Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Kim Eng. Kim is a counselor and spiritual teacher whose Presence through Movement workshops focus on the integration of mind, body, and spirit. With Sounds True, Kim has created several programs, including two DVD programs of her Presence through Movement practices—one program on qi flow yoga and also a DVD on yin yoga. Kim has also created two audio learning programs—Meditations for a New Earth and Resist Nothing: Guided Meditations to Heal the Pain-Body. Kim is also a featured teacher at EckhartTolleTV.com. Eckhart Tolle TV is an online subscription website, which focuses on offering new, monthly video teachings with Eckhart Tolle.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Kim and I talked about how to dissolve what Eckhart calls “the pain-body”—the accumulated pain of our past that Eckhart believes can manifest as a sort of semi-autonomous being. Kim talks about how the pain-body can sometimes be released through movement. We also talked about the discovery of the “inner body”—or a sense of inner aliveness—and what it might mean to be present through grief and loss. Here’s my conversation with Kim Eng:
My name is Tami Simon and I’m the host of a podcast series called Insights at the Edge. Today we’re recording Insights at the Edge on the set of Eckhart Tolle TV and my guest is Kim Eng. Welcome, Kim.
Kim Eng: Thank you, Tami. It’s nice to be here with you.
TS: Wonderful. I want to start by talking a little bit about the origin, for you, of your work with presence through movement. My understanding is that—after you met Eckhart—you were meditating and you started finding yourself moving into spontaneous forms—spontaneous postures and movements. I’m curious to hear the story of what actually happened here.
KE: Well, as you said, I had a regular sitting meditation practice—sitting cross-legged on the floor with my cushion—and I don’t know what happened. One time, I was just sitting there and I could feel this energy in me. I thought, OK, do I sit through this—you know, in sitting meditation you allow things just to be. And I couldn’t. It just moved me. It literally moved me.
There was no stopping it. I found myself just moving while seated—just going very, very slow. It almost felt as if it was an unwinding. Then, gradually, over time, every time when I came to this seated meditation posture, after 15 minutes or so—sometimes only five minutes—it would well up again inside of me—this energy—and I would move. Soon I would actually be up on my feet, and I would just move with this energy. It was like it was moving me.
I would also do it during—Eckhart had retreats and I would be meditating outside and I would just be moving. People would come to me and say, “Oh, you do tai chi!” And [I’d say], “No, I don’t do tai chi.” I just would move.
We were actually at a Costa Rica retreat and somebody said, “Will you lead a class doing this?” And I’m like, “Jeez, I don’t even know how to lead a class in doing this. I have no idea.” It was just something that my body was doing and I was present with it. As I was doing it, I would receive—insights would come.
Then, also, other times, I’d be in meditation and I’d be doing yoga postures. This is before I even knew there was a yin yoga. The energy would hold me in a posture for like 15, sometimes even 20 minutes. It would just hold me there in a posture. I realized that it was energy that was releasing from my body—in between my joints and the connective tissues. You could just feel the energy releasing.
TS: One of the things I’ve always been curious about is the origin of yoga—the origin of tai chi and qigong. Thousands of years ago, how did these particular postures—how were they discovered? It sounds to me, in your story, that you sort of had your own intuitive way into discovering certain postures. I’m curious about that—what your own experience tells you about the origin of these disciplines.
KE: I believe the origin came from stillness. I don’t think it was just created out of the mind. The reason why I know that is because it happened to me. I had no idea how to do tai chi. I knew about yoga—I did some yoga—but I didn’t know about yin yoga. I believe that it was out of a state of stillness that the form just birthed—I can say it just was created. What I realized was that, wow, if this can arise out of stillness, then you can use this exercise—if you want to call it that—to return to stillness. Ultimately, that’s what it is.
Yoga is the union with the divine. [That’s] the meaning of yoga. Same with tai chi. It’s connecting with this energy that you are and moving from that place. By doing these forms that are aligned with stillness—and if you are doing it to return to stillness, it’s a spiritual practice. But if you use these forms just for pure exercise or physical fitness, which you can do, you’re really missing the essence of what the practice is—the origin of the practice.
