Eckhart Tolle wrote a book 23 ago entitled "The Power of Now". By 2000 it had become a New York Times best seller after Oprah read it and recommended it. Tolle has been interviewed by Oprah on her program "Sunday Sessions"; when I first observed them together, I was struck by his other-worldly appearance and presentation style. If it truly takes just seven seconds to form a first impression, Tolle struck me as someone who belonged somewhere within Middle Earth (versus sitting three feet apart from Oprah Winfrey on this Earth as we know it). His key insights during their discussion were, at the very least, worth taking a look at for today's blog post...
Historically, Tolle was an extremely troubled person with many personal problems, not the least of which included many periods of serious depression. Tolle was plagued by late-night thoughts which frightened him; he then began questioning what it was that made his life so unbearable. By his own admission, Tolle was someone who thought way too much about all the bad that happened to him or that he himself had caused. Tolle was also stuck in a thought life that got him nowhere better-enough personally or professionally speaking. Instead of actively working every day to improve the quality of his own real life and making that his focus, Tolle became stuck in his own thoughts of sadness, regret, worry, complaining, and all else that fed the beast of his depressive mindset.
As Tolle began to think about his own thinking, (this practice is, by the way, called "metacognition") he experienced some major revelations. Tolle realized how caught up he was in himself and his own needs' satisfaction and ego gratification on a daily basis. Regarding the pursuit of inner peace and serenity, he remembered a Buddhist monk's simple statement on how to achieve it:
"No self?....no problem!"
For Tolle, this particular moment of clarity linked his egocentric nature to his inability to experience any kind of long-lasting inner peace and calm within his own mind. Now don't get it twisted; we ALL are born with an egocentric nature so as to survive this thing we call life on planet earth! Does a newborn baby pop out of any womb and declare to his or her mother, "Hi Mom! What can I do for you today?" Of course not! Our "ego" nature is who we are from Day 1 of our lives. We are all of us "survivors" of life in our own unique way....
YET....so many of us go on to spend way too many years of our own adult lives thinking about all things "I, Me, Mine"...and to what end? For Eckhart Tolle, it led to him becoming and functioning as an extremely miserable person living in a constant whirlwind of regret, worry, depression, and disconnection from his fellow human beings. He also spent years (decades!) drifting back and forth mentally to the past or to the future (on any given day!) rather than to remain grounded in the present. When added up together, these "Ah Ha!" revelations helped Tolle to suddenly recognized the importance of every "Now!" moment in his own life.
The "Now!" moments of anyone's life are those we are experiencing right now!
I am typing this blog post "now". You may be drinking a cup of coffee at your kitchen counter "now". Someone else is still fast asleep in their bed "now". The gift of ANY today is 24 hours long. What will any of us do with this gift we have been given today?
What will we notice as we experience this day? What will we ignore? What will we waste our own time doing....or not doing? What pieces and parts of this day will we squander...and for what reason(s)? What amount of time will we give over to our "dark" thoughts taken from our own past...or from our own fears about the future that haven't even arrived yet? These are the issues that Tolle wanted to solve for himself, rather than repeatedly cycling through another series of self-generated "Oh no, not again!!" moments based on his past experiences---and/or fears about his future experiences!
As such, the first lesson Tolle learned and included in his book "The Power of Now" was this:
1. Life is just a series of present moments!
Tolle says that the only important time is the one we think about the least: the present. Mentally we constantly drift back to the past or up ahead to the future, and miss so many of our real life right now present moments (today!) as a result. Therefore, living in any other moment than the present is useless. If you, for example, have to hand in a research paper to a class in college in two weeks time, neither regretting (about what you didn't do "yet")...or worrying (about the workload to come) will actually help get that research paper done on time.
Everything you feel and sense takes place in the present. When you think about it, the past is nothing more than all the present moments that have gone by...and the future is nothing more than the collection of present moments waiting to arrive. "Today is the future you worried about yesterday." Put another way, "Today IS the yesterday you worried about tomorrow!"
Whether the future you are worrying about is literally an hour from now...or tomorrow...or a month from now...or five years from now---it's all still represents catastrophic and anxiety-based fiction! That's how worry works! When we think about the future in a polar opposite way, that's the stuff of fantasy-based thinking. Don't misunderstand, it's good to think about the future, but only when we are realistically PLANNING for it! Planning is all about adding realistic deadlines to our dreams. Dreams without deadlines (to achieve them!) is another waste of the "now" moments in our lives. Fantasy-based thinking about the future is an escape...not a plan. Don't forget that.
To interrupt any dysfunctional thought whenever it cropped up out of nowhere, Tolle practiced asking himself:
"What will be my NEXT thought?"
Drawing from the Quantum Zeno Effect (from physics), Tolle applied this principle to his own thoughts...and thought processes. In a nutshell, QZE teaches that any system isn't going to change from its current state while under constant observation. As such, what can be done TO change any thought we have that is more harmful than helpful...or more negative than positive...or more infectious than inspiring? For Tolle, it was simple: interrupt the current "dysfunctional" thought to break the automatic pattern (system!) of thinking that, in itself, IS dysfunctional! Instead of just constantly observing the pattern/system of thinking that is bad for us and letting the system itself run our lives and run/ruin them---Tolle decided to practice interrupting the system itself! And for Tolle, it worked...and worked beautifully.
