Review: The Power of Now (3)

The mind itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool you can/should use. It gets dysfunctional when you seek yourself in it and mistake it for who you are. -> Don’t seek yourself in the mind.

The state to achieve is to be intensely alive in the present moment, which is free of time, free of problems and free of thinking. Some people love to practice dangerous activities like mountain climbing or car racing because it forces them into the Now. In that state they are highly alert and free of thinking or worrying about the past or future.

Psychological Time

Tolle uses two phrases: clocktime and psychological time. We do need clock time to make appointments, setting goals, or predict the future by means of patterns and laws learned from the past. Whereas psychological time is identification with the past and continuous projection into the future.

For example if you set a goal and work towards it you are using clock time. Nothing bad with that. The right way to achieve this goal is to give fullest attention to the step you are taking at this moment. It would be wrong to become excessively focused on the goal to seek fulfillment in this future point. Because then the Now is only means to an end. You would be obsessed by the future.

Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it”.

The future is what you think of it at this very moment. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future. If the quality of consciousness is what shapes the future it is important to improve this quality. It is determined by the degree of your presence.

All problems are illusions of the mind

First thing which came into my mind was: “If I fully live in the present moment, my problems still exist and are waiting until I switch back into the old thinking pattern. Am I not just temporarily avoiding them?”. The answer is simple. You have to realize that there are no problems,…” just situations to be dealt with now, or left alone and accepted as part of the ‘isness’ of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with.”

Problems are mind-made and need time to survive and the mind loves problems because the mind believes that without these problems it looses it’s identity. Tolle has a really good definition of what a problem is:

Problem means that you are dwelling on a situation mentally without there being a true intention or possibility of taking action now and that you are unconsciously making it part of your sense of self.

If there is no ease, joy or lightness in what you are doing you may have to change the how. “How” is often more important than what, so give more attention to the doing than to the result you want to achieve. If you give full attention to the doing itself the fruit of your actions will come on it’s own. Furthermore you no longer depend on the future, you are not attached to the results. Therefore you don’t demand that situations, things or people should make you happy. You are happy, independent of the outcome of your expectations.

Related posts:

1. Review: The Power of Now (2)
2. Review: The Power of Now (1)
3. Review: The Art of Happiness (4)
4. Review: An American Hedge Fund
5. Review: The Art of Happiness (1)