TS: I’d be curious to know, in your experience, both as a practitioner and as a teacher, what’s the litmus test for when you’re “exercising”—just trying to feel better in your body? You’re running, stretching—and when you’re engaging in “presence” through movement? How do you know the difference?
KE: You know there are differences if you’re judging yourself. You’re comparing yourself. For example, if I’m in a class or something and I’m saying, “Oh wow. I did it better yesterday,” or, “Boy, I could get down more two weeks ago than I can today,” or, “This person over here is really advanced.” Also, your mind is thinking. You could be thinking about what to make for dinner, or yesterday, or the future, or whatever. There needs to be a sense of being present—so present that everything in the room dissolves and that you are one with your breath, one with the energy that’s in your body, and accepting where you are at the present moment—because every day is going to be different when you do a practice.
There are so many things that happen in the day that cause stress to our bodies, so every day is going to be different. One day you’re going to be able to touch your toes and the next day, you won’t be able to. Or we injure ourselves some way. It’s being present with what is, accepting it—so much so that you don’t want it to change at all. That’s really true acceptance—that you’re willing to experience this forever, really. But nothing is forever, as all forms change. It’s impermanent, so it comes and goes. You’re just with it. “OK, this is as far as I can go today.”
So, I’m in a pose and I’m resting in that pose and allowing the present moment and your body to open as you accept. When you accept, it’s like this opening begins to happen in your whole energy field and in your body that then takes you deeper. It’s the same with tai chi, too. There [are] movements where you could squat down really low, or you’re moving and you’ve got a sore shoulder and you can’t move. At the moment, right now, I actually do have a sore shoulder. Some good days, I can stretch my arm wide. Other days, I can’t. You’re just going with it. You’re just like, “Oh, OK.” Follow the energy in the present moment without any force. There’s no force—no force to tai chi, no force to yin yoga. It’s just this ease of being and movement.
TS: Do you think that there was something in your connecting with Eckhart and spending a lot of time with him that sort of amplified or increased the amount of energy that was running through your body such that your sitting meditation practice shifted in this way?
KE: I don’t know. That’s a hard one to answer.
TS: We don’t have a parallel world in which we could see what might have happened otherwise.
KE: Exactly. Let me just go there quickly and I’ll let you know. [Laughs]
TS: I’m curious if you have a go-to posture that you—often people have their go-to move, like when I’m stressed out or at the end of the day—this is the thing that I go to first a lot of the time. Do you have something like that?
KE: I have several like that, because some days something may work and another day that same thing that yesterday didn’t work—let’s try something else. So, there are several of them. The first one that I will go to is actually just sitting meditation and allowing the energy to rise again and just flow with that energy. Even flow with it if it comes out vocally. Sometimes it will come out vocally for me and I’m moving and I’m actually voicing a sound. I actually love that one, for some reason. Sometimes I sound like some sort of native Indian or something making a call or a blessing or something.
If I find that I just—phew!—can’t even sit there to get the energy moving in me—and it’s not me that gets it moving, but that I just can’t quiet myself down—I’ll do some breathing. You know. One of them could be [demonstrates breathing]. Just to let out all the excess energy. Then doing alternate nostril breathing—breathing in through one side, closing off this side and exhaling out the other nostril, breathing in through the nostril, closing [demonstrates technique]. That calms me down so that I can just sit and reconnect with stillness.
The energy that arises also [is] a connection to stillness, because how I sense it is that it’s the purest life energy—energy is form—purest life form arising from stillness. Stillness is always in this sort of—even though it’s this vast—you can call it emptiness. There’s still a lot of energy and potential there, so both exist. It’s the yin and yang. Both exist. This is form and formlessness. It’s the purest life form arising and then creativity comes out of that. I believe that this is the state where artists can paint and musicians can get into their music and just play.