I am simplifying Tolle's philosophy a great deal by putting it this way, but that is what it boils down to.
Think about that. What WILL your next thought be?
The book, once again, is Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now".
...until next post! ;-)
Historically, Tolle was an extremely troubled person with many personal problems, not the least of which included many periods of serious depression. Tolle was plagued by late-night thoughts which frightened him; he then began questioning what it was that made his life so unbearable. By his own admission, Tolle was someone who thought way too much about all the bad that happened to him or that he himself had caused. Tolle was also stuck in a thought life that got him nowhere better-enough personally or professionally speaking. Instead of actively working every day to improve the quality of his own real life and making that his focus, Tolle became stuck in his own thoughts of sadness, regret, worry, complaining, and all else that fed the beast of his depressive mindset.
As Tolle began to think about his own thinking, (this practice is, by the way, called "metacognition") he experienced some major revelations. Tolle realized how caught up he was in himself and his own needs' satisfaction and ego gratification on a daily basis. Regarding the pursuit of inner peace and serenity, he remembered a Buddhist monk's simple statement on how to achieve it:
"No self?....no problem!"
For Tolle, this particular moment of clarity linked his egocentric nature to his inability to experience any kind of long-lasting inner peace and calm within his own mind. Now don't get it twisted; we ALL are born with an egocentric nature so as to survive this thing we call life on planet earth! Does a newborn baby pop out of any womb and declare to his or her mother, "Hi Mom! What can I do for you today?" Of course not! Our "ego" nature is who we are from Day 1 of our lives. We are all of us "survivors" of life in our own unique way....
YET....so many of us go on to spend way too many years of our own adult lives thinking about all things "I, Me, Mine"...and to what end? For Eckhart Tolle, it led to him becoming and functioning as an extremely miserable person living in a constant whirlwind of regret, worry, depression, and disconnection from his fellow human beings. He also spent years (decades!) drifting back and forth mentally to the past or to the future (on any given day!) rather than to remain grounded in the present. When added up together, these "Ah Ha!" revelations helped Tolle to suddenly recognized the importance of every "Now!" moment in his own life.
The "Now!" moments of anyone's life are those we are experiencing right now!
I am typing this blog post "now". You may be drinking a cup of coffee at your kitchen counter "now". Someone else is still fast asleep in their bed "now". The gift of ANY today is 24 hours long. What will any of us do with this gift we have been given today?
What will we notice as we experience this day? What will we ignore? What will we waste our own time doing....or not doing? What pieces and parts of this day will we squander...and for what reason(s)? What amount of time will we give over to our "dark" thoughts taken from our own past...or from our own fears about the future that haven't even arrived yet? These are the issues that Tolle wanted to solve for himself, rather than repeatedly cycling through another series of self-generated "Oh no, not again!!" moments based on his past experiences---and/or fears about his future experiences!
As such, the first lesson Tolle learned and included in his book "The Power of Now" was this:
1. Life is just a series of present moments!
Tolle says that the only important time is the one we think about the least: the present. Mentally we constantly drift back to the past or up ahead to the future, and miss so many of our real life right now present moments (today!) as a result. Therefore, living in any other moment than the present is useless. If you, for example, have to hand in a research paper to a class in college in two weeks time, neither regretting (about what you didn't do "yet")...or worrying (about the workload to come) will actually help get that research paper done on time.
Everything you feel and sense takes place in the present. When you think about it, the past is nothing more than all the present moments that have gone by...and the future is nothing more than the collection of present moments waiting to arrive. "Today is the future you worried about yesterday." Put another way, "Today IS the yesterday you worried about tomorrow!"
Whether the future you are worrying about is literally an hour from now...or tomorrow...or a month from now...or five years from now---it's all still represents catastrophic and anxiety-based fiction! That's how worry works! When we think about the future in a polar opposite way, that's the stuff of fantasy-based thinking. Don't misunderstand, it's good to think about the future, but only when we are realistically PLANNING for it! Planning is all about adding realistic deadlines to our dreams. Dreams without deadlines (to achieve them!) is another waste of the "now" moments in our lives. Fantasy-based thinking about the future is an escape...not a plan. Don't forget that.
To interrupt any dysfunctional thought whenever it cropped up out of nowhere, Tolle practiced asking himself:
"What will be my NEXT thought?"
Drawing from the Quantum Zeno Effect (from physics), Tolle applied this principle to his own thoughts...and thought processes. In a nutshell, QZE teaches that any system isn't going to change from its current state while under constant observation. As such, what can be done TO change any thought we have that is more harmful than helpful...or more negative than positive...or more infectious than inspiring? For Tolle, it was simple: interrupt the current "dysfunctional" thought to break the automatic pattern (system!) of thinking that, in itself, IS dysfunctional! Instead of just constantly observing the pattern/system of thinking that is bad for us and letting the system itself run our lives and run/ruin them---Tolle decided to practice interrupting the system itself! And for Tolle, it worked...and worked beautifully.
I am simplifying Tolle's philosophy a great deal by putting it this way, but that is what it boils down to.
Think about that. What WILL your next thought be?
The book, once again, is Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now".
...until next post! ;-)