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# 2019-12-08 - The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
My spiritual teacher recommended this book to me. Personally i found
this book helpful, and ironically, i found it thought provoking. It
helped clarify a few mystifying statements written to me by another
friend. Reading this book was a mind expanding experience on the
whole.
# Preface
Most of the thousands of letters and emails that have been sent to me
from all over the world are from ordinary men and women... There is
frequent mention of the amazing and beneficial effects of inner body
awareness, the sense of freedom that comes from letting go of
self-identification with one's personal history and life-situation,
and a newfound inner peace that arises as one learns to relinquish
mental/emotional resistance to the "suchness" of the present moment.
The more the dysfunction of the human mind plays itself out on the
world stage... the greater the number of people who realize the
urgent need for a radical change in human consciousness if humanity
is not to destroy both itself and the planet. This need, as well as
readiness in millions of people for the arising of a new
consciousness, is the context within which the "success" of The Power
of Now must be seen and understood.
"Mumbo jumbo" was all that Time Magazine could see in [the book]...
any teaching that puts the spotlight of attention on the workings of
the ego will necessarily provoke egoic reaction, resistance, and
attack.
# Introduction
"I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that
kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly i became aware of
what a peculiar thought it was. "Am i one or two? If i cannot live
with myself, then there must be two of me, the 'i' and the 'self'
that 'i' cannot live with." "Maybe," i thought, "only one of them is
real."
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I
was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts.
Without any thought, i felt, i knew, that there is infinitely more to
light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the
curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and
walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet i knew that i
had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine,
as if it had just came into existence. I picked up things, a pencil,
an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.
That day i walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle
of life on earth, as if i had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, i lived in a state of uninterrupted deep
peace and bliss. ... I could still function in the world, although i
realized that nothing i ever did could possibly add anything to what
i already had.
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened
to me, but i didn't understand it at all. ... A time came when, for a
while, i was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no
relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I
spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most
intense joy.
Before i knew it, i had an external identity again. I had become a
spiritual teacher.
This book represents the essence of my work, so far as it can be
conveyed in words... The book in its present form originated, often
spontaneously, in response to questions asked by individuals...
On one level, i draw your attention to what is false in you. ... Such
knowledge is vital, for unless you learn to recognize the false as
false, there can be no lasting transformation...
On another level, i speak of a profound transformation of human
consciousness available now, no matter who or where you are.
On this level of the book, words are not always concerned with
information, but often designed to draw you into this new
consciousness as you read. ... Until you are able to experience what
i speak of, you may find those passages somewhat repetitive. As soon
as you do, however, i believe you will realize that they contain a
great deal of spiritual power... I often address myself to the
knower in you who dwells behind the thinker, the deeper self that
immediately recognizes spiritual truth, resonates with it, and gains
strength from it.
# Chapter 1, You are not your mind
The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years
of misuse. The word God has become a closed concept. The instant
the word is uttered, a mental image is created, a mental
representation of someone or something outside you... Neither God
nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind
the word... Does [the word God] point beyond itself to that
transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming
no more than an idea in your head that you believe in, a mental idol?
Identification with your mind causes thought to become compulsive.
Not being able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we
don't realize this because almost everyone is suffering from it, so
it is considered normal. Identification with your mind creates an
opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and
definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you
and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you
and nature, between you and God.
Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want
to? Have you found the "off" button? No? Then the mind is using
you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don't even
know that you are its slave. It's almost as if you were possessed
without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be
yourself. ... The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher
level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize
that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that
thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize
that all the things that truly matter--beauty, love, creativity, joy,
inner peace--arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.
The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. 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 for perhaps many years. This is what i mean be
"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. 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.
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. Pay close
attention to every movement, even your breathing. Pay attention to
the sense perceptions associated with the activity, the sound, the
feel, the scent, etc.
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 majority of most peoples' thinking is repetitive, useless, and
even harmful. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.
Compulsive thinking is actually an addiction: you no longer feel that
you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you.
Because you are identified with [thinking], [it] means that you
derive your sense of self from the content and activity of your mind.
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.
To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only the past and
future [story-telling and planning, which is also story-telling] are
considered important. It says: "One day, when this, that, or the
other happens, i am going to be okay, happy, and at peace."
The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find
the present moment as long as you ARE your mind.
The mind is essentially a survival machine. 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. The surprising result of a
nationwide inquiry among America's most eminent mathematicians to
find out their working methods, was that thinking "plays only a
subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act
itself."
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.
Emotion arises at the place where the 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. 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.
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.
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.
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. It includes a continuous sense
of threat, a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness. It may be
best to simply call it pain. The mind is an intrinsic part of the
"problem."
Love and joy lie beyond 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 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.
Real love doesn't make you suffer. 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 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.
# Chapter 2, Consciousness: the way out of pain
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 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.
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.
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 don't 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 Now the primary focus of your life. What could
be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to
something that already is? Say "yes" to life--and see how life
suddenly starts working FOR you rather than against you.
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.
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. [It begins
prior to birth when you share your mother's stress response and your
unborn body learns to contract.]
If you look at [this accumulated pain] as an invisible entity in its
own right, you are getting quite close to the truth. It's the
emotional pain-body. It has two modes of being: dormant and active.
... 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... 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... Pain can only feed on
pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.
Once the pain-body has taken over you, you want more pain. You
become a victim or a perpetrator. You are not conscious of this...
but look closely and you will find that your thinking and behavior
are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others.
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. The moment you observe [the pain body], 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.