TS: One of the things that I’m very curious about—when I had the chance, for Eckhart Tolle TV, to interview Eckhart about the “awakening experience” that he had when he was 29, I was asking him for more details about exactly what happened, because I was so curious about knowing as much nuance as possible. He didn’t add a lot of color to the story as it’s written in just a few paragraphs inThe Power of Now.
But he did add one detail that I’m curious about, that I want to talk about—phew!—which is that when he awakened the next morning, after this experience through the night, he had a sense of the aliveness of the inner body and that that’s something that never left him. I’m curious to know, from your experience of movement, what you sense and feel as the inner body. Is that something that you tune to regularly? What’s it like for you?
KE: I believe that what he’s experiencing is what I experience when I go into that deep state of movement meditation—the presence through movement. Because it’s alive. You’re just so—it’s vibrating inside. It’s not only vibrating, but it’s connected. I have the sense [that] this arm is just the extension of this flower is the extension of you is the extension of this room. There is no separation—nothing. It’s only the mind that I see when I’m in this movement, as I move. It’s only the mind that creates this division, this separation.
TS: So the inner body is a very alive and vibrant and sort of pulsating experience for you.
KE: Yes, yes.
TS: And can you—
KE: I wish I could feel it all the time. [Laughs]
TS: Can you tune into it just in a moment?
KE: Yes. I’m tuning into it right now. Can I do it all the time, say if I’m under a lot of stress? No. I’ll have to go and sit and be quiet somewhere to be able to tune that in. But, it’s my practice. It’s still a practice. Awakening often doesn’t happen for most people overnight like it did [for] Eckhart. It’s usually a gradual process for many of us.
TS: So when you tune into the inner body in a moment, like this moment, what do you do? What’s the turning action that you make?
KE: I go inward. How can you best describe it? I think that’s what we all try to point to, right, as teachers—is pointing to something that is really unseen. I turn my attention into my body. I don’t even sometimes—although a lot of people, as in meditation, the first thing you connect with is your breath. Sometimes I don’t even have to connect to my breath. It’s just a matter of—sometimes I do—but many times it’s just a matter of “Oh!” I just tune into my body and it’s there. It’s perhaps because I’ve done it enough times to feel it. I know what it feels like. I can just connect with it—if I’m just sitting there or if I’m teaching or I’m at home.
[Interlude]
TS: From the purest life form, I want to talk about hives.
KE: Hives! [Laughs]
TS: I want to talk about hives, because I remember you describing how—once again, as you were discovering these presence through movement postures and starting to spend longer and longer time in some of these yin yoga postures—that your body actually started breaking out in hives. And not just once or twice, but over the period of a year!
KE: Yes, that’s true.
TS: I’m wondering if you can share with us a little bit about what you think was going on.
KE: At first when it started, I didn’t know what was going on. All I know is that I couldn’t help myself, but when I would meditate, I would end up in a pose. So I couldn’t stop that—I mean, I could, I suppose, if I really wanted to, but I was too in that state of that divine essence—that “No, I’m going there. I’m just staying.” I would start breaking out in hives.
TS: On your arms? On your legs? On your whole body?
KE: Everywhere.
TS: Big hives? Small hives? Let’s get right into it.
KE: Sometimes big, sometimes small.
TS: OK, all over.
KE: Sometimes just a little bit and other times—whoa, it was a lot.
TS: That’s a big deal.
KE: Yes, it was. Then, probably after a month or maybe even two months, I just sort of said to Eckhart, “Wow, you know what? I’m doing these poses that I end up in meditation with and every time I do it, I break out in hives.” And he [said], “Well, hmm. You know what? You’re getting more and more conscious, awakening more, and maybe the pain-body isn’t grabbing you so much.” So, I’m reacting. It’s the energy of the pain-body.
He says, “Maybe it’s the pain-body energy releasing.” When he said that—you know how when somebody says something you just know it’s right? So when he said it, I just knew that that was it. I knew that was right. So, I just continued with my poses. I couldn’t help it—I just did. After a year, it stopped.
