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The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Eckhart Tolle
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To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of Eckhart Tolle's extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.” Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question and answer format to guide us.
A word of mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.
Publisher:
New World Library
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The Power of Now
The Power of Now
The Power of Now
FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND
What exactly do you mean by “watching the thinker”?
When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most
likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually
everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary
thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues
or dialogues. You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering
to themselves. Well, thats not much different from what you and all other “normal” people
do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges,
compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to
the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant
past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things
going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is
accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the
situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice
belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as
of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present
through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon
for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their
head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is
the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disea; se.
The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true
liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your
head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns,
those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years.
This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to
the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.
When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do
not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come
in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am
listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is
not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.
¤
So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of
yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As
you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence your deeper self behind or
underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly
subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it.
This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.
When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream a gap of
“no-mind.” At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they
will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside
you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is
usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen.
In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy
arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness here. The
opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the
price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having.
In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the
mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of
the energy field that gives life to the physical body.
As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East,
you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such
joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external
world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish
but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as “your self.”
That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you. What
I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no
other way that I can express it.
¤
Instead of “watching the thinker,” you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by
directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the
present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw
consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly
alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.
In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally
is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end
in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place
of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be
totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions
associated with the activity: the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands,
the scent of the soap, and so on. Or when you get into your car, after you close the door,
pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but
powerful sense of presence. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.
¤
So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to
disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light
of your consciousness grows stronger.
One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at
the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all
that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
The Power of Now
WHEN DISASTER STRIKES
As far as the still unconscious majority of the population is concerned, only a critical
limit-situation has the potential to crack the hard shell of the ego and force them into
surrender and so into the awakened state. A limit-situation arises when through some
disaster, drastic upheaval, deep loss, or suffering your whole world is shattered and
doesn't make sense anymore. It is an encounter with death, be it physical or
psychological. The egoic mind, the creator of this world, collapses. Out of the ashes of
the old world, a new world can then come into being.
There is no guarantee, of course, that even a limit- situation will do it, but the
potential is always there. Some people's resistance to what is even intensifies in such a
situation, and so it becomes a descent into hell. In others, there may only be partial
surrender, but even that will give them a certain depth and serenity that were not there
before. Parts of the ego shell break off, and this allows small amounts of the radiance
and peace that lie beyond the mind to shine through.
Limit-situations have produced many miracles. There have been murderers in death row
waiting for execution who, in the last few hours of their lives, experienced the egoless state and the deep joy and peace that come with it. The inner resistance to the situation
they found themselves in became so intense as to produce unbearable suffering, and there
was nowhere to run and nothing to do to escape it, not even a mind-projected future. So
they were forced into complete acceptance of the unacceptable. They were forced into
surrender. In this way, they were able to enter the state of grace with which comes
redemption: complete release from the past. Of course, it is not really the
limit-situation that makes room for the miracle of grace and redemption but the act of
surrender.
So whenever any kind of disaster strikes, or something goes seriously “wrong” illness,
disability, loss of home or fortune or of a socially defined identity, break-up or a close
relationship, death or suffering of a loved one, or your own impending death know that
there is another side to it, that you are just one step away from something incredible: a
complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That
one step is called surrender.
I do not mean to say that you will become happy in such a situation. You will not. But
fear and pain will become transmuted into an inner peace and serenity that come from a
very deep place from the Unmanifested itself. It is “the peace of God, which passes all
understanding.” Compared to that, happiness is quite a shallow thing. With this radiant
peace comes the realization not on the level of mind but within the depth of your Being
that you are indestructible, immortal. This is not a belief. It is absolute certainty that
needs no external evidence or proof from some secondary source.
The Power of Now
TRANSFORMING SUFFERING INTO PEACE
I read about a stoic philosopher in ancient Greece who, when he was told that his son had
died in an accident, replied, “I knew he was not immortal.” Is that surrender? If it is, I
don't want it. There are some situations in which surrender seems unnatural and inhuman.
Being cut off from your feelings is not surrender. But we don't know what his inner state
was when he said those words. In certain extreme situations, it may still be impossible
for you to accept the Now. But you always get a second chance at surrender.
Your first chance is to surrender each moment to the reality of that moment. Knowing that
what is cannot be undone because it already is you say yes to what is or accept what
isn't. Then you do what you have to do, whatever the situation requires. If you abide in
this state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering,
no more unhappiness. You then live in a state of nonresistance, a state of grace and
lightness, free of struggle.
Whenever you are unable to do that, whenever you miss that chance either because you are
not generating enough conscious presence to prevent some habitual and unconscious
resistance pattern from arising, or because the condition is so extreme as to be
absolutely unacceptable to you then you are creating some form of pain, some form of
suffering. It may look as if the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this
is not so your resistance is.
Now here is your second chance at surrender: If you cannot accept what is outside, then
accept what is inside. If you cannot accept the external condition, accept the internal
condition. This means: Do not resist the pain. Allow it to be there. Surrender to the
grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without
labeling it mentally. Embrace it. Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep
suffering into deep peace. This is your crucifixion. Let it become your resurrection and
ascension. I do not see how one can surrender to suffering. As you yourself pointed out, suffering is
non-surrender. How could you surrender to non-surrender?
Forget about surrender for a moment. When your pain is deep, all talk of surrender will
probably seem futile and meaningless anyway.
When your pain is deep, you will likely have a strong urge to escape from it rather than
surrender to it. You don't want to feel what you feel. What could be more normal? But
there is no escape, no way out. There are many pseudo escapes work, drink, drugs, anger,
projection, suppression,
and so on but they don't free you from the pain. Suffering does not diminish in intensity
when you make it unconscious. When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as
well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as
the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally. If they are unconscious,
they may even feel compelled to attack or hurt you in some way, or you may hurt them in an
unconscious projection of your pain. You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to
your inner state. When there is no way out, there is still always a way
through. So don't turn away from the pain. Face it. Feel it fully. Feel it don't think
about it! Express it if necessary, but don't create a script in your mind around it. Give
all your attention to the feeling, not to the person, event, or situation that seems to
have caused it. Don't let the mind use the pain to create a victim identity for yourself
out of it. Feeling sorry for yourself and telling others your story will keep you stuck in
suffering. Since it is impossible to get away from the feeling, the only possibility of
change is to move into it; otherwise, nothing will shift. So give your complete attention
to what you feel, and refrain from mentally labeling it. As you go into the feeling, be
intensely alert. At first, it may seem like a dark and terrifying place, and when the urge to turn away from it comes,
observe it but don't act on it. Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the
grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present
present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are
bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.
