The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle (Mu-Shen repost w edit)
In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and miss the joy of just Being
Most humans are never fully present, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment will be better than this one. But then we miss our real life, which is never not in the now.
Now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation.
To be identified with the thinking mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.
It is not so much that we use the thinking mind wrongly — we usually don’t use it at all. It uses us. This is the disease. We believe that we are our mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken us over.
If we get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.
Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.
Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through our own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever we are addicted to, we are using to avoid our pain
Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no healthy purpose
Any action is often better than no action, especially if we have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least we learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If we remain stuck, we learn nothing.
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad.
It seems almost paradoxical, yet when our inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of our life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that we thought we needed for our happiness now come with no struggle or effort on our part, and we are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease
On a deeper level we are already complete. When we realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what we do.
Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is actually us.
To know oneself as the Being prior to the thinker, the stillness, louder than the mental noise, the love and joy defusing the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.
The moment we start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. We then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. We also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the thinking mind.
Give up defining self and others.
Don’t be concerned with how others define you.
When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence.
We can only lose something that we have, but we cannot lose something that we are.
Life isn’t as serious as the thinking mind makes it out to be
Life will give us whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of our consciousness. How do we know this is the experience we need? Because this is the experience we are having at the moment
Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world.
That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness
Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What we perceive as precious is not time, but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more we are focused on time—past and future—the more we miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
As soon as we honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When we act out the present-moment awareness, whatever we do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love. The most simple action can be the most powerfull when we live as the Now
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