TS: Tell me a little bit more about how you understand that the pain-body releasing in the form of hives—what’s your understanding of that?
KE: My experience of that—one time I was sitting in meditation after I was starting to feel like the pain-body was starting to come up and I sat with the energy—the pain-body—because I could feel it in the body. You can actually feel it in the body and sometimes it causes pain.
TS: Let’s slow down, because, first of all, it’s possible that some of our listeners don’t know what the pain-body is. Then, when you say that you can feel it—tell me what you mean by that.
KE: The pain-body is the accumulation of old emotional wounds. Every emotion and every thought is an energy. As we know, energy—just like water—we can say when we boil water, it becomes steam, but it’s still water. The thoughts and the emotions that we’ve accumulated because we haven’t been able to deal with it at the time. It’s stored within our—it could be cellular structure, within our bodies, in our memories, in our minds. So, it’s stored. It gets activated. As Eckhart says, it lays dormant sometimes and then it will get activated, whether it’s through somebody saying something to you or your perception perceives something a certain way and then it’s going to get activated.
When it activated in me one time and I sat with it—because I thought, “I’m going to be present with this,”—and I just sat with it in meditation and feeling this energy. I actually felt it right in here. I could feel the energy of it, because it’s like this big energy ball. Sitting in meditation, I also watched the thoughts that came up—the story that I had around this pain that I was experiencing. What I saw was that—it’s like the thought would come and I saw myself believing in that thought. As soon as I believed in that thought, it was just like [whoosh] the energy of that thought went [whoosh]—grabbed onto this energy that it was feeling already right here.
Suddenly, I had this—there was one of those aha moments, because what Eckhart talks about is feeding the pain-body—how we feed the pain-body. I realized oh, that’s what Eckhart means by “feeding the pain-body.” It’s like, with my own thought, I fed it. I made it grow within me. When I realized that, it was this—at that moment, I was able to just watch the thoughts. I allowed the story to play out without any attachment or belief to it. “What are these thoughts behind this pain-body I’m feeling? Just allow them to run.” I just allowed them to run and it was just like they ran and this dissolved within me. The energy just went [poof].
TS: Here’s something that’s interesting to me. I’ve talked to a lot of different people about emotions in the body. They’ll talk about how shame might feel like something in the stomach and anger might feel like a heat or something like that.
In Eckhart’s teaching, there’s this semi-autonomous being. That’s the way he describes the pain-body—as like a being. And all of these feelings are kind of wrapped into this being called the pain-body. I guess I’m curious [about] experiencing it as a being—a semi-autonomous being—versus just like, “Oh, the body’s having an emotional passage of some kind.” How do you see the difference in those two approaches?
KE: I believe he uses the word “entity” rather than “being.” What I see him meaning in that is that it can’t—it’s like it takes you over, because it’s an identification with a story, with your thoughts, with an emotion. If you’re identified with it, there’s no sense of that stillness. You believe it’s you, so then you act from that place. I don’t even want to say “act.” You react from that place. That pain-body—that entity—which is really the form of the ego, is a reaction mode. It reacts, almost like it has a mind of its own. And, in a way, it does, because you’re operating from this state of reactivity, from this state of pain, because we begin to perceive—it colors the true vision of reality.
If we were abandoned, for instance, when we were a child by one of our parents, and we grow up and we haven’t dealt with that and had nobody to help us through it or anything like that, we begin to perceive—so any relationship we have—say if it was your father who left—we begin to feel afraid that the person that we’re with is going to abandon us. We might even set it up so they will abandon us. It’s like re-experiencing that again, because that’s how we begin to see life. It’s our filters.
TS: So, whether someone experiences it as an entity or they’re just aware of the fact that they’re being taken over by a sense of being troubled deeply—sensations that are so uncomfortable and troubling and thoughts that are so troubling that you just want to sort of jump in the toilet and flush it—that kind of feeling. Let’s just call it that. What would be your recommendation for what to do sort of on the spot when we feel that way?