At this stage, you don't need to be concerned with surrender anymore. It has happened
already. How? Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender. By giving full attention,
you use the power of the Now, which is the power of your presence. No hidden pocket of
resistance can survive in it. Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no
negativity, can survive.
The acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be,
taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this
death, you realize that there is no death and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego
dies. Imagine a ray of sunlight that has forgotten it is an inseparable part of the sun
and deludes itself into believing it has to fight for survival and create and cling to an
identity other than the sun. Would the death of this delusion not be incredibly liberating?
Do you want an easy death? Would you rather die without pain, without agony? Then die to
the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound
self you thought of as “you.”
The Power of Now
THE WAY OF THE CROSS
¤
¤ There are many accounts of people who say they have found God through their deep
suffering, and there is the Christian expression “the way of the cross, ” which I suppose
points to the same thing.
We are concerned with nothing else here. Strictly speaking, they did not find God through
their
suffering, because suffering implies resistance. They found God through surrender, through
total acceptance of what is, into which they were forced by their intense suffering. They
must have realized on some level that their pain was self- created. How do you equate
surrender with finding God? Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment
of resistance surrender is the end of the mind as your master, the impostor pretending
to be “you,” the false god. All judgment and all negativity dissolve. The realm of Being,
which had been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises
within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And
within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the
immeasurable, That which cannot be named.
I don't call it finding God, because how can you find that which was never lost, the very
life that you are? The word God is limiting not only because of thousands of years of
misperception and misuse, but also because it implies an entity other than you. God is
Being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality,
no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and
incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not
conscious of God.
The way of the cross that you mentioned is the old way to enlightenment, and until
recently it was the only way. But don't dismiss it or underestimate its efficacy. It still
works.
The way of the cross is a complete reversal. It means that the worst thing in your life,
your cross, turns into the best thing that ever happened to you, by forcing you into surrender, into “death,” forcing
you to become as nothing, to become as God because God, too, is no-thing.
At this time, as far as the unconscious majority of humans is concerned, the way of the
cross is still the only way. They will only awaken through further suffering, and
enlightenment as a collective phenomenon will be predictably preceded by vast upheavals.
This process reflects the workings of certain universal laws that govern the growth of
consciousness and thus was foreseen by some seers. It is described, among other places, in
the Book of Revelation or Apocalypse, though cloaked in obscure and sometimes impenetrable
symbology. This suffering is inflicted not by God but by humans on themselves and on each
other as well as by certain defensive measures that the Earth, which is a living,
intelligent organism, is going to take to protect herself from the onslaught of human
madness.
However, there is a growing number of humans alive today whose consciousness is
sufficiently evolved not to need any more suffering before the realization of
enlightenment. You may be one of them.
Enlightenment through suffering the way of the cross means to be forced into the kingdom
of heaven kicking and screaming. You finally surrender because you can't stand the pain
anymore, but the pain could go on for a long time until this happens. Enlightenment
consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the
Now the main focus of your life. It means choosing to dwell in the state of presence
rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is. You then don't need pain anymore. How
much more time do you think you will need before you are able to say “I will create no
more pain, no more suffering?” How much more pain do you need before you can make that
choice?
If you think that you need more time, you will get more time and more pain. Time and pain
are inseparable.
The Power of Now
THE POWER TO CHOOSE
What about all those people who, it seems, actually want to suffer? I have a friend whose
partner is physically abusive toward her, and her previous relationship was of a similar
kind. Why does she choose such men, and why is she refusing to get out of that situation
now? Why do so many people actually choose pain?
I know that the word choose is a favorite New Age term, but it isn't entirely accurate in
this context. It is misleading to say that somebody “chose” a dysfunctional relationship
or any other negative situation in his or her life. Choice implies consciousness a high
degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you
disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present.
Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. This means that you
are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of
your mind. That is why Jesus said: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is
not related to intelligence in the conventional sense of the word. I have met many' highly
intelligent and educated people who were also completely unconscious, which is to say
completely identified with their mind. In fact, if mental development and increased
knowledge are not counterbalanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness,
the potential for unhappiness and disaster is very great. Your friend is stuck in a
relationship with an abusive partner, and not for the first time. Why? No choice. The
mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-
create what it knows and is familiar with. Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar.
The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it. Thats why the mind dislikes
and ignores the present moment. Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the
stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can
come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.
So your friend, being identified with her mind, may be re-creating a pattern learned in
the past in which intimacy and abuse are inseparably linked. Alternatively, she may be
acting out a mind pattern learned in early childhood according to which she is unworthy
and deserves to be punished. It is possible, too, that she lives a large part of her life
through the pain-body, which always seeks more pain on which to feed. Her partner has his
own unconscious patterns, which complement hers. Of course her situation is self- created,
but who or what is the self that is doing the creating? A mental-emotional pattern from
the past, no more. Why make a self out of it? If you tell her that she has chosen her
condition or situation, you are reinforcing her state of mind identification. But is her
mind pattern who she is? Is it her self? Is her true identity derived from the past? Show
your friend how to be the observing presence behind her thoughts and her emotions. Tell
her about the pain-body and how to free herself from it. Teach her the art of inner-body
awareness. Demonstrate to her the meaning of presence. As soon as she is able to access
the power of the Now, and thereby break through her conditioned past, she will have a
choice.
Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because
there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the
darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the
conditioned mind is running your life.
Similarly, if you are one of the many people who have an issue with their parents, if you
still harbor resentment about something they did or did not do, then you still believe that they had a choice
that they could have acted differently. It always looks as if people had a choice, but
that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as
long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? None. You are not even there. The
mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional. It is a form of insanity. Almost everyone
is suffering from this illness in varying degrees. The moment you realize this, there can
be no more resentment. How can you resent someone's illness? The only appropriate response
is compassion.
So that means nobody is responsible for what they do? I don't like that idea.
If you are run by your mind, although you have no choice you will still suffer the
consequences of your unconsciousness, and you will create further suffering. You will bear
the burden of fear, conflict, problems, and pain. The suffering thus created will
eventually force you out of your unconscious state.
