One of the most enduring fictions in human history is that there is the past and the future. This has led us to live on memories and longings and to miss what Eckhart Tolle calls “The Power of Now. What does it mean to live in the now? Why are we told that there is no happiness outside the now? Keep reading.
All people want to be happy, but all of them nevertheless suffer. A reason that generates suffering is thought. This idea, already raised by sages of all times, is explained by a brilliant spiritual thinker, Eckhart Tolle, with great clarity and simplicity, in his book "The Power of Now". I will present here some of the ideas that he offers us.
Thoughts are the cause of suffering, and not the facts as we tend to believe, because those facts are interpreted by us permanently. We fill what happens with prejudices and assumptions, which generates sadness, anger, fear or guilt. So if we want to improve our lives we must pay attention to what is happening in our minds. The answer we look for outside is inside.
To stop suffering implies observing ourselves, listening to ourselves, keeping part of the attention in us, every time we think, say or do something. And Yogananda, a Hindu sage, said it in 1915: “Do not give all energy to the outside world. Leave some attention on you, while you do what you do. "
The key is to focus on the present moment, the now, since there is no past or future. The past was and the future has not been. The past comes as memory (mind) and the future as anticipation (mind). They are only thoughts but we treat them as realities. We only have one present, daily and permanent. As Osho said: "Thoughts are nothing, words are only air."
By raising this awareness, you break a lie, a conditioning. This is when you can advance to another level. The level at which we begin to detect automatic and repetitive patterns of behavior that prevent us from living here and now.
Of course the mind will resist and tell us things, so we should not identify ourselves with its contents, because we are not those intrusive and obsessive thoughts. We are more than these thoughts and emotions. We are "that" that realizes the thoughts: Consciousness, which lives in the present.
We can know if we are caught in the mental past, discovering ourselves thinking about what we have already lived, missing it and fleeing from the present. Also when we believe that the past was better. We know if we are trapped in the mental future, when we idealize tomorrow, or when we do something without love or enjoyment, with the idea that there will be a better future. There is no future. There is only one today to live, enjoy or learn. Yesterday and tomorrow are concepts, mental delusions believed for centuries.
As there are thoughts there are emotions. We see them as something very real. But practically every emotion arises due to a thought. You hardly have an idea in your mind and emotions and sensations appear in your body. Of course we feel those emotions! Only they are fleeting, a product of your mind and they are not your real essence. What is real in you is what detects them: consciousness. Observe the emotions and sensations without identifying with them, since they are based, almost always, on memories and expectations. To be more aware ask yourself frequently: What is happening inside me right now?
Those thoughts and emotions give you a sense of identity. You describe yourself by saying "I am like this", and by thinking that you are ideas and emotions, you give them life as if they were your true truth. Those beliefs about you, the way you describe yourself, everything that you consider yourself to be and that you defend ardently, is what we call in the spiritual framework the “ego”. In the words of Eckhart Tolle, the ego is a conceptual personality that we create and with which we develop a relationship as if it were something real, as if it were us. It is an "external self" that we confuse with our true Self.
All human suffering is based on that conceptual personality, on ideas like: "I am important" "they should not treat me like this", "people should change", "life is difficult", "people are bad", "men they are rubbish ”, etc. From these concepts (they are just that) we display emotions and actions. We believe that we must react to every mental image of each offense and create conflicts on a daily basis. We design a story about who we are, (ideas, beliefs, interpretations) and from it, we dramatize, hate, compete and get sick.
Yes, indeed, that mental trap of past and future makes us sick. And despite the fact that our body is renewed by 98% every year, many diseases become lasting, because we remain prisoners of anchored concepts and emotions. Each day is new, but the history of pain that we repeat to ourselves mentally lives on, reproducing cells with memory of illness.
Those memories full of suffering, crystallize in the mind, and create what Tolle calls "the body of pain", which is an energetic formation of memories, which is part of the ego and which seeks to activate, update, recharge, and does through primitive mechanisms like cheating, comparing, being right, and fighting.
We can remember and imagine; These capacities have their role in the day to day, but we must not identify ourselves with a fictional, false, unreal world, like the world of thoughts. It is necessary to feel the experience of life, from the body, without putting everything on a label, without associating everything with the past or the future. When we are in an emergency situation, when we have an orgasm, when we are exercising the body intensely, when we do creative work, in those cases we do not think, and yet we feel very much alive.
Let's get out of the mind, learn to have more direct experiences beyond concepts. Let's live the present moment more, and the problems will be reduced, resolved or no longer affect us. This happens because we empty the life of fiction from interpretations that produce pain. We are not an ego, we are a consciousness attached to everything around us. The ancients knew it and the latest physical science knows it now. And that conscience, it must be said, is the closest thing we have to happiness and to God. Thanks for reading me.
