsing the screen tent
of who I think I am.

An excerpt from Vaishali’s upcoming book, Wisdom Rising, one woman’s manual for reinvention and realization

PART 1 of 2 — In Taiwan there is a device known as a Taiwanese monkey trap. It is a simple box made of open wooden slats. A banana is placed inside the box, and it is clearly visibly through the open slats. There is a hole in the box just large enough for a monkey’s open hand to reach through. Once the monkey has a grip on the banana, the trap is sprung: the monkey now finds the hole is too small for a closed fist clutching a banana to pass back out again.

There is actually nothing holding the monkey in the trap — except for its attachment to the banana.

In her upcoming book, Wisdom Rising, Vaishali reveals how the things that happen *to* you are not really *about* You

ADVANCE EXCERPT: PART 2 of 2 — Vedic psychology says you do not have to take their word for it, you can prove it to yourself. Just ask yourself, “like air, fire and water, were emotions around before you showed up on the planet?” Were human experiences happening before your charming butt arrived to grace the third rock from the sun? Did you invent thought, or was that property of being bouncing around long before you were born? If it was on the planet before you showed up, then it is a universal event, and there is nothing personal about it.

Part 1 of 4: It was when her voice was devoid of emotion that I feared her the most

BY SUEANN JACKSON-LAND — I didn’t know when it started. I still don’t, and probably never will know. My mother changed. Around other people she was cheery, always a bubbly personality. Being the offspring of a master chameleon, I’ve adapted that same mask. I can smile at you with bright blue-gray eyes twinkling, when inside, my heart is in night terrors.

Part 4 of 4: My father jokes that I have a league of guardian angels

BY SUEANN JACKSON-LAND — There is, of course, a much more to my story than what I recounted in the first three parts of the Living in fear series published here. It’s taken me 43 years, four months and 16 days to get to Soul’s Code. Every time I thought I was ready to write “my” book, God changed the story. I wrote earlier today that I was concerned that readers might come away with the idea that the only thing I have to say as a human being is “my mom was mean and then she killed herself.” It is anything but that.

Tragedies will happen and people will let us down, that’s part of living. It’s what we do with it that matters. I don’t want to speak in bumper sticker theology or platitudes because it is different for every person within their own truth. I deeply and passionately believe in free will and that our perceptions can cripple us — or free us. I could have spent my life blaming my mother, blaming my father, and destroying myself.

How I rediscovered myself through Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

BY RAQUEL TAVARES — I recently told my mother that I was tired of all those “self-help” books. Then, shortly after, I bought one again — this time, Eckhart Tolle‘s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

All this is to say that Tolle’s book transcends the ‘self-help’ pigeon-hole, and reaches way beyond ‘the Oprah book club’ labeling. I’m happy that both the genre and seal-of-approval draw the attention of a mass audience, but let’s just say that this book deserves its very own shelf. It should be tagged: the ‘growing up human’ section.

It’s rare that I’ve been so taken by a book that I recommend it to others. With this one, I usually lay this line on top of my recommendations — “This book has changed my life.” And it has.