What you say about choice also applies to forgiveness, I suppose. You need to be fully
conscious and surrender before you can forgive.
“Forgiveness” is a term that has been in use for 2,000 years, but most people have a very
limited view of what it means. You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you
derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now,
which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless,
and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch
even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary.
And how do I get to that point of realization?
When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any
power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.
How will I know when I have surrendered?
When you no longer need to ask the question.
The Power of Now
END
The Power of Now
ENLIGHTENMENT: RISING ABOVE THOUGHT
Isn't thinking essential in order to survive in this world?
Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when
the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 8o to 90 percent of
most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its
dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and
you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.
This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an
addiction? Quite simply this:
you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also
gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain. Why should we be addicted to thinking?
Because you are identified with it, which means that you derive your sense of self from
the content and activity of your mind. Because you believe that you would cease to be if
you stopped thinking. As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on
your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It
consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking. The term
ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false
self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.
To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered
important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the
mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because
without it who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its
continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: “One
day, when this, that, or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.” Even
when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees:
It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it
reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected
future. Observe your mind and you'll see that this is how it works.
The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as
long as you are your mind.
I don't want to lose my ability to analyze and discriminate. I wouldn't mind learning to
think more clearly, in a more focused way, but I don't want to lose my mind. The gift of
thought is the most precious thing we have. Without it, we would just be another species
of animal. The predominance of mind is no more than a stage in the evolution of consciousness. We
need to go on to the next stage now as a matter of urgency; otherwise, we will be
destroyed by the mind, which has grown into a monster. I will talk about this in more
detail later. Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small
aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness
does not need thought.
Enlightenment means rising above thought, not filling back to a level below thought, the
level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind
when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it mostly
for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there
is inner stillness. When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution
is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between
mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it
possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power.
Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness,
quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.
The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds,
gathering, storing, and analyzing information this is what it is good at, but it is not
at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of
no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or
insight. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came at
a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nation-wide inquiry among America's
most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was
that thinking “plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative
act itself.” So I would say that the simple reason why the majority of scientists are not creative is not because they don't know how to think but
because they don't know how to stop thinking!
It wasn't through the mind, through thinking, that the miracle that is life on earth or
your body were created and are being sustained. There is clearly an intelligence at work
that is far greater than the mind. How can a single human cell measuring 1/1,000 of an
inch across contain instructions within its DNA that would fill 1,000 books of 600 pages
each? The more we learn about the workings of the body, the more we realize just how vast
is the intelligence at work within it and how little we know. When the mind reconnects
with that, it becomes a most wonderful tool. It then serves something greater than itself.
The Power of Now
EMOTION: THE BODY'S REACTION TO YOUR MIND
What about emotions? I get caught up in my emotions more than I do in my mind.
Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as
all unconscious mental- emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where
mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind or you might say, a reflection
of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create
a build-up of energy in the body that we call anger The body is getting ready to fight.
The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body
to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that
strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical
changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought
patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into
awareness.
The more you are identified with your thinking, your likes and dislikes, judgments and
interpretations, which is to say the less present you are as the watching consciousness,
the stronger the emotional energy charge will be, whether you are aware of it or not. If
you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually
experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom. A great deal
has been written about this in recent years, so we don't need to go into it here. A strong
unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just
happen to you. For example, I have observed that people who carry a lot of anger inside
without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked,
verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They
have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that
triggers their own latent anger.
If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner
energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with
your emotions. We will explore this in more detail later.
¤
You sap that an emotion is the mind's reflection in the body. But sometimes there is a
conflict between the two: the mind saps “no” while the emotion saps "yes,' or the other
way around. If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection,
so look at the emotion or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict
between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.
Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at
that time.
Conflict between surface thoughts and unconscious mental processes is certainly common.
You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as
thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can
become aware. To watch an emotion in this way is basically the same as listening to or
watching a thought, which I described earlier. The only difference is that, while a
thought is in your head, an emotion has a strong physical component and so is primarily
felt in the body. You can then allow the emotion to be there without being controlled by
it. You no longer are the emotion; you are the watcher, the observing presence. If you
practice this, all that is unconscious in you will be brought into the light of
consciousness.
So observing our emotions is as important as observing our thoughts?
Yes. Make it a habit to ask yourself. Whats going on inside me at this moment? That
question will point you in the right direction. But don't analyze, just watch. Focus your
attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take
your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway
into Being.
¤ An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of
its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough
to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds unless there
is enough presence in you.
If you are pulled into unconscious identification with the emotion through lack of
presence, which is normal, the emotion temporarily becomes “you.” Often a vicious circle
builds up between your thinking and the emotion: they feed each other. The thought pattern
creates a magnified reflection of itself in the form of an emotion, and the vibrational
frequency of the emotion keeps feeding the original thought pattern. By dwelling mentally
on the situation, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought
feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.
Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial, undifferentiated emotion that
has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form. Because of
its undifferentiated nature, it is hard to find a name that precisely describes this
emotion. “Fear” comes close, but apart from a continuous sense of threat, it also includes
a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness. It may be best to use a term that is as
undifferentiated as that basic emotion and simply call it “pain.” One of the main tasks of
the mind is to fight or remove that emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its
incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact,
the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can
never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it
is itself an intrinsic part of the “problem.” Imagine a chief of police trying to find an
arsonist when the arsonist is the chief of police. You will not be free of that pain until
you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind, which is to say
from ego. The mind is then toppled from its place of power and Being reveals itself as
your true nature. Yes, I know what you are going to ask.
I was going to ask: What about positive emotions such as love and joy?
They are inseparable from your natural state of inner connectedness with Being. Glimpses
of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the
stream of thought. For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in
moments when the mind is rendered “speechless,” sometimes triggered by great beauty,
extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And
within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.
Usually, such moments are short-lived, as the mind quickly resumes its noise-making
activity that we call thinking. Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed
yourself from mind dominance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They lie beyond
the emotions, on a much deeper level. So you need to become fully conscious of your
emotions and be able to feel them before you can feel that which lies beyond them. Emotion
literally means “disturbance.” The word comes from the Latin emovere, meaning “to disturb.”
Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being or rather three aspects of the state of
inner connectedness with Being. As such, they have no opposite. This is because they arise
from beyond the mind. Emotions, on the other hand, being part of the dualistic mind, are
subject to the law of opposites. This simply means that you cannot have good without bad.
So in the unenlightened, mind-identified condition, what is sometimes wrongly called joy
is the usually short-lived pleasure side of the continuously alternating pain/pleasure
cycle. Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from
within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain. And what is often
referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive
clinging, an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a
switch. Many “love” relationships, after the initial euphoria has passed, actually
oscillate between “love” and hate, attraction and attack.
Real love doesn't make you suffer. How could it? It doesn't suddenly turn into hate, nor
does real joy turn into pain. As I said, even before you are enlightened before you have
freed yourself from your mind you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep
inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These are aspects of your true nature, which is
usually obscured by the mind. Even within a "normal'' addictive relationship, there can be
moments when the presence of something more genuine, something incorruptible, can be felt.
But they will only be glimpses, soon to be covered up again through mind interference. It
may then seem that you had something very precious and lost it, or your mind may convince
you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasn't an illusion, and you
cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be
destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn't disappeared.
It's still there on the other side of the clouds.
The Buddha says that pain or suffering arises through desire or craving and that to be
free of pain we need to cut the bonds of desire.
All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the
future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings,
those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no 'I' except
as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted. In that
state, even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or
completion in the future. So don't seek to become free of desire or “achieve”
enlightenment. Become present. Be there as the observer of the mind. Instead of quoting
the Buddha, be the Buddha, be “the awakened one,” which is what the word buddha means.
Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of
grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being. At that point,
they started to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe,
unconnected to the Source and to each other.
Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long
as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. I am talking here primarily of emotional
pain, which is also the main cause of physical pain and physical disease. Resentment,
hatred, self-pity, guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, and so on, even the slightest
irritation, are all forms of pain. And every pleasure or emotional high contains within
itself the seed of pain: its inseparable opposite, which will manifest in time.
Anybody who has ever taken drugs to get “high” will know that the high eventually turns
into a low, that the pleasure turns into some form of pain. Many people also know from
their own experience how easily and quickly an intimate relationship can turn from a
source of pleasure to a source of pain. Seen from a higher perspective, both the negative
and the positive polarities are faces of the same coin,
are both part of the underlying pain that is inseparable from the mind-identified egoic
state of consciousness.
There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the
past that still lives on in your mind and body. Ceasing to create pain in the present and
dissolving past pain this is what I want to talk about now.
The Power of Now
Chapter Two
The Power of Now
CONSCIOUSNESS: THE WAY OUT OF PAIN
The Power of Now
CREATE NO MORE PAIN IN THE PRESENT
Nobody's life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn't it a question of learning to live
with them rather than trying to avoid them?
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self- created as long as the
unobserved mind runs your life.
The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of
unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of
judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain
depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how
strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to
escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you
suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now,
the more you are free of pain, of suffering and free of the egoic mind.
Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain
in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as
threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.
Imagine the Earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it
still have a past and a future? Could we still speak of time in any meaningful way? The question “What time is it?” or
“What's the date today?” if anybody were there to ask it would be quite meaningless. The
oak tree or the eagle would be bemused by such a question. “What time?” they would ask.
“Well, of course, it's now. The time is now. What else is there?”
Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this world, but there comes a point
where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.
The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continuously to cover up the present
moment with past and future, and so, as the vitality and infinite creative potential of
Being, which is inseparable from the Now, becomes covered up by time, your true nature
becomes obscured by the mind. An increasingly heavy burden of time has been accumulating
in the human mind. All individuals are suffering under this burden, but they also keep
adding to it every moment whenever they ignore or deny that precious moment or reduce it
to a means of getting to some future moment, which only exists in the mind, never in
actuality. The accumulation of time in the collective and individual human mind also holds
a vast amount of residual pain from the past.
If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add
to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then dont create any more time, or
at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to
stop creating time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the
Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits
to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future
when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say “yes”
to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner
resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life
itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
¤
The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or awful.
It is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this
continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhappiness. By watching the mechanics of
the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present
moment to be. This will give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external
conditions, the state of true inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if
necessary or possible.
Accept then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.
Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This
will miraculously transform your whole life.
¤
The Power of Now
PAST PAIN: DISSOLVING THE PAIN-BODY
As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you
experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain
from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This, of course, includes the pain you suffered as a child, caused
by the unconsciousness of the world into which you were born.
This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you
look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the
truth. Its the emotional pain-body. It has two modes of being: dormant and active. A
pain-body may be dormant 90 percent of the time; in a deeply unhappy person, though, it
may be active up to mo percent of the time. Some people live almost entirely through their
pain-body, while others may experience it only in certain situations, such as intimate
relationships, or situations linked with past loss or abandonment, physical or emotional
hurt, and so on. Anything can trigger it, particularly if it resonates with a pain pattern
from your past. When it is ready to awaken from its dormant stage, even a thought or an
innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.
Some pain-bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless, for example like a child who won't
stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters, true demons. Some are
physically violent; many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people around you
or close to you, while others may attack you, their host. Thoughts and feelings you have
about your life then become deeply negative and self- destructive. Illnesses and accidents
are often created in this
way. Some pain-bodies drive their hosts to suicide. When you thought you knew a person and
then you are suddenly confronted with this alien, nasty creature for the first time, you
are in for quite a shock. However, it's more important to observe it in yourself than in
someone else. Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form it may
be the awakening pain-body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber
mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your
relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it
awakens from its dormant state. The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only
survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you
over, “become you,” and live through you. It needs to get its “food” through you. It will
feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates
further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama,
violence, and even illness. So the pain-body, when it has taken you over, will create a
situation in your life that reflects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain
can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.
Once the pain-body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a
perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isn't
really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will
vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will find that your
thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others. If you
were truly conscious of it, the pattern would dissolve, for to want more pain is insanity,
and nobody is consciously insane.
The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light
of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your
unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the pain
that lives in you. But if you don't face it, if you don't bring the light of your
consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. The
pain-body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I
assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of
your presence.
Some spiritual teachings state that all pain is ultimately an illusion, and this is true.
The question is: Is it true for you? A mere belief doesn't make it true. Do you want to
experience pain for the rest of your life and keep saying that it is an illusion? Does that free you from the pain? What we are concerned with here is
how you can realize this truth that is, make it real in your own experience.
