The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle)

Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed to the Now as the key to the spiritual dimension. It is evident that Eckhart has a deep realization of this dimension, and the state of being that lies beyond the discursive mind. Virtually everything Eckhart says revolves around a single idea—the importance of being in the present moment. Briefly, this is a call to be present with the totality of one's being. This means refraining from living in past memories, or in future dreams and fantasies. It means bringing the mind to where the body is, and inhabiting this present moment where you are fully. This simple but profound teaching gradually effects an important change in the individual who applies it: the stilling of the discursive mind. One cannot be here totally and simultaneously relive some past experience or project into some fantasized future. And with this stillness, all energy that previously went into discursive thought becomes available to perceive more deeply the world around us without labels and judgements. The effect is a dramatic expansion in consciousness and therefore the ability to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel and understand things that would otherwise escape our notice. We begin to penetrate more deeply into persons, situations, ideas, things, and our insight into anything we point our attention to deepens.

According to Eckhart, the single greatest obstacle to a deeper, fuller experience of reality is identification with one's mind. Since we've identified with our discursive minds, we think the cessation of thought implies the cessation or death of our 'selves'. However, this is the great illusion, one that can be dispelled by removing ones identification with thought. One solution Eckhart says, is simply to observe the mind—that is, watch the thinker. Another powerful way is directing the focus of ones attention into the Now, becoming intensely conscious of the present moment. When one does so, thinking stops briefly—it is not possible to be present and at the same time be in the past or future. As one goes more deeply into this realm of no-thought, one realizes the state of pure consciousness.

Another important aspect of the teaching has to do with application of attention/consciousness towards one's pain-body. Eckhart defines the pain-body as the accumulated emotional pain that is lodged in the mind and body of every human being. The idea is to bring attention into the pain-body when it becomes active, by observing it directly, feeling it, experiencing it, allowing it—this breaks identification with it. The key is not to analyse it, but just to experience it fully as a passing phenomenon. As before with the mind, you are the witness or watcher—enter into the present moment and give attention to what is. As we practice this, pain is transmuted into consciousness, and gradually dissolves.

The key then in moving deeply into the Now is ending the delusion of time. Eckhart states that time and mind are inseparable. Time in this context is psychological time which is identification with the past and continuous projection into the future. We must learn to return to present moment awareness and make this our primary state of being. This means we enter into the practical aspects of life such as planning and scheduling, etc. only as required—but we don't live there. "To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment." Eckhart indicates that there may be some oscillation between time and presence, unconsciousness and consciousness for a while, until one is firmly established in presence. "With increasing frequency, you choose to have the focus of your consciousness in the present moment rather than in the past or future, and whenever you realize that you had lost the Now, you are able to stay in it [...] for longer periods as perceived from the external perspective of clock time."

Another important aspect of the teaching is on what Eckhart calls the inner body. Eckhart talks of the inner body as a portal into presence. In other words, bringing our attention into the inner body takes it out of discursive thought. But what is the inner body? In brief it is a sense of vitality and aliveness within the body itself. Eckhart describes the inner body in the form of a kind of meditation:

"Direct your attention into the body. Feel it from within. Is it alive? Is there life in your hands, arms, legs, and feet--in your abdomen, your chest? Can you feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body and gives vibrant life to every organ and every cell? Can you feel it simultaneously in all parts of the body as a single field of energy? Keep focusing on the feeling of your inner body for a few moments. Do not start thinking about it. Feel it. The more attention you give it, the clearer and stronger this feeling will become. It will feel as if every cell is becoming more alive [...]"

One of the underlying objectives of the book is to provide ways or 'portals' into what Eckhart calls the Unmanifest. As we have seen, the Now is the main portal--the portal to which all other portals are connected, as they all occur in presence. However each portal is a kind of focusing or tuning of presence into one of several subareas. And so we have seven primary portals: the Now, the pain-body, the inner-body, space, silence, surrender, and dreamless sleep.