KE: The moment that—if you can recognize that you’re about to have a pain-body attack—
TS: Or you’re having one. You’re in it.
KE: If you’re in it—if you’re lost in it—you’re probably lost. There’s no awareness, so it’s almost like you have to—actually, this happened to me early in our relationship. I had a pain-body attack. Eckhart was trying to help me to become present and I couldn’t. There was a little bit, but I just couldn’t. He says, “You’ll have to ride it out.” That will happen.
Nobody is ever 100 percent of the time in their life, living in their pain-body. So we do have moments of grace where we’re not in it. If you are completely lost and there’s no awareness at all, you do have to ride it out. But, once you ride it out and you begin—that awareness begins to come back—then, it’s almost like there’s also a need to forgive yourself.
Oftentimes, the mind will come back in and the ego will come back in with, say, shame or guilt or something. It’s like the ego coming in through the back door to say, “Oh look, you blew it. You’re not awakening. You’re not aware. It’s not enough.” We have to be vigilant and be aware that that’s the mind again. That’s the ego coming in through the back door. Just come into feeling the body again—going back into stillness, feeling the energy body, and doing what helps you to become more present.
If you have not completely lost it, then you have some awareness. As the pain-body begins to rise, there’s awareness. Then, you can go into that meditation similar to what I had done. I took that pain and went into meditation and just watched it, observed it, felt it.
So, it’s coming up. If you resist it in the moment, then it’ll just persist. If you can just be the space and allow the feeling, without reaction, to be there—and the thoughts to come without identifying and reacting to it—then it’s just something that needs to be played out and let go of. It’s like holding down a bunch of balloons with helium in [them]. You’re holding it down and one day you’re going to get tired of holding it down. It will just pop. It will just come out. Or it’s like popcorn—it just needs to pop out sometimes in order to release it. And we do need to release it, because for most of us, it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a process.
TS: How do you know the difference inside yourself [between] when you’re having a pain-body attack and when you’re just experiencing an emotion that is maybe perfectly appropriate to a situation—like you’re angry because somebody crossed a certain boundary or you’re sad about the loss of something? That’s not necessarily the “pain-body,” is it? How do you understand that?
KE: No. There are normal emotions that happen [in] situations. Usually when they happen, there’s just the energy and the emotion there. But, if you find yourself going into a story about it, like, “Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” or, “This shouldn’t happen.” There’s just this story and the energy of it, the emotion, lingers on and on and on—then it probably tapped into you. It probably triggered an old emotional wound. Usually, if you can—if you’re present with something fresh—an emotion that’s fresh—there’s no pain-body attached to it. You can actually process it within 30 seconds. Sometimes not—sometimes a little longer—but it usually comes up, you feel it, you might look at it, see where it’s pointing to, what’s the wisdom behind it, what message does it have to give you, insights—and it’s gone. But, if it activates something, or you are just over-the-top angry over something small, then you know that it activated the pain-body and something old.
TS: This idea of feeding the pain-body and dissolving the pain-body—I see in my mind when I hear those kinds of words some kind of—you talk about an entity—like some kind of small monster or something. I’m wondering, do you have a visual image for the pain-body that you work with or that lives in you?
KE: Do I have a visual? If I had a—it’s almost like [growls]. It just gets you and it just grabs you and the whole body just contracts. The thoughts keep coming and your face starts [growls]. That’s a visual.
TS: Would you say, in your own life, from this time of having hives—whenever that was when this energy was just leaving your body spontaneously—to now, that there’s been some kind of progression for you in working with the pain-body? Meaning, do you think there’s—has it been a dissolution process? How would you describe that?
KE: I would have probably said a few years ago that it was dissolving and dissolving and it wasn’t coming back. Then, it’s almost like—you know how Ram Dass will say, “If you think you’re enlightened, go home and visit your parents?” Well, if you think it’s gone, life will bring you something to activate, to see what’s still left. This is—it’s actually a beautiful blessing if we can view it that way, because life is showing you where you’re still holding on—where there’s still a so-called you/ego entity that’s there. It just shows you that. It’s beautiful. So, it’s like, “OK, more work to be done.”