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.
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. At this
stage, it may also create physical aches and pains in different parts
of the body, but they won't 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.
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 burns more brightly as a result.
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.
The instinctive shrinking back from danger is not the same thing as
the psychological condition of fear. The psychological condition of
fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. 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. 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.
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
clearly 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.
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.
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.
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.
# Chapter 3, Moving deeply into the now
The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind.
The study of madness isn't enough to create sanity.
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. [Suffering was not our purpose in coming to this
planet.]
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 more you are focused on time--past and future--the more you miss
the Now, the most precious thing there is.
It is the most precious thing because it is the only thing. It's all
there is. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor
will there ever be. 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.
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 personality. Slipping away from the
present moment even for a second may mean death. You can enter that
state now, without depending on a particular activity.
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 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. Only "Being" 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
end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing
its host.
Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or
person that [you are reacting to.] Don't make a personal problem out
of them. [Just observe.]
Intense presence is needed when certain situations trigger a reaction
with a strong emotional charge... In those instances, the tendency
is for you to become "unconscious." You act out, except it isn't
you, it's the reactive pattern, the mind in its habitual survival
mode.
Observation of the mind withdraws energy from it and opens up the
dimension of timelessness. The energy that is withdrawn from the
mind turns into a 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.
Be alert so that you do not unwittingly transform clock time into
psychological time. For example, if you make 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.
In the normal, mind-identified or unenlightened state of
consciousness, the power and infinite creative potential that lie
concealed in the Now are completely obscured by psychological time.
Your life then loses its vibrancy, its freshness, its sense of
wonder. The old patterns of thought, emotion, behavior, reaction,
and desire are acted out in endless repeat performances, a script in
your mind that gives you an identity of sorts but distorts or covers
up the reality of the Now.
[You can never reach freedom because you are already free now.] There
is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future. Presence
is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now.
Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life
situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real.
When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to
enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room,
create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life
situation.
Use your senses fully. Be where you are. Look around. Just look,
don't interpret. See the light, shapes, colors, textures. Be aware
of the silent presence of each thing. Be aware of the space that
allows everything to be. Listen to the sounds; don't judge them.
Listen to the silence underneath the sounds. Touch
something--anything--and feel and acknowledge its Being. Observe the
rhythm of your breathing; feel the air flowing in and out, feel the
life energy inside your body. Allow everything to be, within and
without. Allow the "isness" of all things. Move deeply into the Now.
You are leaving behind the deadening world of mental abstraction, of
time. You are getting out of the insane mind that is draining you of
life energy, just as it is slowly poisoning and destroying the Earth.
You are awakening out of the dream of time into the present.
If you have ever been in a life-or-death emergency situation, you
will know that it wasn't a problem. The mind didn't have time to
fool around and make it into a problem. In a true emergency, the
mind stops; you become totally present in the Now, and something
infinitely more powerful takes over.
The time-bound mode of consciousness is deeply embedded in the human
psyche. But what we are doing here is part of a profound
transformation that is taking place in the collective consciousness
of the planet and beyond: the awakening of consciousness from the
dream of matter, form, and separation. The ending of time. We are
breaking mind patterns that have dominated human life for eons. Mind
patterns that have created unimaginable suffering on a vast scale.
To alert you that you have allowed yourself to be taken over by
psychological time, you can use a simple criterion. Ask yourself: Is
there joy, ease, and lightness in what i am doing? If there isn't,
then time is covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as
a burden or a struggle.
If there is no joy, ease, or lightness in what you are doing, it does
not necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing. It
may be sufficient to change the how. "How" is always more important
than "what."
# Chapter 4, Mind strategies for avoiding the now
To know that you are not present is a great success. That knowing is
presence--even if initially it only lasts for a couple of seconds of
clock time before it is lost again.
Most humans alternate not between consciousness and unconsciousness
but only between different levels of unconsciousness.
Ordinary unconsciousness means being identified with your thought
processes and emotions, your reactions, desires, and aversions. It
is most people's normal state.
Deep unconsciousness often means that the pain-body has been
triggered and that you have become identified with it. Physical
violence would be impossible without deep unconsciousness.
The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal
with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an
already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious,
and a conscious person more intensely conscious.
If you cannot be present even in normal circumstances, such as when
you are sitting alone in a room, walking in the woods, or listening
to someone, then you certainly won't be able to stay conscious when
something "goes wrong" or you are faced with difficult people or
situations, with loss or the threat of loss. You will be taken over
by a reaction, which is always some form of fear, and pulled into
deep unconsciousness. Those challenges are your tests. Only the way
in which you deal with them will show you and others where you are at
as far as your state of consciousness is concerned...
So it is essential to bring more consciousness into your life in
ordinary situations when everything is going relatively smoothly.
[Sounds like first-world privilege to me.] In this way, you grow in
presence power.
Why are you always anxious? Jesus asked his disciples. "Can anxious
thought add a single day to your life?" And the Buddha taught that
the root of suffering is to be found in our constant wanting and
craving.
To be free of this affliction, make it conscious. Observe the many
ways in which unease, discontentment, and tension arise within you...
Anything unconscious dissolves when you shine the light of
consciousness on it.
"Am i at ease in this moment?" is a good question to ask yourself
frequently. Or you can ask: "What's going on inside me at this
moment?" Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as
what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will
fall into place. [Wash the inside of the pot before washing the
outside.]