So the pain-body doesn't want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is. The
moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it,
the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it
presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body. This means that it
cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself
through you. You have found your own innermost strength. You have accessed the power of
Now.
What happens to the pain-body when we become conscious enough to break our identification
with it?
Unconsciousness creates it; consciousness transmutes it into itself. St. Paul expressed
this universal principle beautifully:. “Everything is shown up by being exposed to the
light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.” Just as you cannot
fight the darkness, you cannot fight the pain-body.
Trying to do so would create inner conflict and thus further pain. Watching it is enough.
Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.
The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy
field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind
identification. It has turned in on itself and become anti-life, like an animal trying to
devour its own tail. Why do you think our civilization has become so life-destructive? But
even the life-destructive forces are still life-energy.
When you start to disidentify and become the watcher, the pain-body will continue to
operate for a while and will try to trick you into identifying with it again. Although you
are no longer energizing it through your identification, it has a certain momentum, just like a spinning wheel that will keep turning for a while even
when it is no longer being propelled. At this stage, it may also create physical aches and
pains in different parts of the body, but they wont last. Stay present, stay conscious. Be
the ever-alert guardian of your inner space. You need to be present enough to be able to
watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking.
The moment your thinking is aligned with the energy field of the pain-body, you are
identified with it and again feeding it with your thoughts.
For example, if anger is the predominant energy vibration of the pain-body and you think
angry thoughts, dwelling on what someone did to you or what you are going to do to him or
her, then you have become unconscious, and the pain-body has become “you.” Where there is
anger, there is always pain underneath. Or when a dark mood comes upon you and you start
getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking
has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious and vulnerable to
the pain-body's attack. “Unconscious,” the way that I use the word here, means to be
identified with some mental or emotional pattern. It implies a complete absence of the
watcher.
Sustained conscious attention severs the link between the pain-body and your thought
processes and brings about the process of transmutation. It is as if the pain becomes fuel
for the flame of your consciousness, which then burns more brightly as a result. This is
the esoteric meaning of the ancient art of alchemy:, the transmutation of base metal into
gold, of suffering into consciousness. The split within is healed, and you become whole
again. Your responsibility then is not to create further pain.
Let me summarize the process. Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is
the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it don't let the feeling turn
into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay
present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but
also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the
power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.
¤
For many women, the pain-body awakens particularly at the time preceding the menstrual
flow. I will talk about this and the reason for it in more detail later. Right now, let me
just say this: If you are able to stay alert and present at that time and watch whatever
you feel within, rather than be taken over by it, it affords an opportunity for the most
powerful spiritual practice, and a rapid transmutation of all past pain becomes possible.
The Power of Now
EGO IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PAIN-BODY
The process that I have just described is profoundly powerful yet simple. It could be
taught to a child, and hopefully one day it will be one of the first things children learn
in school. Once you have understood the basic principle of being present as the watcher of
what happens inside you and you “understand” it by experiencing it you have at your
disposal the most potent transformational tool.
This is not to deny that you may encounter intense inner resistance to disidentifying from
your pain. This will be the case particularly if you have lived closely identified with
your emotional pain-body for most of your life and the whole or a large part of your sense
of self is invested in it. What this means is that you have made an unhappy self out of
your pain-body and believe that this mind-made fiction is who you are. In that case,
unconscious fear of losing your identity will create strong resistance to any
disidentification. In other words, you would rather be in pain be the pain-body than
take a leap into the unknown and risk losing the familiar unhappy self.
If this applies to you, observe the resistance within yourself. Observe the attachment to
your pain. Be very alert. Observe the peculiar pleasure you derive from being unhappy.
Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it. The resistance will cease if you make it
conscious. You can then take your attention into the pain-body, stay present as the
witness, and so initiate its transmutation.
Only you can do this. Nobody can do it for you. But if you are fortunate enough to find
someone who is intensely conscious, if you can be with them and join them in the state of
presence, that can be helpful and will accelerate things. In this way, your own light will
quickly grow stronger. When a log that has only just started to burn is placed next to one
that is burning fiercely, and after a while they are separated again,
the first log will be burning with much greater intensity. After all, it is the same fire.
To be such a fire is one of the functions of a spiritual teacher. Some therapists may also
be able to fulfill that function, provided that they have gone beyond the level of mind
and can create and sustain a state of intense conscious presence while they are working
with you.
The Power of Now
THE ORIGIN OF FEAR
You mentioned fear as being part of our basic underlying emotional pain. How does fear
arise, and why is there so much of it in people's lives? And isn't a certain amount of
fear just healthy self protection? If I didn't have a fear of fire, I might put my hand in
it and get burned. The reason why you don't put your hand in the fire is not because of fear, ifs because you
know that you'll get burned. You don't need fear to avoid unnecessary danger just a
minimum of intelligence and common sense. For such practical matters, it is useful to
apply the lessons learned in the past. Now if someone threatened you with fire or with
physical violence, you might experience something like fear. This is an instinctive
shrinking back from danger, but not the psychological condition of fear that we are
talking about here.
The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate
danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread,
phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might
happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your
mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. And if you are identified with your
mind and have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will
be your constant companion. You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot
cope with something that is only a mind projection you cannot cope with the future.
Moreover, as long as you are identified with your mind, the ego runs your life, as I
pointed out earlier. Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense
mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly
under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.
Now remember that an emotion is the body's reaction to your mind. What message is the body
receiving continuously from the ego, the false, mind-made self? Danger, I am under threat.
And what is the emotion generated by this continuous message? Fear, of course.
Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so
on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death
is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such a seemingly
trivial and “normal” thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the
other person wrong defending the mental position with which you have identified is due
to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your
mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego
cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and
countless relationships have broken down.
Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no
difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply
unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there. You
can state dearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no
aggressiveness or defensiveness about it. Your sense of self is then derived from a deeper
and truer place within yourself, not from the mind. Watch out for any kind of
defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in
your mind, a fictitious entity. By making this pattern conscious, by witnessing it, you
disidentify from it. In the light of your consciousness, the unconscious pattern will then
quickly dissolve. This is the end of all arguments and power games, which are so corrosive
to relationships. Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is
within, and it is available to you now.
