Tolle: The Power of NOW

Erkhart Tolle: The Power of NOW

A New Way to Live ....
By Relating in New Ways to YOU!  

Did you catch that tile?  I meant it.  Translation: you can live in new ways if you relate to yourself in new ways.  Truism perhaps. But such is the spirit of "mindfulness" sweeping the Western thought.  Simply put: be mindful of the present, where you are NOW.  The past is PAST.,  The future is not HERE.  It too is an illusion.  You can only live in the here and now. 

Let's take that slowly, okay

The Past is gone.  We replay it like re-runs, or sometimes like instant replays to judge ourselves and others.  Yet the fact is true:  there is not one blessed thing you can do to change it--Period.  End of Discussion!  No... we still do the relays and play the game of "what if" and "I should have" and "if only."  All of our frustrations, hurts, losses are tied to the past.  We can visit there.  But the past is the past.

The Future is not yet.  How many of us labor to make the future happen just as we want it to?  We have a world view for the world needs to be.  Bottom line is--just look at how much we invest ourselves in a future that is not yet?  That is the source of or fear, anxiety, and worry--some call it "stink'n thinbk'n" because it robs us of the present as we try to live in a world that has not come. 

There is only the Present.   Tolle means, "right now!"  Imagine yourself sitting on a sofa. Just be with yourself...really be with yourself.  Call yourself back as soon as you start running tapes of the past.  Call yourself back as soon as you start projecting yourself into the future.  There is room on the sofa for two of YOU!  Step out of yourself and hold yourself there!  

 

 Choose Where You Sit....

 You have a choice to sit in the chair of the past or the chair of the future.  Both are sources of our discontents.  

The Chair of the Past is the source of our hurts, losses, disappointments.

The Chair of the Future projects us ahead with the source of fear, worry, anxiety.

We cannot control either chair.  

The Sofa is the place of the present to be with ourselves.

It is the place for accepting ourselves as we are.

It is source of security and contentment. 

"And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?^"   

^{Matthew 6: 27}