Do you realize that the energy you thus emanate [from resentment] is
so harmful in its effects that you are in fact contaminating yourself
as well as those around you? Have a good look inside. Is there even
the slightest trace of resentment, unwillingness? If there is,
observe it... What thoughts is your mind creating around this
situation? Do your emotions feel pleasant or unpleasant? Is this an
energy that you would actually choose to have inside you? Do you
have a choice?
The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner
psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking
responsibility for their inner space.
Either stop what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and
express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind
has created around the situation and that serves no purpose
whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Negativity is
never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In most cases
it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real change. [Focus is on the
problem, not on arriving at a solution.]
Deep pain usually needs to be transmuted through acceptance combined
with the light of your presence--your sustained attention. Many
patterns in ordinary unconsciousness, on the other hand, can simply
be dropped once you know that you don't want them and don't need them
anymore, once you realize that you have a choice and that you are not
just a bundle of conditioned reflexes. Without the power of Now, you
have no choice.
[I am just a bundle of conditioned reflexes, and i only have the
sensation of choice. I am happier off with this illusion because it
allows me to feel empowered by assuming responsibility for my
choices. But the truth is that my decision is a rationalization, a
story invented long after an unconscious departure toward a behavior.
This rationalization is insubstantial and easily falsified. The
bulk of life happens in the unconscious, and its working is quite
mechanical. If one could parse out this conditioning, there would be
scarcely anything left. "I" am the shapes imagined in clouds and
coincidental patterns spotted within a house of cards.]
When you have been practicing acceptance for a while, there comes a
point when you need to go on to the next stage, where the negative
emotions are not created any more. If you don't, your "acceptance"
just becomes a mental label that allows your ego to continue to
indulge in unhappiness and so strengthen its sense of separation from
other people, your surroundings, your here and now. True acceptance
would transmute those feelings at once.
[But how can there be a next stage if time doesn't exist?]
To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably
carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make
yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in power. So
change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary
or possible; leave the situation or accept it.
Any action is often better than no action... If it is a mistake, at
least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake.
If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.
Or you can drop the whole thing and sit on a park bench. But when
you do, watch your mind. It may say: "You should be working. You
are wasting time." Observe the mind. Smile at it.
Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the
future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got,
and you want what you haven't got. This greatly reduces the quality
of your life by making you lose the present.
You can try to improve your life situation, but you cannot improve
your life. Life is primary.
If you delve into the past, it will become a bottomless pit: There is
always more.
As you become more conscious of your present reality, you may
suddenly get certain insights as to why your conditioning functions
in those particular ways--for example, why your relationships follow
certain patterns--and you may remember things that happened in the
past or see them more clearly. That is fine and can be helpful, but
it is not essential. What is essential is your conscious presence.
THAT dissolves the past. That is the transformative agent. So don't
seem to understand the past, but be as present as you can. The past
cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.
# Chapter 5, The state of presence
Try a little experiment. Close your eyes and say to yourself: "I
wonder what my next thought is going to be." Then become very alert
and wait for the next thought. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole.
What thought is going to come out of the mouse hole? Try it now.
As long as you are in a state of intense presence, you are free of
thought. [So you may have to wait for quite a long time before a
thought comes in.] You are still, yet highly alert. The instant
your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes
in. The mental noise returns; the stillness is lost. You are back
in time.
To test their degree of presence, some Zen masters have been known to
creep up on their students from behind and suddenly hit them with a
stick. Quite a shock! If the student had been fully present and in
a state of alertness, he would have noticed the master coming up from
behind and stopped him or stepped aside. But if he were hit, that
would mean he was immersed in thought, which is to say absent,
unconscious. One of the analogies Jesus used for presence is keeping
one's loin girded and lamp burning.
Body awareness keeps you present.
In a sense, the state of presence could be compared to waiting.
Jesus used the analogy of waiting in some of his parables. This is
not the usual bored or restless kind of waiting that is a denial of
the present and that I spoke about already. It is not a waiting in
which your attention is focused on some point in the future and the
present is perceived as an undesirable obstacle that prevents you
from having what you want. There is a qualitatively different kind
of waiting, one that requires your total alertness. Something could
happen any moment, and if you are not absolutely awake, absolutely
still, you will miss it. This is the kind of waiting Jesus talks
about.
[Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in
awhile, you could miss it. --Ferris Bueler's Day Off]
"Be like a servant waiting for the return of the master," says Jesus.
The servant does not know at what hour the master is going to come.
So he stays awake, alert, poised, still, let he miss the master's
arrival. These are parables not about the end of the world but about
the end of psychological time.
Mind can neither recognize nor create beauty. Only for a few
seconds, while you were completely present, was that beauty or
sacredness there. Because of the narrowness of that gap and a lack
of vigilance and alertness on your part, you were probably unable to
see the fundamental difference between the perception, the
thoughtless awareness of beauty, and the naming and interpreting of
it as thought: The time gap was so small that it seemed to be a
single process. The truth is, however, that the moment thought came
in, all you had was a memory of it.
The wider the time gap between perception and thought, the more depth
there is to you as a human being, which is to say the more conscious
you are.
Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of
nature does not really exist for them. They might say, "What a
pretty flower," but that's just a mechanical labeling. Because they
are not still, not present, they don't truly see the flower, don't
feel its presence, its holiness--just as they don't know themselves,
don't feel their own essence, their own holiness.
Because we live in such a mind-dominated culture, most modern art,
architecture, music, and literature are devoid of beauty, of inner
essence, with very few exceptions. The reason is that the people who
create those things cannot--even for a moment--free themselves from
their mind. So they are never in touch with that place within where
true creativity and beauty arise. The mind left to itself creates
monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban
landscapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever
produced so much ugliness.
