The Power of Now

In June 2008 I read a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I read it on the advice of a new doctor who told me I 'thought too much'! In a way, I was lucky I was sick, because this allowed me quiet, contemplative time to read and absorb the book in two days. The first chapter ~ 'You are not your mind' almost put me off reading at all, for I had, for many years believed in the contrary ~ of course I was my mind, what else ~ a body, yes, that was obvious, but I'd put so much store in my thoughts and I had many of them, always racing ahead of what I was doing, very rarely slowing down ~ thoughts, thoughts, too many of them that caused me great anxiety. Most of my thoughts were about dissecting every bit of information, every conversation or interaction. I very rarely fell asleep quickly at night when I went to bed ~ my thoughts kept me awake. I believed that if I didn't think constantly, quickly then I would have no intellect, and I'd invested so much in my intellectual life and study. After reading the book, which was stimulating, rewarding and enlightening in many ways I began to slow down my racing thoughts and become consciously aware of 'the now', because after all, that's all we really have. So, what is the power of now? Simply, it means that if we live in the now rather than the past, we're not always thinking about what we might have done differently, what mistakes we've made, who has wronged us, what enjoyments we've missed out on. In other words, we stop making ourselves miserable by going over and over what cannot be changed or undone. There is only now and opportunities to make the now significant. What I enjoyed about Tolle's teaching is that he drew upon ideas from Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and other religions and philosophies, but reminded the reader not to fixate on any of the names (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad) ~ just to move through them. After reading the book I began to meditate every day. I'd resisted for so long. Actually, the idea of meditation and anything spiritual irked me, but after reading the book I decided to just give myself over to listening to my breathing and getting in touch with the feelings inside my body. This was not always pleasant. Yes ~ mind doesn't really figure here. It's about not thinking, just breathing and feeling and eventually just breathing. And, with your eyes closed you feel the immensity of the space within you, which is simultaneously absolutely nothing ~ a void, and yet filled with that expansive and overwhelming nothing. It's what Tolle calls 'pure consciousness'. It's hard to explain if you haven't experienced it, and I'm sure that others experience meditation in their own particular way. I can't say that my anxiety has been totally overcome by reading this book, no book could do that because anxiety is produced in the body by complex interactions between the internal self and the exterior world. However, I do often return to the book and meditate from time to time. I'm not sure what prompted this morning's post, perhaps being in the 'now' almost always draws us back into the past, and there's nothing wrong with that ~I think that's the way our brain functions. If we didn't have memory (where-ever it's located - brain/body, or just floating around) we would not learn from our mistakes. I think the aspect detrimental to our psyche is in living too much in the past and not embracing the immediacy of our existence. In some ways this blog is a form of being in the now, the screen ever present, my gaze fixated on the words I type as they form across the page ~ consciousness of my finger tapping ~ and the sound, so clear and distinct in the otherwise quiet of the morning.