And is it really work? I begin to wonder, is it really work or [is it] just happening in the moment? I’m not gripped by the pain-body all the time. Nobody is gripped by the pain-body all the time. Yet, when it shows up, if we can think of it as, “I want it to be gone forever, I never want it to come up again,” then you’re not truly present, because you’re still living in past and you’re still living in future. If you can just see it as, “Oh, it’s here. OK, this is what I’ve got to deal with right now in this moment.” That’s fine and you go on. It leaves and you go on through your day. Then weeks or months might even go by and it comes up again. OK, so it comes up again.
TS: You were saying that in the past year, certain challenging situations occurred that brought you to realize—can you just talk a little bit more about that?
KE: Well, challenges. For example, I’ve had to go back into sort of doing business work in this last year because we’ve had some changes. Even though I can do it, I don’t do it well. It reminds me of Eckhart. He was having that dialogue with the Dalai Lama in Vancouver at the Peace Summit. He was giving a talk and saying how presence is and how it works. He [said something like], now, that doesn’t mean that if you give me a—I can’t even remember what he said, but this is just something that’s coming to mind. You can’t give him a baseball and a baseball bat and think he’s going to—because he’s present—he can become really good at this and he’ll become a baseball pro. It’s not his calling.
He shies away from business. [He says,] “No way, I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it.” It’s like with me—I don’t want to do it, but sometimes life puts you in situations where there’s nobody else, so you have to do it.
And it activated some childhood stuff for me, because when I was younger, I was—I had to work. Our family had a business. [I was] only 12 years old, and I had to work. That was my life. There was—not going into a big story—but, I had stuff come up around that. When I was thrown back into sort of a business working world like [the type of business working world of my family] when I was a child, things get activated. I went, “Wow, I’ve got more stuff here.”
It’s easy just meditating or teaching about this presence and this stillness and the energy, but this is still more stuff, and it’s my everyday life. Now, I’m thrown into being able to practice becoming still and shedding the old energy of that pain-body and just be with it. It’s coming up so I can let go of it, which is the beautiful gift. If this didn’t happen, then I wouldn’t—maybe I wouldn’t even know that it was there. But, obviously, it’s something that still holds me back. In order to then be completely free and live in the freedom that we truly are, we really have to let go of everything—everything. We have no attachments.
TS: One of the things I hear in what you’re saying that I think is really beautiful—which is a different way of looking at things—is that when the pain-body does come up, instead of having the response, “Oh darn, I still have this hungry pain-body,” we could say, “Oh, something in me is ready now to be let go of, because I’m aware of this thing.” We could actually turn it around. That’s a pretty powerful move that you’re pointing to.
KE: Yes. Yes, we can turn it around. Also, we can’t ever, ever expect that it will be gone, because we just don’t know. We just don’t know. Eckhart has often said there are many spiritual teachers out there, but sometimes the ego can come back. He realizes that within himself, too. He doesn’t know. How could we know this? How could we know how empty we really are? Because that is the—call it a state, but it’s not a state—a state of stillness, of consciousness—is this emptiness—so that life can use this form to whatever it wants to create.
TS: Kim, there’s one more topic I’d like to talk with you about. I know that in the past year of your life there have been some big losses. Your father has passed and that Maya, the adorable King Charles spaniel, has also passed. I’m curious—through those two experiences, what you can share with us about presence through loss?
KE: Yes. Finding that peace—the peace—and that they just don’t leave. I still feel them. I learned that even though the form is gone—when my father recently passed and it was only maybe a couple of days or something like that. Here I was, I was just thinking about him. The realization of: “Wow, I will never see him again. In form, I’ll never see him again.” I felt this tremendous sadness and loss. I just allow myself to feel it, the grief of it. Suddenly, there was this peace that was there. It was just the peace that passes all understanding. It was just so profound, so deep. The realization and the connection that, “Oh my God, he isn’t gone,” because I could just sense the energy of him. I could still sense him. I can still sense Maya.