Falling back to a level of consciousness below mind, which is the
pre-thinking level of our distant ancestors and of [other] animals
and plants, is not an option for us. There is no way back. If the
human race is to survive, it will have to go on to the next stage.
Silence is an even more potent carrier of presence [than words of
mystical power], so... be aware of the silence between and underneath
the words. Be aware of the gaps. To listen to the silence, wherever
you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present. Even if
there is noise, there is always some silence underneath and in
between the sounds. Listening to the silence immediately creates
stillness inside you. Only the stillness in you can perceive the
silence outside. And what is stillness other than presence,
consciousness freed from thought forms?
Many misunderstandings and false beliefs about Christ will clear if
you realize that there is no past or future in Christ. To say that
Christ WAS or WILL BE is a contradiction in terms. Jesus said
"Before Abraham was, I am." He did not say: "I already existed
before Abraham was born." That would have meant that he was still
within the dimension of time and form identity. The words I AM used
in a sentence that starts in the past tense indicate a radical shift,
a discontinuity in the temporal dimension. It is a Zen-like
statement of great profundity. Jesus attempted to convey directly,
not through discursive thought, the meaning of presence...
And what is God's self-definition in the Bible? God said: "I AM THAT
I AM." No time here, just presence.
Without a false self to uphold, defend, and feed, [enlightened
masters] are more simple, more ordinary than the ordinary man or
woman. Anyone with a strong ego would regard them as insignificant,
or more likely, not see them at all.
If you are drawn to an enlightened teacher, it is because there is
already enough presence in you to recognize presence in another.
Only light can recognize the light.
# Chapter 6, The inner body
Over the centuries, many erroneous views and interpretations have
accumulated around words such as SIN, due to ignorance,
misunderstanding, or a desire to control [others], but they contain
an essential core of truth. If you are unable to look beyond such
interpretations and so cannot recognize the reality to which the word
points, then don't use it. Don't get stuck on the level of words. A
word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not
unlike a sign, it points beyond itself.
The word HONEY isn't honey. You can study and talk about honey for
as long as you like, but you won't really know it until you taste it.
After you have tasted it, the word becomes less important to you.
You won't be attached to it anymore. Similarly, you can talk or
think about God continuously for the rest of your life, but does that
mean you know or have even glimpsed the reality to which the word
points? It really is no more than an obsessive attachment to a
signpost, a mental idol.
So, if a word doesn't work for you anymore, then drop it and replace
it with one that does work. If you don't like the word sin, then
call it unconsciousness or insanity. That may get you closer to the
truth, the reality behind the word... and leaves little room for
guilt.
Perhaps you haven't looked very deeply into the human condition in
its state of dominance by the egoic mind. Open your eyes and see the
fear, the despair, the greed, and the violence that are
all-pervasive. See the heinous cruelty and suffering on an
unimaginable scale that the humans have inflicted and continue to
inflict on each other as well as on other life forms on the planet.
You don't need to condemn. Just observe. That is [what] sin [is].
That is [what] insanity [is]. ... Above all, don't forget to observe
your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there.
The body that you can see and touch cannot take you into into Being.
But that visible and tangible body is only an outer shell, or rather
a limited and distorted perception of a deeper reality. In your
natural state of connectedness with Being, this deeper reality can be
felt every moment as the invisible inner body, the animating presence
within you. So to "inhabit the body" is to feel the body from
within, to feel the life inside the body and thereby come to know
that you are beyond the outer form.
But that is only the beginning of an inward journey that will take
you ever more deeply into a realm of great stillness and peace, yet
also of great power and vibrant life.
To become conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from
the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual
journey. It will free vast amounts of consciousness that previously
had been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking.
If you cannot feel very much at this stage, pay attention to whatever
you CAN feel. Just focus on the feeling. Your body is coming alive.
Later, you will practice some more.
The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and
your essence identity, your true nature.
Adam and Eve saw that they were naked, and they became afraid.
Unconscious denial of their animal nature set in very quickly. The
threat that they might be taken over by powerful instinctual drives
and revert back to complete unconsciousness was indeed a very real
one. Shame and taboos appeared around certain parts of the body and
bodily functions, especially sexuality. The light of their
consciousness was not yet strong enough to make friends with their
animal nature, to allow it to be and even enjoy that aspect of
themselves--let alone go to deeply into it to find the divine hidden
within it, the reality within the illusion. So they did what they
had to do. They began to disassociate from their body...
When religions arose, this disassociation became even more
pronounced...
The fact is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying
or fighting the body... Transformation is THROUGH the body, not away
from it.
You ARE your body. The body that you can see and touch is only a
thin illusory veil. Underneath it lies the invisible inner body, the
doorway into Being, into Life Unmanifested. Through the inner body,
you are inseparably connected to this unmanifested One
Life--birthless, deathless, eternally present. Through the inner
body, you are forever one with God.
Whenever you are waiting, wherever it may be, use that time to feel
the inner body. In this way, traffic jams and lines become very
enjoyable. Instead of mentally projecting yourself away from the
Now, go more deeply into the Now by going more deeply into the body.
The word Unmanifested attempts, by way of negation, to express That
which cannot be spoken, thought, or imagined. It points to what IS
by saying what it is NOT. Being, on the other hand, is a positive
term. These words are no more than signposts.
Feeling will get you closer to the truth of who you are than thinking
[will].
