The Power of Now

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is an accessible book about mindfulnes—about living in the now—and how it can transform your life.

You are not your mind

Buddha defines enlightenment simply as the end of suffering.

The mind is an incredibly powerful instrument, but we have become to identify with it. Our mind is like a hand or foot, a tool to a purpose. Our mind is so powerful that for many, the tool has taken over the master. A clear sign of this is when you cannot stop thinking, when you cannot turn off your mind.

Watching the thinker

We are only different from the ‘mad’ people on the side-walk in that we don’t mutter our thoughts our loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes and so on. Most of the time it’s discussing the irrelevant; the past or possible futures. And even if it is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. You see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it.

To free yourself from your mind, you have to learn to observe it. Listen to the voice in your head, watch the thinker. But listen impartially, do not judge the voice, only observe it. When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. You feel your deeper self. The thought loses its power and quickly subsides.

When this happens, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream—a gap of ‘no-mind.’ Short in the beginning, this gap will become longer and longer, evoking a certain stillness and peace inside you.

Directing attention to the now

Instead of watching the thinker, another way to create a gap in the mind is to focus your attention into the now. Become intensely conscious of the present moment; the essence of meditation.

In everyday life this can be practised by taking any routine activity (cycling, walking, going to the bathroom, eating, etc.) and giving it your fullest attention so that it becomes an end in itself. The degree of peace you experience is the best measure for your success.

Most of our thinking is repetitive and useless, but also dysfunctional and negative, making it harmful as well. But this type of thinking is an addiction. It is an addiction because we identify with the thoughts. We think the thought is us, and that if the thoughts stop, so do we.

When we grow up, we form a mental image of who we are based on personal and cultural conditioning. This ‘ego’ as we may call it consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking.

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists, only the past and future are considered important. This is, of course, a total reversal of the truth. the ego is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because who are you without it? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfilment there.

When the ego seems to be concerned with the present it sees and misinterprets it through the eyes of the past, or it reduces it to the means of an (future) end.

The present holds the key to liberation, but you cannot find it as long as you are the mind.

Emotions

Emotions are the body’s reaction to the mind. The thought of being threatened makes your body contract. The more you are identified with your thinking, the stronger the emotional energy charge will be. You need to get back to feeling or observing your emotions. When this is hard, try focussing your attention on the inner energy field of your body, feel the body from within.

When an emotion arises, observe it, watch it manifest physically in your body. Disconnect your identity from it like you should disconnect from your thoughts.

It’s a good idea to make a habit of asking yourself what is going on inside. Do not attempt this as an analysis, but really as an observer.

An emotions usually represents an amplified and energised though pattern. Because it is so overpowering it is hard to stay present enough to be able to observe it. The thought invokes an emotion, and the emotion then strengthens (confirms) the thought.

Feelings of joy and love occur when a gap occurs in the stream of thought. For most people, these gaps happen occasionally when the mind is rendered ‘speechless;’ triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion or danger. You need to be able to observe the other emotions before you can feel how joy and love are something deeper.

Emotions are part of a dualistic mind. Pleasure is the counter-emotion to pain, but not similar to joy; pleasure is always external while joy comes from within. Because each emotion is relative to its counterpart, it’s impossible to always experience pleasure, at some time, one will always experience pain.

Desire

Desire is the a manifestation of the mind seeking fulfilment in external things, a substitute for joy in being. As long as you are your mind, you are these cravings, wants, attachments and needs. Don’t desire to become free from desire, simply be present as the observer of the mind.

Consciousness: the way out of pain

Pain you create in the now is always some form of non-acceptance, an unconscious resistance to what is. This natural tendency comes from the mind’s inability to handle the timelessness of the now. It understands everything in terms of past and future. Time and mind are inseparable.

To remain in control the mind seeks to continuously cover up the present moment with past and future. Since being is inseparable from the now, your true nature becomes obscured by the mind.

To avoid pain, you must let go of time, and realise that the present moment is all you have. Instead of occasionally being in the now, occasionally think about the past and the future. You must accept the present moment and then see how to work with it, not dwindle about how the present moment should’ve been.

