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By Eckart Tolle
To have your attention in the Now is not a denial of what is needed in your life.
It is recognizing what is primary. Then you can deal with what is secondary with
great ease. It is not saying, "I’m not dealing with things anymore
because there is only the Now." No. Find what is primary first, and make
the Now into your friend, not your enemy. Acknowledge it, honour it. When the
Now is the foundation and primary focus of your life, then your life unfolds with
ease.
~
Putting away the dishes, drawing up a business strategy, planning a trip - what
is more important: the doing or the result that you want to achieve through the
doing? This moment or some future moment?
Do you treat this moment as if it were an obstacle to be overcome? Do you feel
you have a future moment to get to that is more important?
Almost everyone lives like this most of the time. Since the future never arrives,
except as the present, it is a dysfunctional way to live. It generates a constant
undercurrent of unease, tension, and discontent. It does not honour life, which
is Now and never not Now.
~
Feel the aliveness within your body. That anchors you in the Now.
~
Ultimately you are not taking responsibility for life until you take responsibility
for this moment - Now. This is because Now is the only place where life can be
found.
Taking responsibility for this moment means not to oppose internally the "suchness"
of Now, not to argue with what is. It means to be in alignment with life.
The Now is as it is because it cannot be otherwise. What Buddhists have always
known, physicists now confirm: there are no isolated things or events. Underneath
the surface appearance, all things are interconnected, are part of the totality
of the cosmos that has brought about the form that this moment takes.
When you say "yes" to what is, you become aligned with the power and
intelligence of Life itself. Only then can you become an agent for positive change
in the world.
~
A simple but radical spiritual practice is to accept whatever arises in the Now
- within and without.
~
When your attention moves into the Now, there is an alertness. It is as if you
were waking up from a dream, the dream of thought, the dream of past and future.
Such clarity, such simplicity. No room for problem making. Just this moment as
it is.
~
The moment you enter the Now with your attention, you realize that life is sacred.
There is a sacredness to everything you perceive when you are present. The more
you live in the Now, the more you sense the simple yet profound joy of Being and
the sacredness of all life.
~
Most people confuse the Now with what happens in the Now, but that’s not
what it is. The Now is deeper than what happens in it. It is the space in which
it happens.
So do not confuse the content of this moment with the Now. The Now is deeper than
any content that arises in it.
~
When you step into the Now, you step out of the content of your mind. The incessant
stream of thinking slows down. Thoughts don’t absorb all your attention
anymore, don’t draw you in totally. Gaps arise in between thoughts - spaciousness,
stillness. You begin to realize how much vaster and deeper you are than your thoughts.
~
Thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and whatever you experience make up the
content of your life. "My life" is what you derive your sense of self
from, and "my life" is content, or so you believe.
You continuously overlook the most obvious fact: your innermost sense of I Am
has nothing to do with what happens in your life, nothing to do with content.
That sense of I Am is one with the Now. It always remains the same. In childhood
and old age, in health or sickness, in success or failure, the I Am - the space
of Now - remains unchanged at its deepest level. It usually gets confused with
content, and so you experience I Am or the Now only faintly and indirectly, through
the content of your life. In other words: your sense of Being becomes obscured
by circumstances, your stream of thinking, and the many things of this world.
The Now becomes obscured by time.
And so you forget your rootedness in Being, your divine reality, and lose yourself
in the world. Confusion, anger, depression, violence, and conflict arise when
humans forget who they are.
Yet how easy it is to remember the truth and thus return home:
I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the
content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am
consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.
Excerpted from: Stillness Speaks, by Eckhart Tolle, $17, hardcover. Published
by New World Library 1-800-972-6657 Ext. 52 www.newworldlibrary.com
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