As long as six months ago, actually around the time my life's energy and focus really began to shift, a book kept being pushed gently into my consciousness by a number of different people I ran across in my day to day business. "Have you read The Power of Now?" "You must read The Power Of Now." "This book changed my life.. have you read it? It's called..." Yeah, yeah, that Power of Now book, that I'd never heard of in nearly half a century on the planet, but which now the Universe has clearly decided it's my turn to absorb.
I decided I didn't want to buy it to add to my self help book collection. I already own one or two, oh, thousand that is. So it was easy enough to punch it up on our local library website. Two copies, both out, both with reserves on them. That's OK, no rush. I hit the reserve button, thereby consigning the reading of said book to whatever date in the future it became available to me, and promptly forgot about it, reassured I'd done my bit.
But still, that damn book kept popping into conversations all around me! Until just as I'd reached total frustration point, and was about to get on to Ebay and buy a copy to end the angst of "not knowing" (after my best friend happened to mention that she'd bought her ex-partner a copy of... guess what... yep!) when suddenly, an email arrived to tell me that My Book Was Ready for Collection. Phew! So I shot off down to the library and fetched the musty smelling, dog eared critter. I could feel a sense of excitement even looking at the nondescript cover. The book fairly pulsated with promise. What on earth could be in there that was so amazing? And of course I couldn't wait to get started, but I knew just from the vibrations I was feeling that this was not going to be a quick flick, a speed read. This was going to take some TIME. I was going to have to absorb this one, word by word, paragraph by paragraph. I was going to marinate my psyche in this creation and come out the other side a changed entity. I just knew it.
I've now come to experience Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now. I've joined the ranks of the enlightened. We're like a little secret society, except not so secret because it turns out an awful lot of the planet has read this little gem. Did it resonate with them all? I sincerely doubt it. Did it smack people between the eyes who were free and ready for its contents and deceptively simple message? No doubt at all.
I could not have read this book even a year ago. I could not have read it, and as for absorbing any of it, or even wanting to for that matter... I would have tried the first few pages, started skimming, then piffed it. Actually I wouldn't even have got that far. I would have picked it up at the library, read the first paragraph or so, and decided I didn't need to go any further; it wasn't for Me. Then.
So.. the Power of Now... The world makes sense. The piece of the puzzle I've been missing all my life. Key to Past, Present and Future. Scrap that. Key to Now, which is all that ever matters. Because the past back then was Now, and the future doesn't exist until it becomes Now. If you can live by this mantra, nothing from your past can ever affect you (because it's not now, where you now live your truth!) and nothing from the future can ever worry you (because it doesn't exist until it becomes Now). So when you choose to dwell solely in the Now, there is nothing to focus on except Being. Being is peaceful, unworried, untroubled. It is the projecting backwards and forwards from here that causes us so much mind chatter, so much worry, and ultimately so much pain.
When do we cease being "in the moment"?
It's when we are elsewhere. We are thinking about past wrongs, past things we might have done, or others have done. Or we are looking into the future, worrying about what people will do, what we will do, how much money we're going to have (or not have!) and how we're going to cope or change or what we're going to do or see or buy, or what's going to happen to us. As if we know anyway.
When we are operating on a thinking level, we are no longer merely Being. We are often doing what's in the previous paragraph. And suddenly there is no peace, because we are having anxiety and angst. The thinking brain then obliges us yet further, and instigates emotions which attach to those thoughts, which create a whole raft of uncertainty and often a lot of pain. We are reliving the past, we are imagining the future, and worrying about it.. and we are anywhere but in our Now.
Would you like to explore the Now? It's my favorite place to hang out these days. You do? OK, deep breath... listen up..
I want you to go out of your mind (not literally of course!). But I want you to strip away your thinking, to what lies beneath... So let's just Be.
Don't worry about imagining lying on a beach or that sort of mumbo jumbo. I can tell you from personal experience when I've tried that, I'd be lying there tensely, eyes tight shut, fists unknowingly clenched (so hard I'd be concentrating) dredging up images of palm trees and blue sky.. and damn if I wasn't THINKING about those things in trying to make the unthinkingness happen... totally defeats the purpose here....
So what is there, in your Now, when there's no thought going on?
Nothing. A void, a silence, peace. There is no endless "mind chatter," because here you've gone beneath the level of thinking, to your very core layer. This is called being "in the now" or "in the present."
