The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      The Power of Now

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND

      What exactly do you mean by “watching the thinker”?

      When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most 
        likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually 
        everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary 
        thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues 
        or dialogues. You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering 
        to themselves. Well, thats not much different from what you and all other “normal” people 
        do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, 
        compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to 
        the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant 
        past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things 
        going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is 
        accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the 
        situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice 
        belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as 
        of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present 
        through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon 
        for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their 
        head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is 
        the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

;       The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true 
        liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your 
        head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, 
        those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. 
        This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to 
        the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

      When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do 
        not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come 
        in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am 
        listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is 
        not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

      ¤

      So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of 
        yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As 
        you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence  your deeper self behind or 
        underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly 
        subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. 
        This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.

      When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream  a gap of 
        “no-mind.” At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they 
        will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside 
        you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is 
        usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. 
        In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy 
        arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

      It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness here. The 
        opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the 
        price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. 
        In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the 
        mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of 
        the energy field that gives life to the physical body.

      As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, 
        you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such 
        joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external 
        world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish 
        but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as “your self.” 
        That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you. What 
        I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no 
        other way that I can express it.

      ¤

      Instead of “watching the thinker,” you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by 
        directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the 
        present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw 
        consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly 
        alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

      In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally 
        is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end 
        in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place 
        of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be 
        totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions 
        associated with the activity: the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, 
        the scent of the soap, and so on. Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, 
        pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but 
        powerful sense of presence. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.

      ¤

      So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to 
        disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light 
        of your consciousness grows stronger.

      One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at 
        the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all 
        that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      WHEN DISASTER STRIKES

      As far as the still unconscious majority of the population is concerned, only a critical 
        limit-situation has the potential to crack the hard shell of the ego and force them into 
        surrender and so into the awakened state. A limit-situation arises when through some 
        disaster, drastic upheaval, deep loss, or suffering your whole world is shattered and 
        doesn't make sense anymore. It is an encounter with death, be it physical or 
        psychological. The egoic mind, the creator of this world, collapses. Out of the ashes of 
        the old world, a new world can then come into being.

      There is no guarantee, of course, that even a limit- situation will do it, but the 
        potential is always there. Some people's resistance to what is even intensifies in such a 
        situation, and so it becomes a descent into hell. In others, there may only be partial 
        surrender, but even that will give them a certain depth and serenity that were not there 
        before. Parts of the ego shell break off, and this allows small amounts of the radiance 
        and peace that lie beyond the mind to shine through.

      Limit-situations have produced many miracles. There have been murderers in death row 
        waiting for execution who, in the last few hours of their lives, experienced the egoless state and the deep joy and peace that come with it. The inner resistance to the situation 
        they found themselves in became so intense as to produce unbearable suffering, and there 
        was nowhere to run and nothing to do to escape it, not even a mind-projected future. So 
        they were forced into complete acceptance of the unacceptable. They were forced into 
        surrender. In this way, they were able to enter the state of grace with which comes 
        redemption: complete release from the past. Of course, it is not really the 
        limit-situation that makes room for the miracle of grace and redemption but the act of 
        surrender.

      So whenever any kind of disaster strikes, or something goes seriously “wrong”  illness, 
        disability, loss of home or fortune or of a socially defined identity, break-up or a close 
        relationship, death or suffering of a loved one, or your own impending death  know that 
        there is another side to it, that you are just one step away from something incredible: a 
        complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That 
        one step is called surrender.

      I do not mean to say that you will become happy in such a situation. You will not. But 
        fear and pain will become transmuted into an inner peace and serenity that come from a 
        very deep place  from the Unmanifested itself. It is “the peace of God, which passes all 
        understanding.” Compared to that, happiness is quite a shallow thing. With this radiant 
        peace comes the realization  not on the level of mind but within the depth of your Being  
        that you are indestructible, immortal. This is not a belief. It is absolute certainty that 
        needs no external evidence or proof from some secondary source.

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      TRANSFORMING SUFFERING INTO PEACE

      I read about a stoic philosopher in ancient Greece who, when he was told that his son had 
        died in an accident, replied, “I knew he was not immortal.” Is that surrender? If it is, I 
        don't want it. There are some situations in which surrender seems unnatural and inhuman.