So anyone who is identified with their mind and, therefore, disconnected from their true
power, their deeper self rooted in Being, will have fear as their constant companion. The
number of people who have gone beyond mind is as yet extremely small, so you can assume
that virtually everyone you meet or know lives in a state of fear. Only the intensity of
it varies. It fluctuates between anxiety and dread at one end of the scale and a vague
unease and distant sense of threat at the other. Most people become conscious of it only when it takes on one of its more acute forms.
The Power of Now
THE EGO'S SEARCH FOR WHOLENESS
Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a
deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people, this is
conscious, in others unconscious. If it is conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and
constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be
felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will
often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in
order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after possessions, money,
success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel
better about themselves, feel more complete. But even when they attain all these things,
they soon find that the hole is still there, that it is bottomless. Then they are really
in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore. Well, they can and do, but it
gets more difficult.
As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be
at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a
craving has just been fulfilled. Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to
identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most
common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and
recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities,
relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political,
nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you. Do you find this frightening? Or is it a relief to know
this? All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later. Perhaps you find it
as yet hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to believe that your identity
cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the troth of it for yourself. You
will know it at the latest when you feel death approaching. Death is a stripping away of
all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” and find that there is
no death.
The Power of Now
FOREWORD
BY RUSSELL E. DICARLO Author of Towards a New World View
Blanketed by an azure sky, the orange-yellow rays of the setting sun can, at special
times, gift us with a moment of such consider able beauty, we find ourselves momentarily
stunned, with frozen gaze. The splendor of the moment so dazzles us, our compulsively
chattering minds give pause, so as not to mentally whisk us away to a place other than the
here-and-now. Bathed in luminescence, a door seems to open to another reality, always
present, yet rarely witnessed.
Abraham Maslow called these “peak experiences,” since they represent the high moments of
life where we joyfully find ourselves catapulted beyond the confines of the mundane and
ordinary. He might just as well have called them “peek” experiences. During these
expansive occasions, we sneak a glimpse of the eternal realm of Being itself. If only for
a brief moment in time, we come home to our True
Self. “Ah,” one might sigh, “so grand . . . if only I could stay
here. But how do I take up permanent residence?“ During the past ten years, I have
committed myself to finding out. During my search, I have been honored to engage in
dialogue with some of the most daring, inspiring and insightful ”paradigm pioneers“ of our
time: in medicine, science, psychology, business, religion/spirituality, and human
potential. This diverse group of individuals is joined by their commonly voiced insight
that humanity is now taking a quantum leap forward in its evolutionary development. This
change is accompanied by a shift in world view the basic picture we carry with us of ”the
way things are.“ A world view seeks to answer two fundamental questions, ”Who are we?“ and
”What is the nature of the Universe in which we live?” Our answers to these questions
dictate the quality and characteristics of our personal relationships with family, friends and employers/employees. When considered on a larger
scale, they define societies.
It should be of little surprise that the world view which is emerging calls into question
many of the things Western society holds to be true:
MYTH #1 Humanity has reached the pinnacle of its development.
Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, drawing upon comparative religious studies, medical
science, anthropology, and sports, has made a provocative case that there are more
advanced stages of human development. As a person reaches these advanced levels of
spiritual maturity, extraordinary capacities begin to blossom of love, vitality,
personhood, bodily awareness, intuition, perception, communication, and
volition. First step: to recognize they exist. Most people do not.
Then, methods can be employed with conscious intention.
MYTH #2 We are completely separate from each other, nature, and the Kosmos.
This myth of “other-than-me” has been responsible for wars, the rape of the planet, and
all forms and expressions of human injustice. After alt, who in their right mind would
harm another if they experienced that person as part of themselves? Stan Grof, in his
research of non-ordinary states of consciousness, summarizes by saying “the psyche and
consciousness of each of us is, in the last analysis, commensurate with ”All-That-Is“
because there are no absolute boundaries between the body/ego and the totality of
existence.”
Dr. Larry Dossey's Era-3 medicine, where the thoughts, attitudes, and healing intentions
of one individual can influence the physiology of another person (in contrast to Era-z, prevailing mind-body
medicine) is very well supported by scientific studies into the healing power of prayer.
Now this can't happen according to the known principles of physics and world view of
traditional science. Yet the preponderance of evidence suggests that indeed it does.
MYTH #3 The physical world is all there is.
Materialistically bound, traditional science assumes that anything that cannot be
measured, tested in a laboratory, or probed by the five senses or their technological
extensions simply doesn't exist. Ifs “not real.” The consequence: all of reality has been
collapsed into physical reality. Spiritual, or what I would call nonphysical, dimensions
of reality have been run out of town.
This clashes with the “perennial philosophy,” that philosophical consensus spanning ages,
religions, traditions, and cultures, which describes different but continuous dimensions
of reality. These run from the most dense and least conscious what we'd call “matter” to
the least dense and most conscious, which we'd call spiritual.
Interestingly enough, this extended, multidimensional model of reality is suggested by
quantum theorists such as Jack Scarfetti who describes superluminal travel. Other
dimensions of reality are used to explain travel that occurs faster than the speed of
light the ultimate of speed limits. Or consider the work of the legendary physicist,
David Bohm, with his explicate (physical) and implicate (non- physical) multidimensional
model of reality.
This is no mere theory the i982 Aspect Experiment in France demonstrated, that two
once-connected quantum particles separated by vast distances remained somehow connected.
If one particle was changed, the other changed instantly. Scientists don't know the mechanics of how this faster-than-the-speed-of-light
travel can happen, though some theorists suggest that this connection takes place via
doorways into higher dimensions.
So contrary to what those who pledge their allegiance to the traditional paradigm might
think, the influential, pioneering individuals I spoke with felt that we have not reached
the pinnacle of human development, we are connected, rather than separate, from all of
life, and that the full spectrum of consciousness encompasses both physical and a
multitude of nonphysical dimensions of reality.
At core, this new world view involves seeing yourself, others, and all of life, not
through the eyes of our small, earthly self that lives in time and is born in time. But
rather through the eyes of the soul, our Being, the True Self. One by one,
people are jumping to this higher orbit. With his book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
rightfully takes his place among this special group of world- class teachers. Eckharts
message: the problem of humanity is deeply rooted in the mind itself. Or rather, our
misidentification with mind.
