To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation — Eckhart Tolle
There is no real past, there is no real future, there is only NOW. Oh but Cary, what about yesterday? That was just 24 hours of NOW moments. Wherever you were at 9:25 a.m yesterday, that was NOW, at 1:18, again NOW, and as you read this sentence, NOW, and even tomorrow morning when you get up, that is another NOW moment.
I am in the process of reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, Awakening to your Life’s Purpose, and it is a fantastic book. I had always heard people say things like, “Just be.” But honestly I never quite understood, why or even how, but this book is teaching me all of that.
We live in a very busy world, our minds racing a million miles a second, or so it seems, and we are always either sweating the past, or worrying about the future, not even paying attention to the moment we are experiencing right then and there. In fact, as I sat down and read my book yesterday, the thoughts of this post kept coming to me. There I was in the midst of another beautiful day, the sun beating down on my body, the wind blowing through my hair, and all I wanted to do was move onto the next moment, which was well over twelve hours away.
We have all done this, I know I am not the only one. Imagine all the discussions you have had in your head, the ones where the next time you saw so and so, you were going to tell them this, or that. At times those discussions even take on a very negative tone, because you plan on telling that person off. Did that moment even happen? If you are like me, then probably not. By the time I finally got to that moment, I either chickened out, or the situation rectified itself and there was nothing to even worry about to begin with.
Or I’ll be driving down the road, and my mind begins to wander about either a past issue, or once again an impending future one. It is either something that has already happened, or something we think is going to happen, and the next thing I know, I’m accidentally cutting someone off. I just put my life, and the life of others in jeopardy because I am not actually there in the now, I’m experiencing a week ago, again, or planning tomorrow, neither of which has any use to me right here and now.
I have been moving through this world, acting unconsciously, completely unaware, but no more. I have little glimpses into these kinds of lessons, I even posted about something similar months ago. But, just like any other good habit we develop, we need to constantly work on it, so as not to allow old bad habits to creep back in. I started to slip back into some of my old ways of jumping in the car, and taking off to either work, or dinner with friends, careening through the streets at a hectic pace. When I get like this, I immediately just start to feel my breath go in and out of my lungs, it brings me back to the now, it reminds me that I am alive, and need to be present.
Everything for me now has become sort of a meditation, even when it comes to my eating. Now when I eat, unless when I am out with friends. I turn off the t.v., the radio, I don’t even read a book, but I pay as much attention as I can to what it is I am doing. For example when I eat my cereal in the morning I pay attention to every detail. I think about how the food tastes, its texture, is it hot or cold, how it feels when I chew it, how it feels as it goes down my throat, and more importantly, how does my body feel, or react to it. I am no longer eating, I am meditating. I work on keeping all the thoughts about how the day may or may not go out of my head, and focus on feeling the muscles in my jaw as I chew. I am doing all my best to “just be.”
Has this helped? It sure has. I honestly can’t eat as much as I could, even just a few days ago. Even with the lap-band, there are times where I can eat more than I should, but not when I am eating consciously. My normal breakfast of kashi cereal with soy milk is now cut in half. One of my favorite lunches of tuna salad with crackers that weighs a total of 3.5 oz, it is almost too much. I now eat until my body tells me “Enough!” My body is now satisfied, when my mind was thinking it wasn’t.
I am grateful for now, because now is all I have, all I ever had, and all I ever will have.