I can still almost hear them sometimes. That’s something else—I don’t know if I want to go into that. [Laughs]. You know, messages and stuff, communicating.
It just takes you deeper, because all forms—all spiritual teaching—is the detachment—to not be attached. There’s nothing wrong with the attachment, but we eventually have to let things go, because all forms dissolve sooner or later.
If we’re holding onto something so tight, there’s going to be a lot of suffering when that form leaves. But if we can just go, “Wow, it’s gone.” There’s just this emptiness that’s here. The form is gone and we feel the emptiness. So, feel the sadness, which is the emptiness, because the form is gone. You’ll arrive [at] this peace and it’s like, “Wow, this is wonderful. This is great.” There’s a loss, but there’s no loss. There’s a sadness, but there’s no sadness. So, the sadness is there and the peace is there.
TS: One of the things I just want to check out with you is—there’s this grief or sadness, and you mentioned that you went into it, and so part of what I want to understand is the difference between doing that and feeding the pain-body. How might somebody know if they themselves are in a process of grief over something that they’re losing, a person or an animal companion, something they really care about? When is that feeding the pain-body and when is that a natural process that absolutely needs to be engaged with?
KE: When there’s resistance to what is. So, somebody is passing away. They’re still maybe in form, but they’re passing away. There’s resistance to them passing away. It’s like, “I don’t want you to go.” It could be one thought. Or like, “No! What am I going to do?” You just get so wrapped up into the form.
Say, for example, when I experience the grief and the sadness at that realization that I’ll never, ever see my father again, I could have gone one of two ways. One, all my attention, awareness, and the identification goes onto the emotion. There was sadness. Why was there sadness? Because I’ll never see him again. What does that mean? There’s an emptiness there.
Instead, what I did, was that I actually went into the feeling of the emptiness, which was still sadness, because sadness was there. I was able to see both of them—the emotion, the strong emotion of grief and sadness and also the formless gone, the emptiness that’s gone. So, I went into, “What does this emptiness feel like?” It actually went through—in other words, the emptiness is here. It’s all around, so it’s not like they’re two separate things—the emptiness through here is the form that came up.
It’s like going through the sadness and also, because I could see the emptiness—going right through the sadness and straight into the emptiness, and [phew] going right into that—and then there was peace. There was just this profound peace and profound knowing that my father—the form left, yes—never left. He’s here. He’s right here, although I’ll never see him again, but he’s right here.
TS: How do you experience that—that he’s right here?
KE: A feeling—it’s a feeling, a sensing. Sometimes something will come through in a word, in a message.
TS: Kim, I just want to ask one final question here. This show is called Insights at the Edge. I’m always curious to know what somebody’s personal edge is, if you will. What I mean by that is just what the sense is for you of your own kind of growing edge of discovery. I’m curious how you would respond to that.
KE: Oh, every moment—I think I’m always on the edge. The edge is the unknown. That’s the edge. Can we be comfortable on that edge of the unknown, not knowing what’s going to happen? Can we get out of that thinking mind of wanting to know what’s going to happen in the next moment or having these expectations that go in your head and letting that all go and fully be here. Can we do this in every moment? Can I do this in every moment? This is—it’s an edge. It’s an edge right now.
TS: Wonderful. I’ve been speaking with Kim Eng. With Sounds True, Kim has created two DVDs, Presence through Movement: Qi Flow Yoga and Presence through Movement: Yin Yoga, as well as two audio programs, Meditations for a New Earth and Resist Nothing: Guided Meditations to Heal the Pain-Body. She’s also a featured contributor at EckhartTolleTV.com, which is an online video subscription service with new monthly teachings. I kind of think of it as Eckhart Tolle’s Mystery School. If you’re interested in more information, you can go to EckhartTolle.com.
Kim, thanks for being with us on Insights at the Edge. SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thank you.
KE: Thank you, Tami.