When you become identified more with the timeless inner body than
with the outer body, when presence becomes your normal mode of
consciousness and past and future no longer dominate your attention,
you do not accumulate time anymore in your psyche and in the cells of
the body. The accumulation of time as the psychological burden of
past and future greatly impairs the cells' capacity for self-renewal.
So if you inhabit the inner body, the outer body will grow old at a
much slower rate, and even when it does, your timeless essence will
shine through the outer form, and you will not give the appearance of
an old person.
Try it out and you will BE the evidence.
If at any time you are finding it hard to get in touch with the inner
body, it is usually easier to focus on your breathing first.
Conscious breathing, which is a powerful meditation in its own right,
will gradually put you in touch with the body.
Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop
thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy
field. Become aware of the stillness. When you resume thinking, it
will be fresh and creative. Don't just think with your head, think
with your whole body.
When listening to another person, don't just listen with your mind,
listen with your whole body. Feel the energy field of your inner
body as you listen. That takes attention away from thinking and
creates a still space that enables you to truly listen without the
mind interfering. You are giving the other person space to be. It
is the most precious gift you can give.
Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of their
attention is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that
than to what the other person is saying, and none at all to what
really matters: the Being of the other person underneath the words
and mind. Of course, you cannot feel someone else's Being except
through your own. This is the beginning of the realization of
oneness, which is love.
# Chapter 7, Portals into the unmanifested
[To deepen bodily awareness] make it into a meditation. Ten to
fifteen minutes of clock time should be sufficient. First make sure
that there are no external distractions such as telephones or people
who are likely to interrupt you. If possible, keep the spine erect.
If you sit in a chair, don't lean back. This will help you to stay
alert.
Make sure the body is relaxed. Close your eyes. Take a few deep
breaths. Feel yourself breathing into the lower abdomen, as it were.
Observe how it expands and contacts slightly with each in and out
breath. Then become aware of the entire inner energy field of the
body. Don't think about it--FEEL it. Then take your attention even
more deeply into that feeling. Become one with it. Merge with the
energy field, so that there is no longer a perceived duality of the
observer and the observed, of you and your body. The distinction
between inner and outer also dissolves now, so there is no inner body
anymore. By going deeply into the body, you have transcended the
body.
Stay in this realm of pure Being for as long as feels comfortable;
then become aware again of the physical body, your breathing and
physical senses, and open your eyes. Look at your surroundings for a
few minutes in a meditative way--that is, without labeling them
mentally--and continue to feel the inner body as you do so.
The Unmanifested is the source of chi. Chi is the inner energy field
of your body. It is the bridge between the outer you and the Source.
It lies halfway between the manifested, the world of form, and the
Unmanifested. Chi can be likened to a river or an energy stream. If
you take the focus of your consciousness deeply into the inner body,
you are tracing the course of this river back to its Source. Chi is
movement; the Unmanifested is stillness. When you reach a point of
absolute stillness, which is nevertheless vibrant with life, you have
gone beyond the inner body and beyond chi to the Source itself: the
Unmanifested. Chi is the link between the Unmanifested and the
physical universe.
Now let your spiritual practice be this: As you go about your life,
don't give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to
your mind. Keep some within.
The Now can be seen as the main portal. It is an essential aspect of
every other portal...
* Inner body: You cannot be in your body without being intensely
present in the Now.
* Meditation: Another portal into the Unmanifested is created through
the cessation of thinking.
* Surrender: The letting go of mental-emotional resistance to what
is--also becomes a portal into the unmanifested. In the state of
surrender, your form identity softens and becomes somewhat
"transparent," as it were, so the Unmanifested can shine through
you.
* Silence: Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence:
the mind becomes still. A portal is opening up. Every sound is
born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life
span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables every sound to be.
It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound... The
Unmanifested is present in this world as silence. [the still,
small voice]
* Space: The Unmanifested also pervades the entire physical universe
as space--from within and without. "Nothing" can only become a
portal into the Unmanifested if you don't try to grasp or
understand it. Don't think about the space around you, feel it and
pay attention to it.
It's up to you to open a portal in your life that gives you conscious
access to the Unmanifested.
As soon as one of the portals is open, love is present in you as the
"feeling-realization" of oneness. Love isn't a portal; it's what
comes through the portal into this world. Your task is not to search
for love but to find a portal through which love can enter. [Seek
and you will find.]
If you remain in conscious connection with the Unmanifested, you
value, love, and deeply respect the manifested and every life form in
it as an expression of the One Life beyond form. You also know that
every form is destined to dissolve again and that ultimately nothing
out here matters all that much. You have "overcome the world," in
the words of Jesus, or, as the Buddha put it, you have "crossed over
to the other shore."
You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.
THAT IS HOW IMPORTANT YOU ARE!
Apart from dreamless sleep, there is one other involuntary portal.
It opens up briefly at the time of physical death. Even if you have
missed all the other opportunities for spiritual realization during
your lifetime, one last portal will open up for you immediately after
the body has died.
Every portal is a portal of death, the death of the false self. When
you go through it, you cease to derive your identity from your
psychological, mind-made form. Death is the end of illusion. It is
painful only as long as you cling to illusion.
# Chapter 8, Enlightened relationships
But there comes a point when your partner behaves in ways that fail
to meet your needs, or rather those of your ego. The feelings of
fear, pain, and lack that are an intrinsic part of egoic
consciousness but had been covered up by the "love relationship" now
resurface. Just as with every other addiction, you are on a high
when the drug is available, but invariably there comes a time when
the drug no longer works for you. When those painful feelings
reappear, you feel them even more strongly than before, and what is
more, you now perceive your partner as the CAUSE of those feelings.