      Being cut off from your feelings is not surrender. But we don't know what his inner state 
        was when he said those words. In certain extreme situations, it may still be impossible 
        for you to accept the Now. But you always get a second chance at surrender.

      Your first chance is to surrender each moment to the reality of that moment. Knowing that 
        what is cannot be undone  because it already is  you say yes to what is or accept what 
        isn't. Then you do what you have to do, whatever the situation requires. If you abide in 
        this state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering,

      no more unhappiness. You then live in a state of nonresistance, a state of grace and 
        lightness, free of struggle.

      Whenever you are unable to do that, whenever you miss that chance  either because you are 
        not generating enough conscious presence to prevent some habitual and unconscious 
        resistance pattern from arising, or because the condition is so extreme as to be 
        absolutely unacceptable to you  then you are creating some form of pain, some form of 
        suffering. It may look as if the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this 
        is not so  your resistance is.

      Now here is your second chance at surrender: If you cannot accept what is outside, then 
        accept what is inside. If you cannot accept the external condition, accept the internal 
        condition. This means: Do not resist the pain. Allow it to be there. Surrender to the 
        grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without 
        labeling it mentally. Embrace it. Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep 
        suffering into deep peace. This is your crucifixion. Let it become your resurrection and 
        ascension. I do not see how one can surrender to suffering. As you yourself pointed out, suffering is 
        non-surrender. How could you surrender to non-surrender?

      Forget about surrender for a moment. When your pain is deep, all talk of surrender will 
        probably seem futile and meaningless anyway.

      When your pain is deep, you will likely have a strong urge to escape from it rather than 
        surrender to it. You don't want to feel what you feel. What could be more normal? But 
        there is no escape, no way out. There are many pseudo escapes  work, drink, drugs, anger, 
        projection, suppression,

      and so on  but they don't free you from the pain. Suffering does not diminish in intensity 
        when you make it unconscious. When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as 
        well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as 
        the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally. If they are unconscious, 
        they may even feel compelled to attack or hurt you in some way, or you may hurt them in an 
        unconscious projection of your pain. You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to
      your inner state. When there is no way out, there is still always a way
      through. So don't turn away from the pain. Face it. Feel it fully. Feel it  don't think 
        about it! Express it if necessary, but don't create a script in your mind around it. Give 
        all your attention to the feeling, not to the person, event, or situation that seems to 
        have caused it. Don't let the mind use the pain to create a victim identity for yourself 
        out of it. Feeling sorry for yourself and telling others your story will keep you stuck in 
        suffering. Since it is impossible to get away from the feeling, the only possibility of 
        change is to move into it; otherwise, nothing will shift. So give your complete attention 
        to what you feel, and refrain from mentally labeling it. As you go into the feeling, be 
        intensely alert. At first, it may seem like a dark and terrifying place, and when the urge to turn away from it comes, 
        observe it but don't act on it. Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the 
        grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present  
        present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are 
        bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.

      At this stage, you don't need to be concerned with surrender anymore. It has happened 
        already. How? Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender. By giving full attention, 
        you use the power of the Now, which is the power of your presence. No hidden pocket of 
        resistance can survive in it. Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no 
        negativity, can survive.

      The acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be, 
        taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this 
        death, you realize that there is no death  and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego 
        dies. Imagine a ray of sunlight that has forgotten it is an inseparable part of the sun 
        and deludes itself into believing it has to fight for survival and create and cling to an 
        identity other than the sun. Would the death of this delusion not be incredibly liberating?

      Do you want an easy death? Would you rather die without pain, without agony? Then die to 
        the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound 
        self you thought of as “you.”

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      THE WAY OF THE CROSS

      ¤

      ¤ There are many accounts of people who say they have found God through their deep 
        suffering, and there is the Christian expression “the way of the cross, ” which I suppose 
        points to the same thing.

      We are concerned with nothing else here. Strictly speaking, they did not find God through 
        their
      suffering, because suffering implies resistance. They found God through surrender, through 
        total acceptance of what is, into which they were forced by their intense suffering. They 
        must have realized on some level that their pain was self- created. How do you equate 
        surrender with finding God? Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment 
        of resistance  surrender  is the end of the mind as your master, the impostor pretending 
        to be “you,” the false god. All judgment and all negativity dissolve. The realm of Being, 
        which had been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises 
        within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And 
        within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the 
        immeasurable, That which cannot be named.