Our drifting awareness, our tendency to take the path of least resistance by being less
than fully awake to the present moment, creates a void. And the time-bound mind, which has
been designed to be a useful servant, compensates by proclaiming itself master. Like a
butterfly flittering from one flower to another, the mind engages past experiences or,
projecting its own made-for-television movie, anticipates what is to come. Seldom do we
find ourselves resting in the oceanic depth of the here and now. For it is here in the
Now where we find our True Self, which lies behind our physical body, shifting emotions,
and chattering mind.
The crowning glory of human development rests not in our ability to reason and think,
though this is what distinguishes us from animals. Intellect, like instinct, is merely a
point along the way. Our ultimate destiny is to re- connect with our essential Being and express from our extraordinary, divine reality in the
ordinary physical world, moment by moment. Easy to say, yet rare are those who have
attained the further reaches of human development.
Fortunately, there are guides and teachers to help us along the way. As a teacher and
guide, Eckhart's formidable power lies not in his adept ability to delight us with
entertaining stories, make the abstract concrete, or provide useful technique. Rather, his
magic is seated in his personal experience, as one who knows. As a result, there is a
power behind his words found only in the most celebrated of spiritual teachers. By living
from the depths of this Greater Reality, Eckhart clears an energetic pathway for others to
join him.
And what if others do? Surely the world as we know it would change for the better. Values
would shift in the flotsam of vanishing fears that have been funneled away through the
whirlpool of Being itself. A new civilization would be born.
“Where's the proof of this Greater Reality?” you ask. I offer only an analogy. A battery
of scientists can get together and tell you about all the scientific proof for the fact
that bananas are bitter. But all you have to do is taste one, once, to realize that there
is this whole other aspect to bananas. Ultimately, proof lies not in intellectual
arguments, but in being touched in some way by the sacred within and without.
Eckhart Tolle masterfully opens us to that possibility.
Russell E. DiCarlo Author, Towards a New World View: Conversations at the Leading Edge
Erie, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
January 1998
The Power of Now
Chapter One
The Power of Now
MOVING DEEPLY INTO THE NOW
The Power of Now
DON'T SEEK YOUR SELF IN THE MIND
I feel that there is still ct great deal I need to learn about the workings of my mind
before I can get anywhere near full consciousness or spiritual enlightenment.
No, you don't. The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. Once
you have understood the basic dysfunction, there isnt really much else that you need to
learn or understand. Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good
psychologist, but doing so won't take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness
isn't enough to create sanity. You have already understood the basic mechanics of the
unconscious state: identification with the mind, which creates a false self, the ego, as a
substitute for your true self rooted in Being. You become as a “branch cut off from the
vine,” as Jesus puts it.
The ego's needs are endless. It feels vulnerable and threatened and so lives in a state of
fear and want. Once you know how the basic dysfunction operates, there is no need to
explore all its countless manifestations, no need to make it into a complex personal
problem. The ego, of course, loves that. It is always seeking for something to attach
itself to in order to uphold and strengthen its illusory sense of self, and it will
readily attach itself to your problems. This is why, for so many people, a large part of
their sense of self is intimately connected with their problems. Once this has happened,
the last thing they want is to become free of them; that would mean loss of self. There can be a great deal of unconscious ego investment in
pain and suffering.
So once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with the mind, which
of course includes the emotions, you step out of it. You become present. When you are
present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind
in itself is not dysfunctional.
It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it
for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind and takes over your whole life.
The Power of Now
END THE DELUSION OF TIME
It seems almost impossible to disidentify from the mind. We are all immersed in it. How do
you teach a fish to fly?
Here is the key: End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from
the mind and it stops unless you choose to use it.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost
exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with
past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow
it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future
holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
But without a sense of time, how would we function in this world? There would be no goals
to strive toward anymore. I wouldn't even know who I am, because my past makes me who I am
today. I think time is something very precious, and we need to learn to use it wisely
rather than waste it. Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is
not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more
you are focused on time past and future the more you miss the Now, the most precious
thing there is.
Why is it the most precious thing? Firstly, because it is the only thing. Its all there
is. The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor
that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor
will there ever be. Secondly,
the Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of the mind. It is
your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of Being.
¤
The Power of Now
NOTHING EXISTS OUTSIDE THE NOW
Aren't past and future just as real, sometimes even more real, than the present? After
all, the past determines who we are, as well as how we perceive and behave in the present.
And our future goals determine which actions we take in the present.
You havent yet grasped the essence of what I am saying because you are trying to
understand it mentally. The mind cannot understand this. Only you can. Please just listen.
Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think
you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is
obvious, is it not? Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now.
Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.
What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When
you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace and you do so now. The future is an
imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When
you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of
their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the
sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the
eternal present. Their reality is “borrowed” from the Now.
The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood by the mind. The moment you
grasp it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence.
Suddenly, everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates Being.
¤
The Power of Now
THE KEY TO THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION
In life-threatening emergency situations, the shift in consciousness from time to presence
sometimes happens naturally. The personality that has a past and a future momentarily
recedes and is replaced by an intense conscious presence, very still but very alert at the
same time. Whatever response is needed then arises out of that state of consciousness. The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain
climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces
them into the Now that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free
of thinking, free of the burden of the personality. Slipping away from the present moment
even for a second may mean death. Unfortunately, they come to depend on a particular
activity to be in that state. But you don't need to climb the north face of the Eiger. You
can enter that state now.
¤
Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed to the Now as the
key to the spiritual dimension. Despite this, it seems to have remained a secret. It is
certainly not taught in churches and temples. If you go to a church, you may hear readings
from the Gospels such as “Take no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself,” or “Nobody who puts his hands to the plow and looks
back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” Or you might hear the passage about the beautiful
flowers that are not anxious about tomorrow but live with ease in the timeless Now and are
provided for abundantly by God. The depth and radical nature of these teachings are not
recognized. No one seems to realize that they are meant to be lived and so bring about a
profound inner transformation.
¤ The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor's edge of Now to be so
utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you
are in your essence, can survive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your
problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.
The great Zen master Rinzai, in order to take his students' attention away from time,
would often raise his finger and slowly ask: “What, at this moment, is lacking?” A
powerful question that does not require an answer on the level of the mind. It is designed
to take your attention deeply into the Now. A similar question in the Zen tradition is
this: “If not now, when?”