Space refers to using the space that appears to separate things as a non-object of attention. The idea is to focus one's attention predominantly on the space instead of the objects within space. Similarly with silence: focus one's attention primarily on the silence out of which sounds manifest. Interestingly, this type of attention creates space and silence in the mind: as above so below.

The portal of surrender refers quite simply to the powerful practice of surrendering to what is. Other ways of putting this is allowing, accepting, or yielding to what is instead of opposing the flow of life--to relinquish inner resistance to what is. The action one takes in a surrendered inner state is much more effective than anything that comes out of a non-surrendered inner state. The action comes out of presence, is spontaneous, intuitive, and powerful.

And finally we have the portal of dreamless sleep, which is a portal we all enter into unconsciously when we fall into deep sleep. We draw from it the vital energy that sustains us for a while when we return to the manifest. In this state 'you' no longer exist.

Eckhart also speaks of the role of spirituality within the context of relationships. The key to practice in relationships is acceptance of your partner as he or she is. That unconditional acceptance serves to remove all resistance and conflict. In the case of difficult relationships, after acceptance one can then consciously choose whether to remain in the relationship, end the relationship (in love), or talk about the ways the relationship is creating pain, as a means for bringing into awareness the underlying dysfunctional patterns of the relationship. "The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way."

There is an amusing quote of Carl Jung who tells of a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that most white people have tense faces, staring eyes, and a cruel demeanor. 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."

A timeless message in an uneasy and restless era gone mad over time. Time to lose my madness. Catch you in the Now.

When Things Fall Apart (Pema Chodron)

This book is a collection of independent talks that were given at various times by Pema Chodron, the principal teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan monastery in North America established for Westerners. Her editor sifted through the years of material to produce a large portion of the contents of this book. According to Pema, it was only later, once the book was more or less complete that a theme seemed to emerge. First, the great need of loving-kindness towards oneself, and developing from that the awakening of a fearlessly compassionate attitude toward our own pain and that of others. The second underlying theme was, "dissolving the dualistic tension between us and them, this and that, good and bad, by inviting in what we usually avoid." Pema's teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, described this as "leaning into the sharp points."

The depth, pertinence, and usefulness of these talks are really quite astounding and even mind-altering. Something at a deeper level resonates with what is being said. Reading this material is like being told something you already know to be true, but you're not sure why or how. It's a fascinating experience of having been there before, in a kind of pleasantly incessant deja vu. Pema adopts a very down-to-earth writing style that gets to the heart of the matter in a language everyone can understand.

The first chapter is entitled Intimacy with Fear. The underlying idea is that we need to learn to stop running away from fear, and instead have the courage to embrace it when it arises. Further, that fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. A powerful insight that tells of a kind of emotional/psychological barrier, beyond which lies some deep truth about ourselves or the world. I am reminded of Dante's Inferno, and the sage advice that the only way out of hell is through it's centre. As Pema says, "No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear. We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear."

It is from the second chapter that the title of the book takes it's name: When Things Fall Apart. We learn that Pema began her journey with the advent of what some would call a genuine spiritual experience: standing in front of her adobe house drinking tea, the car drove up and the door banged shut; her husband walked around the corner and told her without warning that he was having an affair and wanted a divorce. "When things fall apart and we're on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that's really swell." The idea is brought home in the famous quote by Karlfried Gras von Durkheim, "Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us."

The next chapter is entitled This Very Moment Is the Perfect Teacher. The basic idea here is to understand that everything we need to develop on our path is happening right now, that we don't need to create artificial situations which test our limits. It happens naturally all the time in the present moment. As Pema states, "Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain." Instead, when we meet our edge, we can realize that we have a profound growth opportunity before us. To just be with the experience, allowing the quality of what we're feeling to pierce us to the heart, without reacting or repressing. "Reaching our limit is like finding a doorway to sanity and the unconditional goodness of humanity, rather than meeting an obstacle or a punishment."

