• The Being

    • March 31, 2010 9:15 am

    Dearest Readers,

    With millions of copies sold, I am probably one of the few people of late who hasn’t jumped on The Power of Now bus and ridden its journey to enlightenment. Heck, I haven’t even seen The Secret. But the other night, in a state of sleeplessness, I downloaded the audiobook version of TPON on my iPhone and joined the masses.

    Whether it was curiosity that led me to do so or the need for a soft-spoken German man to lull me to sleep I cannot say. All I know is, I fell asleep in the Now. Then.

    What I like best about Eckhart Tolle’s message is his use of the word “Being”. This statement is from Wikipedia: “Occasionally [Tolle] uses the term God, but he prefers Being as “an open concept,” something “it is impossible to form a mental image of” and which “does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity.”

    Those of you who read this blog regularly know I use a number of different words for this same entity: Higher Power, Higher Guidance, Love, Spirit of Unity Back of All Things etc.

    I’m actually okay with the word God and I often use it myself. But it’s so loaded, and so open to misinterpretation that I tend to be pretty careful about it.

    I wish I didn’t have to be. I wish I could just use the word God all the time (just three little letters! So easy! So little typing!) but then I’d have to reassure y’all that I’m not talking about a white man in the sky or a Father of the Church and that would take just as long as writing Life Force Energy of the Benevolent Universe.

    Eckhart kinda nailed it with Being though, didn’t he? “Being” not only conjures the image of a Power Greater than Ourselves but simultaneously describes exactly how we can dwell in the presence of that Power. By be-ing. Just by Being. Here. Now.

    One of the criticisms of the book (again from Wikipedia) charges that “there is nothing new in the book, that it simply repackages concepts familiar from various spiritual traditions.”

    Well, duh. Until we get it, folks, we gotta keep on hearing it.

    So no matter how many times we hear it, no matter how many times it’s been re-packaged, no matter how many times it’s been blogged about, we can still open ourselves to receiving the message anew.

    And the message is so simple, so beautiful. And so flippin’ challenging! Be. Be here. Be in the experience of Now.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I will land in my body, right now. I will land back in my life, right now. Every time I fly out and away I will practice coming back into the experience of Being. I’m alive!

    Future-Tripping

    • December 17, 2009 10:30 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Today’s post might be a bit of a meditation practice in itself. To breathe, to be here now, with each word as I type it. I’m buzzing with anticipation for the day ahead, which involves shooting a segment of video for the show I’m presently creating. I need to slow down my thinking.

    Blog entries about the practice of being present in my life come often, don’t they? They can never come often enough. It is a daily practice. Actually, it’s a moment-to-moment practice because the mind is always moving forward and the remembering must be constant.

    That’s almost what being present is: remembering. “The power of now” and “being here now” and “living in the moment” are ideals. When I teach yoga I say, “The nature of the mind is to think.” The mind thinks, that’s what it does. In order to step back from the thinking mind I must remember to return to the experience of now.

    So that is what I’ve been doing since I woke up. My mind is future-tripping big time to the arrival of the videographer, to our drive out of town, to the shoot, to the drive back, and on and on. I’m living out the day in my head and forgetting where I am.

    And so I must engage in the active effort to remember that I am not there yet, I am here. I must return to this moment, the only one there is. This is certainly challenging because it feels like I have to do it every single second but the practice is worth the reward. For I am then in my life, the only one I really have, the one that is unfolding here and now in reality.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: The life that plays out in my head is a fantasy. It is not real. I will continue, throughout the day, to actively remember to be in my real life as it unfolds in the present moment. I will step out of the thinking mind and experience the now.

    Being Here Now

    • September 25, 2009 3:47 pm

    Well, the cat woke me up at 4:17 a.m. but did I get up to blog about it? No, I did not.

    There were no forthcoming inspirational messages coming through so I ignored the cat and slept until I had to wake up at 6:30.

    It’s already been a very full day and I’ve still got a “to-do” list a mile long. I’m blogging right now to avoid tackling it.

    Why do we procrastinate?

    Here’s a crazy idea: most of us procrastinate because we know that if we actually get the thing done we are going to feel GOOD. And many of us do not believe we deserve to feel good.

    I’ve done some pretty big work on myself to believe that I deserve to feel good but some days are better than others. I can still fall back into the old way of thinking that tells me I don’t deserve to feel free, it’s better if I’m stressed etc.

    I call these thoughts The Voices of Dissent or TVOD.

    Often TVOD occur when I future-trip. Instead of being here now I’ve launched myself into a situation or a scenario that is not happening anywhere but in my head and as a result I’m feeling anxious.

    Ergo, when I am not here, I am in fear.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: When I return to the present I return to peace. Keep returning to the here and now. It is the only time we really have.