Avoidance of relationships in an attempt to avoid pain is not the
answer either. The pain is there anyway. Three failed relationships
in as many years are more likely to force you into awakening than
three years on a desert island or shut away in your room. [Or on a
park bench.]
Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective.
It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive.
Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego.
Even in an otherwise addictive relationship, there may be moments
when something more real shines through, something beyond your mutual
addictive needs. These are moments when both your mind and your
partner's mind briefly subside and the pain-body is temporarily in a
dormant state.
As the egoic mode of consciousness and all the social, political, and
economic structures that it created enter the final stage of
collapse, the relationships between men and women reflect the deep
state of crisis in which humanity now finds itself. However, every
crisis represents not only danger but also opportunity. If
relationships energize and magnify egoic mind patterns and activate
the pain-body, as they do at this time, why not accept this fact
rather than try to escape from it? So whenever your relationship is
not working, whenever it brings out the "madness" in you and in your
partner, be glad. What was unconscious is being brought up to the
light.
Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only
chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your
life and close relationships in particular. Never before have
relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are
now. [At least not openly, in the light.] As you may have noticed,
they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. ... But if you
accept that the relationship is here to make you CONSCIOUS instead of
happy, then the relationship WILL offer you salvation, and you will
be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be
born into this world.
When your partner behaves unconsciously, relinquish all judgment.
Judgment is either to confuse someone's unconscious behavior with who
they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person
and mistake THAT for who they are. To relinquish judgment does not
mean that you do not recognize dysfunction and unconsciousness when
you see it. It means "being the knowing" rather than "being the
reaction" and the judge. You will then either be totally free of
reaction or you may react and still be the knowing, the space in
which the reaction is watched and allowed to be. Instead of fighting
the darkness, you bring in the light. Instead of reacting to
delusion, you see the delusion yet at the same time look through it.
Being the knowing creates a clear space of loving presence that
allows all things and all people to be as they are. No greater
catalyst for transformation exists.
If your partner is still identified with the mind and the pain-body
while you are already free, this will present a major challenge--not
to you but to your partner. It is not easy to live with an
enlightened person, or rather it is so easy that the ego finds it
extremely threatening. Remember that the ego needs problems,
conflicts, and "enemies" to strengthen the sense of separateness on
which its identity depends. The unenlightened person's mind will be
deeply frustrated because its fixed positions are not resisted, which
means they will become shaky and weak, and there is even the "danger"
that they may collapse altogether, resulting in loss of self. The
pain-body is demanding feedback and not getting it. The need for
argument, drama, and conflict is not being met. But beware: Some
people who are unresponsive, withdrawn, insensitive, or cut off from
their feelings may think and try to convince others that they are
enlightened, or at least that there is "nothing wrong" with them and
everything wrong with their partner. Men tend to do that more than
women.
If there isn't an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and
openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment. ... If your
"enlightenment" is egoic self-delusion, then life will soon give you
a challenge that will bring out your unconsciousness in whatever
form... If you are in a relationship, many of your challenges will
come through your partner.
If you are consistently or at least predominantly present in your
relationship, this will be the greatest challenge for your partner.
They will not be able to tolerate your presence for very long and
stay unconscious. If they are ready, they will walk through the door
that you opened for them and join you in that state. If they are
not, you will separate like oil and water. The light is too painful
for someone who wants to remain in the darkness.
Generally speaking, it is easier for a woman to feel and be in her
body, so she is naturally closer to Being and potentially closer to
enlightenment than a man. In the Tao Te Ching, the Tao, which could
be translated as Being, is described as "infinite, eternally present,
the mother of the universe." The Goddess or Divine Mother has two
aspects: She gives life, and she takes life.
When the mind took over and humans lost touch with the reality of
their divine essence, they started to think of God as a male figure.
As a general rule, the major obstacle for men tends to be the
thinking mind, and the major obstacle for women the pain-body, though
in certain individual cases the opposite may be true, and in others
the two factors may be equal.
The pain-body has a collective as well as a personal aspect. The
collective one is the pain accumulated in the collective human psyche
over thousands of years through disease, torture, war, murder,
cruelty, madness, and so on. Everyone's personal pain-body also
partakes in the collective pain-body.
Apart from her personal pain-body, every woman has her share in what
could be described as the collective female pain-body--unless she is
fully conscious.
The number of women who are now approaching the fully conscious state
already exceeds that of men and will be growing even faster in the
years to come. ... for some considerable time there will be a gap
between the consciousness of men and that of women. Women are
regaining the function that is their birthright and, therefore, comes
to them more naturally than it does to men: to be a bridge between
the manifested world and the Unmanifested, between physicality and
spirit.
Enlightened or not, you are either a man or a woman, so on the level
of your form identity you are not complete. You are one-half of the
whole.
[Regarding gay people:]
Being an outsider [in a minority group], someone who does not "fit
in" with others or is rejected by them, for whatever reason, makes
life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as
enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness
almost by force.
On the other hand, if you then develop a sense of identity based on
your gayness, you have escaped one trap only to fall into another.
You will play roles and games dictated by a mental image you have of
yourself as gay.
[Regarding self-love:]
If you cannot be at ease with yourself when you are alone, you will
seek a relationship to cover up your unease. You can be sure that
the unease will then reappear in some other form within the
relationship, and you will probably hold your partner responsible for
it.
