Attempting To Be In The NOW

I have been out of the blogging world for awhile now, I haven’t written anything for more than a week. I wouldn’t call it “writer’s block” but more of a preoccupation that is keeping me away. I am reading “The Power of NOW” by Eckhart Tolle. I am sure many of you have read this book but this is my second attempt at reading it. It was gifted to me more than three years ago but somehow after the first few pages I lost interest in it and the book remained an adornment in my colorful shelf until now. I suppose the time had come for me to take it up again and start reading. It has a lot to teach me. The book is all about what the title says “The Power of NOW”, to live in the “Now”, a not so simple task and yet not impossible. To achieve that we need to become a witness to our thoughts especially the irrelevant and negative ones that always takes over our mind and we begin to identify with those thoughts. Thinking then becomes a disease.

Of late I have noticed that my thoughts tend to dwell more and more on a sadness that I cannot pinpoint. And I seem to enjoy it despite the pain. It is almost like an addiction. Sad and painful thoughts, the negative emotions are all that I indulge in. I am afraid of happy thoughts because I feel that if I start doing that I will no longer be the “Queen of Tragedy”, thriving on pain. Feeding on the agony of a past and worrying about a future which is an illusion are all that I do. My days are miserable; I often lock myself in my room and cry for no reason. I guess I am on the threshold of a major depression. But like I said the time had come to do something about it. I took up this book just by accident or was it an accident? I am an avid reader and at that point this was the only book I hadn’t read so I started it. And this time I am glued to it.

“Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind- made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering.”

I began to take pride that I was analyzing everything including love. I remember reading some excerpts of Shri Shri Shri Ravi Shankar where he says, “Do not analyze love because the moment you do, you doubt love”. I was giving too much importance to my thinking mostly negative ones and they were riding on my back all day and night. Yet like everyone else I want peace and happiness. But how can I when I have become the slave of my thoughts? So I began this simple exercise where I am conscious of my thoughts but I am just the observer, a witness. It’s not easy because we are so used to our thoughts taking us over that even those few seconds of just being a witness to my thoughts took an effort. But I am sure I will get there somewhere when I can watch my thoughts and be amused. Every time I achieve a little I get a glimpse of that bliss, of the joy that is within me that cannot be touched by any outside influence.

The other exercise that Tolle says is to be aware of your present, to be fully conscious of our “now”. That is why the journey is more important than the destination, to notice the beauty around us, to take time to smell the flowers, as Debra in one of her posts wrote http://debrasblogpureandsimple.blogspot.com. Are we more interested in the journey or the destination? We are usually so wrapped up in our anxiousness to reach our destination that we miss out the beauty of the journey. I hadn’t noticed this simple truth until I read it. Only the Now exists,” Nothing ever happened in the past, it happened in the Now, nothing will happen in the future, it will happen in the Now. What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace – and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own.” And here I was thinking and dreaming of a future, depending on circumstances to be right or the right person to come into my life to make my future more fulfilling. Even as I write these words, every word that is written happened in my Now and has already become a past. It is amazing, when you ponder on this truth, so simple and yet so profound. So these days I try and not dwell on the past unless it is very necessary to do so and that too only the positive ones. The moment sadness tries to seep in  I make myself conscious of them and  tell myself that this is all the past even if that past just happened a few seconds ago. But it is tough; I am so used to feeling sorry for myself that it takes a lot of effort. I have a long way to go but it is a step nevertheless. I am much more at ease these days; I can sense a different kind happiness in me which wasn’t there before. I haven’t yet finished the book but it has already transformed me in many ways.

I don’t know if I can ever write the kind of poems that I have written so far. They are dark and sad poems. Maybe someday when I am more in control of my negative energy I will write like that just to express a thought or emotion but till then I think I have no words. My dear friend,  Sulekha Rawat, my Outlier would always tell me to think happy thoughts and write about them but I have been unable to do so. Perhaps someday…. till then folks, let me concentrate on the NOW! But on a serious note those of you who haven’t read this book please get a copy and read it. It is worth it.