Past pain

Not living in the now, emotional pain will pile up inside you as it adds to the mind’s past. This accumulated pain can be seen as an energy field that, like a veil, covers the body and mind; the emotional pain-body. Though it need not be active all the time, anything can trigger it, specifically if it resonates with a pain pattern from the past. When you suddenly respond differently to a situation that that you otherwise would have, the pain-body has taken over from ‘you.’ When this happens, you should simply observe how the pain-body tries to take over.

Observing and becoming aware of it is what kills the pain-body. When you try to fight it or deny it, you create an inner conflict and with it more pain. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment. When you start to dis-identify with the pain-body, this will be uncomfortable at first, but it won’t last. When you observe it, it cannot control your thinking.

To summarise, when you feel pain, feel it, and realise it is the pain-body. Don’t think about it, don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Do not judge or analyse.

Ego identification with the pain-body

When we have lived closely together with our pain body for a long time, we tend to have lent our identity to it, and consequently experience strong resistance when we dis-associate ourself from it. In such a case, we should observe this resistance, observe what pleasure we gain from associating with this pain-body (pity, victimhood for example). Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it. Resistance will cease if you make it conscious.

Though no once can do this for you, if you find someone intensely conscious and be with them in a state of presence, that can be helpful and accelerate things.

The origin of fear

We don’t need fear to prevent us from hurting ourselves, in most cases, common sense and a minimum level of intelligence are enough.

There are two modes of fear, one to be directly threatened of physical danger and one completely divorced from it; unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. It is a fear of something that might happen, not something that is happening now.

You are in the here and now while your mind is in the future. When you identify with your mind more strongly than with yourself, the anxiety gap that emerges from it will dictate your life. Fear is the emotion associated with the physical materialisation of this mind gap thought.

Fear is ultimately the ego’s fear of death. If you identify with your mind, and if your mind has a certain conviction, you will do anything in an argument to make the conviction hold true, at least to yourself. When you identify strongly with your mind, you cannot afford to be wrong.

You will learn so much faster when you can dis-associate from your mind. When you allow alternative views to emerge, there is so much new information opened up for exploration. Observing your mind in such an argument is the key to liberation and intellectual growth.

There are only so few people who disconnect themselves from their mind, so that most people you meet will live in a state of fear, only the intensity of it varies.

The ego’s search for wholeness

Another aspect of emotional pain is the feeling of incompleteness. Consciously it manifests as a feeling of not being good enough, unconscious it will be felt as an intense craving, wanting and needing. Often people go in compulsive pursuit of possessions, money, power, success, recognition or a special relationship to feel better about themselves. Only when a craving has just been fulfilled will you be at ease, but it fades quickly long as your egoic mind is running your life.

Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things, it needs to be defended an fed constantly. Most commonly, ego identifications have to do with possessions, work, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, relationships, special skills, personal and family history and belief systems. None of these, however, is you.

Exercise: write down the things you do in a week, then think, really think about what the drivers for this activity are. Think also in secondary or tertiary reasons. You need to earn money, but why? Why so much? Why more? Why can’t you do that elsewhere? If your external driver is stronger than the internal one, stop the behaviour.

Moving deeply into the now

Time and mind are inseparable, remove time from the mind and it stops. To be identified with the mind is to be trapped in time and live exclusively through memory and anticipation, being unable to acknowledge the present moment and to let it be.

The past gives you identity and the future the promise of salvation. Both are essentially illusions.

Nothing exists outside the now

The now cannot be grasped by the mind, so don’t try to understand it. Try to feel it.

The key to the spiritual dimension

In life-threatening situations, the shift in consciousness to presence sometimes happens naturally. Extreme sports can create the same response, but are only activity-related.

The mind cannot know a tree. It can only know facts or information about the tree. Being allows you to experience the tree. Similarly, we hardly know anyone, but only the things we know about them. Only in being can we find out who they are.

When you find it hard to be in the present, start by observing the habitual tendency of your mind to want to escape from the now. You will observe that the future is usually imagined as better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation, when it is worse it creates anxiety instead. Both are illusory. Through self-observation, more presence comes into your life automatically. The moment you realise you aren’t present, you are present.

Be the watcher of you mind, of your thoughts, emotions and reactions. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes it.

In intense situations, we have the tendency to let emotions take over and we become unconscious, become the emotion. You act it out and justify its presence, even though its isn’t you; it is the mind in its habitual survival mode.