¤
The Now is also central to the teaching of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Sufis
have a saying: “The Sufi is the son of time present.” And Rumi, the great poet and teacher
of Sufism, declares: “Past and future veil God from our sight; burn up both of them with
fire.”
Meister Eckhart, the thirteenth-century spiritual teacher, summed it all up beautifully
“Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than
time.”
¤
The Power of Now
ACCESSING THE POWER OF THE NOW
A moment ago, when you talked about the eternal present and the unreality of past and
future, I found myself looking at that tree outside the window. I had looked at it a few
times before, but this time it was different. The external perception had not changed
much, except that the colors seemed brighter and more vibrant. But there was now an added
dimension to it. This is hard to explain. I don't know how, but I was aware of something
invisible that I felt was the essence of that tree, its inner spirit, if you like. And
somehow I was part of that. I realize now that I hadn't truly seen the tree before, just a
flat and dead image of it. When I look at the tree now, some of that awareness is still
present, but I can feel it slipping away. You see, the experience is already receding into
the past. Can something like this ever be more than affecting glimpse?
You were free of time for a moment. You moved into the Now and therefore perceived the
tree without the screen of mind. The awareness of Being became part of your perception.
With the timeless dimension comes a different kind of knowing, one that does not “kill”
the spirit that lives within every creature and every thing. A knowing that does not
destroy the sacredness and mystery of life but contains a deep love and reverence for all
that is. A knowing of which the mind knows nothing.
The mind cannot know the tree. It can only know facts or information about the tree. My
mind cannot know you, only labels, judgments, facts, and opinions about you. Being alone
knows directly.
There is a place for mind and mind knowledge. It is in the practical realm of day-to-day
living. However, when it takes over all aspects of your life, including your relationships
with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, unchecked,
may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.
You have had a glimpse of how the timeless can transform your perceptions. But an
experience is not enough, no matter how beautiful or profound. What is needed and what we
are concerned with is a permanent shift in consciousness.
So break the old pattern of present-moment denial and present-moment resistance. Make it
your practice to withdraw attention from past and future whenever they are not needed.
Step out of the time dimension as much as possible in everyday life. If you find it hard
to enter the Now directly, start by observing the habitual tendency of your mind to want
to escape from the Now. You will observe that the future is usually imagined as either
better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or
pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory. Through
self-observation, more presence comes into your life automatically. The moment you realize
you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are
no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind:
the witnessing presence. Be present as the watcher of your mind of your
thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as
interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react.
Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don't judge or analyze what
you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Dont make a
personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those
things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your
mind, the silent watcher. ¤
Intense presence is needed when certain situations trigger a reaction with a strong
emotional charge, such as when your self-image is threatened, a challenge comes into your
life that triggers fear, things “go wrong,” or an emotional complex from the past is
brought up. In those instances, the tendency is for you to become “unconscious.” The
reaction or emotion takes you over you “become” it. You act it out. You justify, make
wrong, attack, defend . . . except that it isn't you, it's the reactive pattern, the mind
in its habitual survival mode.
Identification with the mind gives it more energy;, observation of the mind withdraws
energy from it. Identification with the mind creates more time; observation of the mind
opens up the dimension of the timeless. The energy that is withdrawn from the mind turns
into presence. Once you can feel what it means to be present, it becomes much easier to
simply choose to step out of the time dimension whenever time is not needed for practical
purposes and move more deeply into the Now. This does not impair your ability to use time
past or future when you need to refer to it for practical matters. Nor does it impair
your ability to use your mind. In fact, it enhances it. When you do use your mind, it will
be sharper, more focused.
The Power of Now
LETTING GO OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME
Learn to use time in the practical aspects of your life we may call this “clock time”
but immediately return to present-moment awareness when those practical matters have been dealt with. In this way, there will be no build-up of “psychological time,”
which is identification with the past and continuous compulsive projection into the future.
Clock time is not just making an appointment or planning a trip. It includes learning from
the past so that we don't repeat the same mistakes over and over. Setting goals and
working toward them. Predicting the future by means of patterns and laws, physical,
mathematical and so on, learned from the past and taking appropriate action on the basis
of our predictions.
But even here, within the sphere of practical living, where we cannot do without reference
to past and future, the present moment remains the essential factor, Any lesson from the
past becomes relevant and is applied now. Any planning as well as working toward achieving
a particular goal is done now.
The enlightened person's main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still
peripherally aware of time. In other words, they continue to use clock time but are free
of psychological time.
Be alert as you practice this so that you do not unwittingly transform clock time into
psychological time. For example, if you made a mistake in the past and learn from it now,
you are using clock time. On the other hand, if you dwell on it mentally, and
self-criticism, remorse, or guilt come up, then you are making the mistake into “me” and
“mine”: you make it part of your sense of self, and it has become psychological time,
which is always linked to a false sense of identity. Nonforgiveness necessarily implies a
heavy burden of psychological time.
If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of
where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you
are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps
because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it,
the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Clock time then turns
into psychological time. Your life's journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive
need to arrive, to attain, to “make it.” You no longer see or smell the flowers by the
wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all
around you when you are present in the Now.
¤
I can see the supreme importance of the Now, but I cannot quite go along with you when you
say that time is a complete illusion.
When I say “time is an illusion,” my intention is not to make a philosophical statement. I
am just reminding you of a simple fact a fact so obvious that you may find it hard to
grasp and may even find it meaningless but once fully realized, it can cut like a sword
through all the mind-created layers of complexity and “problems.” Let me say it again: the
present moment is all you ever have. There is never a time when your life is not “this
moment.” Is this not a fact?
The Power of Now
THE INSANITY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME
You will not have any doubt that psychological time is a mental disease if you look at its
collective manifestations. They occur, for example, in the form of ideologies such as
communism, national socialism or any nationalism, or rigid religious belief systems, which
operate under the implicit assumption that the highest good lies in the future and that therefore the end justifies the means. The end is an idea, a point in the mind-projected
future, when salvation in whatever form happiness, fulfillment, equality, liberation, and
so on will be attained. Not infrequently, the means of getting there are the enslavement,
torture, and murder of people in the present.
For example, it is estimated that as many as 50 million people were murdered to further
the cause of communism, to bring about a “better world” in Russia, China, and other
countries. This is a chilling example of how belief in a future heaven creates a present
hell. Can there be any doubt that psychological time is a serious and dangerous mental
illness?
How does this mind pattern oper
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