THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle

In one of his books, Carl Jung tells of a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that, in his perception, most white people had tense faces, staring eyes and a cruel demeanour. He said: “They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We don’t know what they want. We think they are mad.”
The undercurrent of constant unease started long before the rise of Western industrial civilization, of course, but in Western civilization, which now covers almost the entire globe, it manifests in an unprecedented, acute form.
It was already there at the time of Jesus, and it was there 600 years before that at the time of Buddha, and long before that. 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.
Resistance to the Now as a collective dysfunction is intrinsically connected to loss of awareness of Being and forms the basis of our dehumanized, industrial civilization. Freud, by the way, also recognized the existence of this undercurrent of unease and wrote about it in his book Civilization and Its Discontents.
So how can we be free of this affliction? Make it conscious. Observe the many ways in which unease, discontent and tension arise within you. Anything unconscious dissolves when you shine the light of consciousness on it. Once you know how to dissolve ordinary unconsciousness, the light of your presence will shine brightly.
Make it a habit to monitor your mental-emotional state through self-observation. “Am I at ease at this moment?” is a good question to ask yourself frequently. 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. Primary reality is within, secondary reality without.
But don’t answer these questions immediately. Direct your attention inward. There are many ways in which people unconsciously resist the present moment. I will give you a few examples. With practice, your power of self-observation, of monitoring your inner state, will become sharpened.
Freedom from unhappiness
Do you resent what you are doing? It may be your job, or you may have agreed to do something, but part of you resents and resists it. Are you carrying unspoken resentment toward a person close to you? Do you realize that the energy you thus emanate is so harmful that you are, in fact, contaminating yourself as well as those around you?
Maybe you are being taken advantage of. Maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious. Maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating or unconscious. All this is irrelevant. Whether or not your thoughts and emotions are justified makes no difference. The fact is you are resisting what is. You are making the present moment into an enemy. You are creating unhappiness – conflict between the inner and the outer.
Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you, but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. 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.
Stop what you are doing, speak to the person concerned, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation. Recognizing its futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way to deal with any situation. Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated and, in time, give rise to more unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is contagious; unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease.
Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space – nobody else is – just as you are responsible for the planet. As within, so without. If humans clear inner pollution, they will also cease to create outer pollution.
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).