LEARN TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT

[Guest guest]

LEARN TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT

 

By Eckhart Tolle

 

 

Are you worried? Do you have many `what if' thoughts? You are

identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an

imaginary future situation and creating fear. There is no way that

you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn't exist. You

can stop this health-and life-corroding feeling simply by

acknowledging the present moment. Become aware of your breathing.

Feel the air flowing in and out of your body. Feel your inner energy

field. All that you ever have to deal with is this moment. Ask

yourself what `problem' you have right now, not next year, tomorrow,

or five minutes from now. You can always cope with the Now, but you

can never cope with the future.

 

We are a habitual " waiter " . How much time we spend waiting? It can

be " small-scale waiting " like being in the line at the post-office,

in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive,

and so on. " Large-scale waiting " is waiting for the next vacation,

for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly

meaningful relationship, to make money, to be important, and many

more. It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life

waiting to start living.

 

Waiting is a state of mind. Basically it means that you want the

future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got,

and you want what you haven't got. This greatly reduces the quality

of your life by making you lose the present. There is nothing wrong

with striving to improve the life situation. There is also nothing

wrong with setting goals and striving to achieve things. The mistake

lies in using it as a substitute for the feeling of life, for

Being*. The only point of access for that is the Now.

 

Many people wait for prosperity. It cannot come in the future. When

you fully accept the present reality, when you fully accept what you

have got, you are grateful for what you have got, grateful for what

is, grateful for Being*. Gratitude for the present moment and the

fullness of life now is true prosperity. It cannot come in future.

 

You may have exciting experiences that money can buy, but they will

come and go and always leave you with an empty feeling and the need

for further physical or psychological gratification. Abide in Being*

and feel the fullness of life now, which alone is true prosperity.

 

The more you practice monitoring your inner mental-emotional state,

the easier it will be to know when you have been trapped in past or

future. The false unhappy self, based on mind identification, lives

on time. It knows that the present moment is its own death and so

feels very threatened by it. It will do all it can to take you out

of it. It will try to keep you trapped in time.

 

*Being is the eternal and the ever-present. It is accessible to us

in our deepest self. But it cannot be grasped with our mind. We can

only understand it, feel it, when our mind is still. The greatest

obstacle to experiencing the Being is the perpetual mental noise –

our dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking, which causes a

serious leakage of the vital energy. Much of our compulsive thinking

is an addiction – because we have no choice to stop it. It seems

stronger than us. ( The Power of Now)

 

 

prof laxmi narain (prof_narain)

 

Source and courtesy: Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad

This article was published in Sri Ramana Jyothi,

monthly magazine of the Kendram.