But do you need to have a relationship with yourself at all? Why
can't you just BE yourself? When you have a relationship with
yourself, you have split yourself into two: "I" and "myself." That
mind-created duality is the root cause of all unnecessary complexity,
of all problems and conflict in your life.
# Chapter 9, Beyond happiness and unhappiness there is peace
Q: This sounds to me like denial and self-deception. When something
dreadful happens to me or someone close to me--accident, illness,
pain of some kind, or death--I can pretend that it isn't bad, but the
fact remains that it is bad, so why deny it?
A: You are not pretending anything. You are allowing it to be as it
is, that's all. This "allowing to be" takes you beyond the mind with
its resistance patterns that create the positive-negative polarities.
It is an essential aspect of forgiveness. Forgiveness of the
present is even more important that forgiveness of the past. If you
forgive every moment--allow it to be as it is--then there will be no
accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later
time.
Remember that we are not talking about happiness here. For example,
when a loved one has just died, or when you feel your own death
approaching, you cannot be happy. It is impossible. But you CAN be
at peace. There may be sadness and tears, but provided that you have
relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep
serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. This is the emanation of
Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite.
> Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your
> destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs? --Marcus
> Aurelius
It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of
suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept--before
they will forgive. As soon as they do, one of the greatest miracles
happens: the awakening of Being-consciousness through what appears to
be evil, the transmutation of suffering into inner peace.
Most of the so-called bad things that happen in people's lives are
due to unconsciousness. They are self-created, or rather
ego-created. I sometimes refer to those things as "drama." When you
are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore.
When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of
all drama in your life. Nobody can even have an argument with you,
no matter how hard he or she tries. You cannot have an argument with
a fully conscious person. An argument implies identification with
your mind and a mental position, as well as resistance and reaction
to the other person's position. The result is that the polar
opposites become mutually energized. These are the mechanics of
unconsciousness.
You can still make your point clearly and firmly, but there will be
no reactive force behind it, no defense or attack. So it won't turn
into drama. When you are fully conscious, you cease to be in
conflict. ... This refers not only to conflict with other people but
more fundamentally to conflict within you, which ceases when there is
no longer any clash between the demands and expectations of your mind
and what is.
As long as you are in this dimension, you are still subject to its
cyclical nature and to the law of impermanence of all things, but you
no longer perceive this as "bad"--it just is.
The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization.
You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep
loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your
very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be
failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in
every failure. In this world, everybody "fails" sooner or later, of
course, and every achievement eventually comes to naught. All forms
are impermanent.
You can still be active and enjoy manifesting and creating new forms
and circumstances, but you won't be identified with them. You do not
need them to give you a sense of self. They are not your life--only
your life situation.
Your physical energy is also subject to cycles. It cannot always be
at a peak. A cycle can last for anything from a few hours to a few
years. Many illnesses are created through fighting against cycles of
low energy, which are vital for regeneration. ... Thus, the
intelligence of the [physical] organism may take over as a
self-protective measure and create an illness in order to force you
to stop, so that the necessary regeneration can take place.
Impermanence is also central to Jesus's teaching: "Do not lay up for
yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where
thieves break in and steal..."
Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as
the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of
peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your
natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or
struggle to attain.
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease,
and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things
being in a certain way, good or bad.
All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or
another. All negativity IS resistance. In this context, the two
words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges from irritation or
impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen
resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistence triggers
the emotional pain-body, in which case even a minor situation may
produce intense negativity, such as anger, depression, or deep grief.
The ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality
and get what it wants. The only "useful" function is that it
strengthens the ego, and that is why the ego loves it.
When you have reached a certain degree of presence, you don't need
negativity anymore to tell you what is needed in your life situation.
But as long as negativity IS there, use it. Use it as a kind of
signal that reminds you to be more present.
You stop negativity from arising by being fully present. But don't
become discouraged. There are as yet few people on the planet who
can sustain a state of continuous presence...
Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within
you, look on it not as a failure, but as a helpful signal that is
telling you: "Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present."
As an alternative to dropping a negative reaction, you can make it
disappear by imagining yourself becoming transparent to the external
cause of the reaction. I recommend that you practice it with little,
even trivial, things first. Let's say that you are sitting quietly
at home. Suddenly, there is the penetrating sound of a car alarm
from across the street. Irritation arises. What is the purpose of
the irritation? None whatsoever. Why did you create it? You
didn't. The mind did. It was totally automatic, totally
unconscious. Why did the mind create it? Because it holds the
unconscious belief that its resistance, which you experience as
negativity or unhappiness in some form, will somehow dissolve the
undesirable condition. This, of course, is a delusion. The
resistance that it creates, the irritation or anger in this case, is
far more disturbing than the original cause that it is attempting to
dissolve.
[Much like people yelling at their dogs to stop barking. The yelling
is worse, and now i get to hear both barking AND yelling in the human
audible frequency range.]
All this can be transformed into spiritual practice. Feel yourself
becoming transparent, as it were, without the solidity of a material
body. Now allow the noise, or whatever causes a negative reaction,
to pass right through you. It is no longer hitting a solid "wall"
inside you. As I said, practice with little things first...
Somebody says something to you that is rude or designed to hurt.
Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as
attack, defense, or withdrawal, you let it pass right through you.
Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt
anymore. THAT is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable.
You can still tell that person that his or her behavior is
unacceptable, if that is what you choose to do. But that person no
longer has the power to control your inner state. You are then in
your power--not in someone else's, nor are you run by your mind.
Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one
you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and
unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace.
The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace
becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get
you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of
surrender.
You may have heard the phrase "turn the other cheek," ... He was
attempting to convey symbolically the secret of nonresistance and
nonreaction. In this statement, as in all his others, he was
concerned only with your inner reality, not with the outer conduct of
your life.
Nothing is what it seems to be. The world that you create and see
through the egoic mind may seem a very imperfect place, even a vale
of tears. But whatever you perceive is only a kind of symbol, like
an image in a dream. It is how your consciousness interprets and
interacts with the molecular energy dance of the universe. ... An
infinite number of completely different interpretations, completely
different worlds, is possible and, in fact, exists--all depending on
the perceiving consciousness. Every being is a focal point of
consciousness, and every such focal point creates its own world,
although all those worlds are interconnected. There is a human
world, an ant world, a dolphin world, and so on. There are countless
beings whose consciousness frequency is so different from yours that
you are probably unaware of their existence, as they are of yours.
Furthermore, to recognize the primacy of Being, and thus work on the
level of cause, does not exclude the possibility that your compassion
may simultaneously manifest on the level of doing and of effect by
alleviating suffering whenever you come across it. When a hungry
person asks you for bread and you have some, you will give it. But
as you give the bread, even though your interaction may only be very
brief, what really matters is this moment of shared Being, of which
the bread is only a symbol. A deep healing takes place within it.
In that moment, there is no giver, no receiver.
[I like this paragraph a lot. It acknowledges a deeper, more
powerful spiritual dimension where there is more than meets the eye.]
# Chapter 10, The meaning of surrender
To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying
defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life,
becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something
entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with
whatever situation you find yourself in and anything about it. Nor
does it mean to cease making plans or initiate positive action.
Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of YIELDING to rather
than OPPOSING the flow of life. The only place where you can
experience the flow of life is the now, so to surrender is to accept
the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to
relinquish inner resistance to what IS. Inner resistance is to say
"no" to what IS, through mental judgment and emotional negativity.
It becomes particularly pronounced when things "go wrong," which
means that there is a gap between the demands or rigid expectations
of your mind and what IS. That is the pain gap. If you have lived
long enough, you will know that things "go wrong" quite often. It is
precisely at those times that surrender needs to be practiced if you
want to eliminate pain and suffering from your life. Acceptance of
what IS immediately frees you from mind identification and thus
reconnects you with Being. Resistance IS the mind.
Surrender is a purely inner phenomenon. It does not mean that on the
outer level you cannot take action and change the situation. In
fact, it is not the overall situation that you need to accept when
you surrender, but just the tiny segment called the Now.
Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego,
and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you
and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. The
unconscious compulsion to destroy others through judgment arises, as
does the need to compete and dominate. Even nature becomes your
enemy and your perceptions and interpretations are governed by fear.
[This trajectory leads to paranoia.]
If you find your life situation unsatisfactory or even intolerable,
it is only by surrendering first that you can break the unconscious
resistance pattern that perpetuates that situation.
Do not confuse surrender with an attitude of "I can't be bothered
anymore" or "I just don't care anymore." If you look at it closely,
you will find that such an attitude is tainted with negativity in the
form of hidden resentment and so is not surrender at all but masked
resistance.
Start by acknowledging that there IS resistance. BE there when it
happens, when the resistance arises. Observe how your mind creates
it, how it labels the situation, yourself, or others. Look at the
thought processes involved. Feel the energy of the emotion. By
witnessing the resistance, you will see that it serves no purpose.
By focusing all your attention on the Now, the unconscious resistance
is made conscious, and that is the end of it.
Would you choose unhappiness? If you did not choose it, how did it
arise? [The author is pointing out that it arose unconsciously.]
Until you practice surrender, the spiritual dimension is something
you read about, talk about, get excited about, write books about,
think about, believe in--or don't, as the case may be. It makes no
difference. Not until you surrender does it become a living reality
in your life.
It is true that only an unconscious person will try to use or
manipulate others, but it is equally true that only an unconscious
person can be used an manipulated. If you resist or fight
unconscious behavior in others, you become unconscious yourself. But
surrender doesn't mean that you allow yourself to be used by
unconscious people. Not at all. It is perfectly possible to say
"no" firmly and clearly to a person or to walk away from a situation
and be in a state of complete inner nonresistance at the same time.
When you say "no" to a person or a situation, let it come not from
reaction but from insight, from a clear realization of what is right
or not right for you at that moment. Let it be a nonreactive "no," a
high-quality "no," a "no" that is free of all negativity and so
creates no further suffering.
If you cannot surrender, take action immediately. Speak up or do
something to bring about a change in the situation--or remove
yourself from it. Take responsibility for your life. Do not pollute
your beautiful, radiant inner Being nor the Earth with negativity.
Do not give unhappiness in any form whatsoever a dwelling place
inside you.
If you cannot take action, for example if you are in prison, then you
have two choices left: resistance or surrender.
You always get a second chance at surrender. Your first chance is to
surrender each moment to the reality of that moment. Whenever you
are unable to do that, you are creating some form of pain. 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.
Q: 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?
A: 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. Suffering does not diminish in intensity when you make it
unconscious.
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.
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, timebound self you thought of as "you."
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.
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...
Q: How will i know when i have surrendered?
A: When you no longer need to ask the question.
author: Tolle, Eckhart, 1948-
LOC: BL624 .T64
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The_Power_of_Now
tags: book,non-fiction,self-help,spirit
title: The Power of Now
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