Skipping ahead we come to a very interesting chapter entitled Not Causing Harm. The essential idea here is to be mindful of everything happening inside and around us, so we can see things as they arise and before they acquire enough power to control us. Such mindfulness affords us the space to choose how to respond, rather than responding by force of habit or impulsively. In this way we avoid causing harm to others and to ourselves. This idea is very much related to the notion of refraining. However, this refraining is not repression, but rather holding back from habitual or compulsive behaviour, and creating a little space between stimulus and response. Interestingly, Pema states that when we begin to create space, we begin to approach an underlying groundlessness, a kind of free-flow or free-fall that we experience as restlessness, agitation, or fear. "There's something there in us that we don't want to experience, and we never do experience, because we're so quick to act." However, regularly experiencing this phenomenon, with calmness and acceptance, is key to being free from the grip of the compulsive ego, and gives way to the birth of genuine free will.

Another extremely insightful chapter is entitled Eight Worldy Dharmas. This title alludes to one of the classic Buddhist teachings on hope and fear which concerns four pairs of opposites: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disgrace. The idea is that we desire and are attached to the "positive" experiences of life while we dislike and reject the "negative" experiences. The key to understanding lies in seeing the powerful movements of mind to have one and avoid the other. This is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara—the continual habitual seeking for pleasure and running away from pain. So how can we be free from these patterns? Pema advises us to begin by noticing how we react when someone praises us, when someone blames us, when we suffer a loss, and so on. Do we just experience things? Or do we unconsciously fashion fantastic stories to accompany experiences thereby getting hooked and caught up in hope and fear—of wonderful and terrible phantoms of the mind that lie outside of what's happening in the present moment? "We might feel that somehow we should try to eradicate these feelings of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. A more practical approach would be to get to know them, see how they aren't all that solid. Then the eight worldy dharmas become the means for growing wiser as well as kinder and more content." Interesting. Closely related to this is the idea of how, "... [w]e carry around a subjective reality that continuously triggers our emotional reactions." We unfailingly misinterpret statements, due to our conditioning and patterns, and spin off in these patterned directions. If we could only observe how we do this, bring this process into consciousness, we would achieve a level of freedom from these unconscious habitual processes. We would be able to see them as they arise, and we would no longer allow ourselves to spin. It is precisely these emotional reactions that manifest when we get hooked by one of the eight worldy dharmas, which in turn form the foundation of our subjective reality.

One last chapter worth mentioning which is particularly interesting from a practical perspective is entitled Going Against the Grain. It provides a concrete psychological tool for dealing with all kinds of physical, emotional, and psychological pain and turmoil. In fact, the method introduced as tonglen practice is more than just a tool for dealing with pain: it repatterns the mind by transforming old patterns of reaction and repression into new patterns of calmness and acceptance. But it goes further; tonglen practice actually reconditions the mind to be an agent of positive change, rather than solely a passive recipient and endurer of pain and suffering. The practice involves breathing in the pain of others (or our own), while allowing oneself to fully experience the pain, and breathing out calmness, kindness, or whatever we feel is appropriate in the present situation. One does not just visualize or imagine, but one actually attempts to create the feelings of calmness and kindness, while radiating these feelings outward with each out breath, focusing these feelings on the person(s) of interest. A powerful technique employing feelings and emotions to reprogram negative mental patterns into more constructive forms.

This is just a sampling of some of the material covered in the book. After reading, I found myself in better spirits, and better equipped to deal with the pressures and difficulties of modern life. I also found myself employing some of the techniques described in my daily interactions, resulting in a capacity to see through some of the games we play, and an ability to touch the underlying pain with a sense of acceptance and forgiveness. I'm grateful that Pema chose to share her extraordinary insights on the skillful handling of human pain and suffering. It is clear that she has been through difficult times herself, and is offering the benefit of the fruits of her personal experience, supported by an all-too-uncommon understanding of human nature.