THE POWER OF NOW

by Eckhart Tolle

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 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. The enlightened person's main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still peripherally aware of time; they continue to use clock time, but are free of psychological time.
Be alert as you practise 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, 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.
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 honour and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, the Now is no longer honoured. 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 and to "make it." You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you.
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?
You will not have any doubt that psychological time is a mental disease if you look at its collective manifestations: 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 -- will be attained.
Not infrequently, the means of getting there involves 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 operate in your life? Are you always trying to get somewhere other than where you are? Is most of your doing just a means to an end? Is fulfillment always just around the corner, or confined to short-lived pleasures? Do you believe that if you acquire more things that you will become more fulfilled or psychologically complete? Are you waiting for a man or woman to give meaning to your life?
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 and its sense of wonder.

Adapted from The Power of Now, copyright 1999 by Eckhart Tolle. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA, 800-972-6657 (ext. 52). www.newworldlibrary.com





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