There is no pain in the Now. There are no negative feelings in the Now. All that bad stuff flows from the unconscious prattle of what we like to think of as "productive thinking" or on the flip side, the worrying that goes on in our heads, all day and every day. And I guess many people never realise how counterproductive to your peace and happiness this sort of torture is, or that it isn't necessary or even helpful! From that ceaseless thinking, flows emotion.. and emotion is what causes us to feel a certain way, both positive and negative, but unfortunately quite often negative. It is emotion that has been spawned from one's thoughts, either positive or negative.. but never from the core self. It therefore follows that your thoughts create your feelings. Once you lose that mind chatter, life is suddenly tranquil and easy.
An example? I used to think about an ex-partner. A lot! I would relive the relationship, wonder why it couldn't have worked, what I didn't do, what I should've done, and think how much I missed him and all the reasons I thought I did. From those thoughts (all regarding the past of course) would spring emotions: sadness, loss, emptiness, disappointment, longing for what was. Suddenly I'd feel like I could easily burst into tears from the pain! And worse still, I'd want to ACT on that pain! Make it go away by either (a) trying to contact him, (b) distract myself, often by doing something unhelpful, or (c) obliterate the pain with some sort of substance, to give me at least some temporary relief. Yet nothing had changed from five minutes ago; it was only my thoughts creating all this emotion, and out of the PAST for heaven's sake. This wasn't my Now.
Similarly (and because I'm such a versatile sorta gal and am so unilaterally talented of course) I could project into the future on the same topic: Will he ever come back? Will he ever contact me again? Does he even miss me? Who is he with? What is he doing? Is he suffering the way I am? Err.. I doubt it!!
Oh, and yes, here comes the emotion and associated pain that loves to ride shotgun with those thoughts of the Future That Will Never Be... yep, my old mates Loss, Disappointment, Angst, Bereft & Co., come to torture me once again. Damn, if only I'd not gone there and just stayed in the Now!
The Now is the ONLY place, once you find it and embrace it, that you ever want to be or will ever need to be. It's that incredibly, beautifully simple!
I lived nearly my whole life incessantly thinking, evaluating, judging, planning.. Doh! I'm a "thinking woman." This is to be admired, I always thought. And so did others! Whilst never admired for my great beauty (damn it Janet!) I've always received compliments on my cerebral abilities. And I took them. Hell, a compliment is a compliment, and especially when you're no spring chicken anymore, compliments can be thin on the ground.
Thinking is really another word for trying to maintain control, or get control of something or somebody. It's your ego, and oh it does love to be in charge!
Think that one over....!
So... picture this. As we move through life, and perceive that we can't seem to get control of our lives (listening to our mind chatter here again), and thereby causing the emotion of "I'm a big fat failure at this game called Life" many of us then move one step further on from thinking (because we can no longer bear our thoughts which make us feel this bad) and into something truly destructive, in order to squash/smother/kill those thoughts, and of course the emotion that attaches to them. We don't want to feel that pain anymore, that agony of not being able to sort ourselves out, take control or whatever. So we anaesthesise our thinking brain with a substance like alcohol, drugs, food, cigarettes, or even actions such as compulsive shopping, spending, travel, tattooing, piercing, cutting - anything to blanket the pain.
(I might add, I love to travel and shop, and also am known to imbibe the odd lager. Can I make the distinction here that when you're doing these things out of a sheer joy of being, rather than trying to blot out and squash your misery or loneliness or boredom or whatever, there is a massive difference - the latter being that if you're doing these things negatively, they've become a compulsion, and often one you can't afford because they are indulged in so incessantly... which again adds to the doom and gloom because now your financial status is yet another problem you can't seem to get any sort of grip on!)
Before anyone thinks I better dismount from my lofty horse, I'll also assure you that I have drank myself into a coma, and quite regularly, for many, many years... and it affected me in every way possible, including financial, and never ever in a positive way. The reason I did that? I used to overthink about, oh, everything... and could never solve anything on that level, and in the end it was instant gratification to blot it out, if only for a little while. It was only my deep seated fear of becoming alcoholic, having grown up with a raging example of why that wasn't a road I wanted to tread, thank you very much, that prevented me from thinking my way into a serious addiction.
So, where to Now? I'm in my Now, writing this post. For me, and for you. The reason? I'm wanting to share the simple joy of being. That's first and foremost. I'm hoping to fold this powerful message up inside my own prose, for my own future safekeeping, but also that it might resonate in a most simple, beautiful and profound way for You, my reader, whoever you may be; perhaps giving you the gift of a shortcut into the joy of the Now.... where there is no time, no past and no future. Man, I love this road!
“Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.”
― Eckhart Tolle