      I don't call it finding God, because how can you find that which was never lost, the very 
        life that you are? The word God is limiting not only because of thousands of years of 
        misperception and misuse, but also because it implies an entity other than you. God is 
        Being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, 
        no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and 
        incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not 
        conscious of God.

      The way of the cross that you mentioned is the old way to enlightenment, and until 
        recently it was the only way. But don't dismiss it or underestimate its efficacy. It still 
        works.

      The way of the cross is a complete reversal. It means that the worst thing in your life, 
        your cross, turns into the best thing that ever happened to you, by forcing you into surrender, into “death,” forcing 
        you to become as nothing, to become as God  because God, too, is no-thing.

      At this time, as far as the unconscious majority of humans is concerned, the way of the 
        cross is still the only way. They will only awaken through further suffering, and 
        enlightenment as a collective phenomenon will be predictably preceded by vast upheavals. 
        This process reflects the workings of certain universal laws that govern the growth of 
        consciousness and thus was foreseen by some seers. It is described, among other places, in 
        the Book of Revelation or Apocalypse, though cloaked in obscure and sometimes impenetrable 
        symbology. This suffering is inflicted not by God but by humans on themselves and on each 
        other as well as by certain defensive measures that the Earth, which is a living, 
        intelligent organism, is going to take to protect herself from the onslaught of human 
        madness.

      However, there is a growing number of humans alive today whose consciousness is 
        sufficiently evolved not to need any more suffering before the realization of 
        enlightenment. You may be one of them.

      Enlightenment through suffering  the way of the cross  means to be forced into the kingdom 
        of heaven kicking and screaming. You finally surrender because you can't stand the pain 
        anymore, but the pain could go on for a long time until this happens. Enlightenment 
        consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the 
        Now the main focus of your life. It means choosing to dwell in the state of presence 
        rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is. You then don't need pain anymore. How 
        much more time do you think you will need before you are able to say “I will create no 
        more pain, no more suffering?” How much more pain do you need before you can make that 
        choice?

      If you think that you need more time, you will get more time  and more pain. Time and pain 
        are inseparable.

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      THE POWER TO CHOOSE

      What about all those people who, it seems, actually want to suffer? I have a friend whose 
        partner is physically abusive toward her, and her previous relationship was of a similar 
        kind. Why does she choose such men, and why is she refusing to get out of that situation 
        now? Why do so many people actually choose pain?

      I know that the word choose is a favorite New Age term, but it isn't entirely accurate in 
        this context. It is misleading to say that somebody “chose” a dysfunctional relationship 
        or any other negative situation in his or her life. Choice implies consciousness  a high 
        degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you 
        disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present. 
        Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. This means that you 
        are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of 
        your mind. That is why Jesus said: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is 
        not related to intelligence in the conventional sense of the word. I have met many' highly 
        intelligent and educated people who were also completely unconscious, which is to say 
        completely identified with their mind. In fact, if mental development	and	increased	
        knowledge	are	not counterbalanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness,

      the potential for unhappiness and disaster is very great. Your friend is stuck in a 
        relationship with an abusive partner, and not for the first time. Why? No choice. The 
        mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-

      create what it knows and is familiar with. Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar. 
        The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it. Thats why the mind dislikes 
        and ignores the present moment. Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the 
        stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can 
        come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.

      So your friend, being identified with her mind, may be re-creating a pattern learned in 
        the past in which intimacy and abuse are inseparably linked. Alternatively, she may be 
        acting out a mind pattern learned in early childhood according to which she is unworthy 
        and deserves to be punished. It is possible, too, that she lives a large part of her life 
        through the pain-body, which always seeks more pain on which to feed. Her partner has his 
        own unconscious patterns, which complement hers. Of course her situation is self- created, 
        but who or what is the self that is doing the creating? A mental-emotional pattern from 
        the past, no more. Why make a self out of it? If you tell her that she has chosen her 
        condition or situation, you are reinforcing her state of mind identification. But is her 
        mind pattern who she is? Is it her self? Is her true identity derived from the past? Show 
        your friend how to be the observing presence behind her thoughts and her emotions. Tell 
        her about the pain-body and how to free herself from it. Teach her the art of inner-body 
        awareness. Demonstrate to her the meaning of presence. As soon as she is able to access 
        the power of the Now, and thereby break through her conditioned past, she will have a 
        choice.

      Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because 
        there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the 
        darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the 
        conditioned mind is running your life.

      Similarly, if you are one of the many people who have an issue with their parents, if you 
        still harbor resentment about something they did or did not do, then you still believe that they had a choice  
        that they could have acted differently. It always looks as if people had a choice, but 
        that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as 
        long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? None. You are not even there. The 
        mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional. It is a form of insanity. Almost everyone 
        is suffering from this illness in varying degrees. The moment you realize this, there can 
        be no more resentment. How can you resent someone's illness? The only appropriate response 
        is compassion.

      So that means nobody is responsible for what they do? I don't like that idea.

      If you are run by your mind, although you have no choice you will still suffer the 
        consequences of your unconsciousness, and you will create further suffering. You will bear 
        the burden of fear, conflict, problems, and pain. The suffering thus created will 
        eventually force you out of your unconscious state.

      What you say about choice also applies to forgiveness, I suppose. You need to be fully 
        conscious and surrender before you can forgive.

      “Forgiveness” is a term that has been in use for 2,000 years, but most people have a very 
        limited view of what it means. You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you 
        derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, 
        which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless,

      and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch 
        even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary.

      And how do I get to that point of realization?

      When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any 
        power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.

      How will I know when I have surrendered?

      When you no longer need to ask the question.

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      END

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      ENLIGHTENMENT: RISING ABOVE THOUGHT

      Isn't thinking essential in order to survive in this world?

      Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when 
        the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 8o to 90 percent of 
        most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its 
        dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and 
        you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

      This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an 
        addiction? Quite simply this:

      you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also 
        gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain. Why should we be addicted to thinking?

      Because you are identified with it, which means that you derive your sense of self from 
        the content and activity of your mind. Because you believe that you would cease to be if 
        you stopped thinking. As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on 
        your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It 
        consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking. The term 
        ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false 
        self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.

      To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered 
        important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the 
        mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because 
        without it  who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its 
        continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: “One 
        day, when this, that, or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.” Even 
        when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: 
        It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it 
        reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected 
        future. Observe your mind and you'll see that this is how it works.

      The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as 
        long as you are your mind.

      I don't want to lose my ability to analyze and discriminate. I wouldn't mind learning to 
        think more clearly, in a more focused way, but I don't want to lose my mind. The gift of 
        thought is the most precious thing we have. Without it, we would just be another species 
        of animal. The predominance of mind is no more than a stage in the evolution of consciousness. We 
        need to go on to the next stage now as a matter of urgency; otherwise, we will be 
        destroyed by the mind, which has grown into a monster. I will talk about this in more 
        detail later. Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small 
        aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness 
        does not need thought.

      Enlightenment means rising above thought, not filling back to a level below thought, the 
        level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind 
        when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it mostly 
        for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there 
        is inner stillness. When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution 
        is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between 
        mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it 
        possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. 
        Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness, 
        quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.

      The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, 
        gathering, storing, and analyzing information  this is what it is good at, but it is not 
        at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of 
        no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or 
        insight. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came at 
        a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nation-wide inquiry among America's 
        most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was 
        that thinking “plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative 
        act itself.” So I would say that the simple reason why the majority of scientists are not creative is not because they don't know how to think but 
        because they don't know how to stop thinking!

      It wasn't through the mind, through thinking, that the miracle that is life on earth or 
        your body were created and are being sustained. There is clearly an intelligence at work 
        that is far greater than the mind. How can a single human cell measuring 1/1,000 of an 
        inch across contain instructions within its DNA that would fill 1,000 books of 600 pages 
        each? The more we learn about the workings of the body, the more we realize just how vast 
        is the intelligence at work within it and how little we know. When the mind reconnects 
        with that, it becomes a most wonderful tool. It then serves something greater than itself.

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      EMOTION: THE BODY'S REACTION TO YOUR MIND

      What about emotions? I get caught up in my emotions more than I do in my mind.

      Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as 
        all unconscious mental- emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where 
        mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind  or you might say, a reflection 
        of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create 
        a build-up of energy in the body that we call anger The body is getting ready to fight. 
        The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body 
        to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that 
        strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical 
        changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought 
        patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into 
        awareness.

      The more you are identified with your thinking, your likes and dislikes, judgments and 
        interpretations, which is to say the less present you are as the watching consciousness, 
        the stronger the emotional energy charge will be, whether you are aware of it or not. If 
        you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually 
        experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom. A great deal 
        has been written about this in recent years, so we don't need to go into it here. A strong 
        unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just 
        happen to you. For example, I have observed that people who carry a lot of anger inside 
        without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked, 
        verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They 
        have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that 
        triggers their own latent anger.

      If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner 
        energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with 
        your emotions. We will explore this in more detail later.

      ¤

      You sap that an emotion is the mind's reflection in the body. But sometimes there is a 
        conflict between the two: the mind saps “no” while the emotion saps "yes,' or the other 
        way around. If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, 
        so look at the emotion or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict 
        between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.

      Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at 
        that time.

      Conflict between surface thoughts and unconscious mental processes is certainly common. 
        You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as 
        thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can 
        become aware. To watch an emotion in this way is basically the same as listening to or 
        watching a thought, which I described earlier. The only difference is that, while a 
        thought is in your head, an emotion has a strong physical component and so is primarily 
        felt in the body. You can then allow the emotion to be there without being controlled by 
        it. You no longer are the emotion; you are the watcher, the observing presence. If you 
        practice this, all that is unconscious in you will be brought into the light of 
        consciousness.

      So observing our emotions is as important as observing our thoughts?

      Yes. Make it a habit to ask yourself. Whats going on inside me at this moment? That 
        question will point you in the right direction. But don't analyze, just watch. Focus your 
        attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take 
        your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway 
        into Being.

      ¤ An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of 
        its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough 
        to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds  unless there 
        is enough presence in you.

      If you are pulled into unconscious identification with the emotion through lack of 
        presence, which is normal, the emotion temporarily becomes “you.” Often a vicious circle 
        builds up between your thinking and the emotion: they feed each other. The thought pattern 
        creates a magnified reflection of itself in the form of an emotion, and the vibrational 
        frequency of the emotion keeps feeding the original thought pattern. By dwelling mentally 
        on the situation, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought 
        feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.

      Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial, undifferentiated emotion that 
        has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form. Because of 
        its undifferentiated nature, it is hard to find a name that precisely describes this 
        emotion. “Fear” comes close, but apart from a continuous sense of threat, it also includes 
        a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness. It may be best to use a term that is as 
        undifferentiated as that basic emotion and simply call it “pain.” One of the main tasks of 
        the mind is to fight or remove that emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its 
        incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, 
        the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can 
        never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it 
        is itself an intrinsic part of the “problem.” Imagine a chief of police trying to find an 
        arsonist when the arsonist is the chief of police. You will not be free of that pain until 
        you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind, which is to say 
        from ego. The mind is then toppled from its place of power and Being reveals itself as 
        your true nature. Yes, I know what you are going to ask.

      I was going to ask: What about positive emotions such as love and joy?

      They are inseparable from your natural state of inner connectedness with Being. Glimpses 
        of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the 
        stream of thought. For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in 
        moments when the mind is rendered “speechless,” sometimes triggered by great beauty, 
        extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And 
        within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.

      Usually, such moments are short-lived, as the mind quickly resumes its noise-making 
        activity that we call thinking. Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed 
        yourself from mind dominance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They lie beyond 
        the emotions, on a much deeper level. So you need to become fully conscious of your 
        emotions and be able to feel them before you can feel that which lies beyond them. Emotion 
        literally means “disturbance.” The word comes from the Latin emovere, meaning “to disturb.”

      Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being or rather three aspects of the state of 
        inner connectedness with Being. As such, they have no opposite. This is because they arise 
        from beyond the mind. Emotions, on the other hand, being part of the dualistic mind, are 
        subject to the law of opposites. This simply means that you cannot have good without bad. 
        So in the unenlightened, mind-identified condition, what is sometimes wrongly called joy 
        is the usually short-lived pleasure side of the continuously alternating pain/pleasure 
        cycle. Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from 
        within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain. And what is often 
        referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive 
        clinging, an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a 
        switch. Many “love” relationships, after the initial euphoria has passed, actually 
        oscillate between “love” and hate, attraction and attack.

      Real love doesn't make you suffer. How could it? It doesn't suddenly turn into hate, nor 
        does real joy turn into pain. As I said, even before you are enlightened  before you have 
        freed yourself from your mind  you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep 
        inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These are aspects of your true nature, which is 
        usually obscured by the mind. Even within a "normal'' addictive relationship, there can be 
        moments when the presence of something more genuine, something incorruptible, can be felt. 
        But they will only be glimpses, soon to be covered up again through mind interference. It 
        may then seem that you had something very precious and lost it, or your mind may convince 
        you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasn't an illusion, and you 
        cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be 
        destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn't disappeared. 
        It's still there on the other side of the clouds.

      The Buddha says that pain or suffering arises through desire or craving and that to be 
        free of pain we need to cut the bonds of desire.

      All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the 
        future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, 
        those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no 'I' except 
        as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted. In that 
        state, even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or 
        completion in the future. So don't seek to become free of desire or “achieve” 
        enlightenment. Become present. Be there as the observer of the mind. Instead of quoting 
        the Buddha, be the Buddha, be “the awakened one,” which is what the word buddha means.

      Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of 
        grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being. At that point, 
        they started to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, 
        unconnected to the Source and to each other.

      Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long 
        as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. I am talking here primarily of emotional 
        pain, which is also the main cause of physical pain and physical disease. Resentment, 
        hatred, self-pity, guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, and so on, even the slightest 
        irritation, are all forms of pain. And every pleasure or emotional high contains within 
        itself the seed of pain: its inseparable opposite, which will manifest in time.

      Anybody who has ever taken drugs to get “high” will know that the high eventually turns 
        into a low, that the pleasure turns into some form of pain. Many people also know from 
        their own experience how easily and quickly an intimate relationship can turn from a 
        source of pleasure to a source of pain. Seen from a higher perspective, both the negative 
        and the positive polarities are faces of the same coin,

      are both part of the underlying pain that is inseparable from the mind-identified egoic 
        state of consciousness.

      There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the 
        past that still lives on in your mind and body. Ceasing to create pain in the present and 
        dissolving past pain  this is what I want to talk about now.

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      

  

Chapter Two

    
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      CONSCIOUSNESS: THE WAY OUT OF PAIN

    

  
    
      The Power of Now

    

    
      CREATE NO MORE PAIN IN THE PRESENT

      Nobody's life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn't it a question of learning to live 
        with them rather than trying to avoid them?

      The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self- created as long as the 
        unobserved mind runs your life.

      The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of 
        unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of 
        judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain 
        depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how 
        strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to 
        escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you 
        suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, 
        the more you are free of pain, of suffering  and free of the egoic mind.

      Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain 
        in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as 
        threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.

      Imagine the Earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it 
        still have a past and a future? Could we still speak of time in any meaningful way? The question “What time is it?” or 
        “What's the date today?”  if anybody were there to ask it would be quite meaningless. The 
        oak tree or the eagle would be bemused by such a question. “What time?” they would ask. 
        “Well, of course, it's now. The time is now. What else is there?”

      Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this world, but there comes a point 
        where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.

      The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continuously to cover up the present 
        moment with past and future, and so, as the vitality and infinite creative potential of 
        Being, which is inseparable from the Now, becomes covered up by time, your true nature 
        becomes obscured by the mind. An increasingly heavy burden of time has been accumulating 
        in the human mind. All individuals are suffering under this burden, but they also keep 
        adding to it every moment whenever they ignore or deny that precious moment or reduce it 
        to a means of getting to some future moment, which only exists in the mind, never in 
        actuality. The accumulation of time in the collective and individual human mind also holds 
        a vast amount of residual pain from the past.

      If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add 
        to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then dont create any more time, or 
        at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to 
        stop creating time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the 
        Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits 
        to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future 
        when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say “yes” 
        to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create in