Letting go of psychological time

Learn to use time only for the practical aspects of your life. This does not mean only planning the future, but also learning from the past. Any planning as well as working toward achieving a particular goal is done now. Any applied lesson from the past manifests in the now.

Don’t turn life from a wonderful journey into an obsessive need to arrive or attain.

The insanity of psychological time

In the mind-identified state of consciousness, old patterns of thought, emotion, behaviour, reaction and desire are acted out in endless repeat performances. A script in tour mind that gives you an identity of sorts and covers up the reality of the now. The mind than creates an obsession with the future as an escape from the unsatisfactory present.

Negativity and suffering have their roots in time

A capacity to dissociate with the past—dissociate with the mind—is the capacity to create a different future. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future, and the quality of your consciousness at this moments is decided by your degree of presence. The only place where true change can take place is in the now.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry—all forms of fear—are caused by too much future. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past.

All problems are illusions of the mind

The mind loves problems because it gives you an identity of sorts. It’s not unlikely that when you describe yourself honestly, you describe your problems as well.

However, it’s nothing more than dwelling on a future situation without the possibility of taking action now. You are focusing on a hundred things that you will or may have to do in the future instead of focusing your attention on the one thing you can do right now.

When you create a problem you create pain. But creating a problem is simply a choice.

The joy of being

A simple check to see if you have allowed yourself to be taken over by psychological time is to ask yourself whether or not there is joy, ease and lightness in whatever it is that you are doing. If it isn’t, then time is covering up the present moment.

You shouldn’t necessarily change what you are doing but how you are doing it. See if you can give you fullest attention to the doing rather than the result that you want to achieve through it. This also implies that you completely accept what is.

The moment your attention turns to the now, you no longer depend on the future for fulfilment and satisfaction, you don’t look to it for salvation. Therefore, you are not attached to the results. Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of being.

In the absence of psychological time, your sense of self is derived from being, not from your personal past. Therefore, the psychological need to become anything other than who you already are is no longer there.

This does not make you insensible to pursuing goals. However, when you realise that on a deeper level you are already complete, there will be a joyous, playful energy behind what you do. Being free of psychological time, you no longer pursue your goals with grim determination, driven by fear, anger, discontent, or the need to become someone.

Nor will you remain inactive through fear of failure. When your deeper sense of self is derived from being, when you are free of becoming as a psychological need, neither your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so there is freedom from fear.

Everything is honoured, but nothing matters.

Mind strategies for avoiding the now

To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfilment.

Most people don’t alternate between consciousness and unconsciousness but between different levels of unconsciousness.

The true test of your level of consciousness is not how long you can sit silently in a room alone, but how you can retain your consciousness in difficult situations. But, in order to stay in the now in these kind of situations, you must first become conscious in everyday life.

When you learn to witness your thoughts you may become aware of the background static of ordinary unconsciousness and realise how rarely you are truly at ease with yourself. On the level of your thinking, you will find a great deal of resistance in the form of judgment, discontent, and mental projection away from the now. On the emotional level, there will be an undercurrent of unease, tension, boredom, or nervousness.

Dissolving ordinary unconsciousness

We can free ourselves of anxiety and unease by bringing it into the light, making it conscious. Observe the many ways in which unease, discontent, and tension arise within you from unnecessary judgement, resistance to what is, and denial of the now. Anything unconscious dissolves when you shed on it the light of consciousness.

Make a habit to monitor your mental-emotional state through self-observation. “Am I at ease at this moment?” and “What is going on inside me at this moment?” are good questions. Be interested in what goes on inside as much as goes on outside.

Freedom from unhappiness

A response of unease or discomfort to a situation may seem justified, but all it is, in essence, is a resistance to what is. Negativity is never the most effective way of dealing with a situation. Anything done with negative energy will become contaminated with it.

You let go of negativity by simply letting it go. Observe there is a burden you are carrying, and know that you are no longer wanting to do so.

Wherever you are, be there totally

Catch yourself complaining, for complaining is always non-acceptance of what is. You can actively change the situation, leave, or accept it. Everything else brings useless pain.

Being in the now means being in the here, and not somewhere else. Catch yourself wishing to be somewhere else and observe your thoughts.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between fear and your thinking.

When you are unable to change the situation or remove yourself from it, you must accept it, surrender to it, by dropping all inner resistance.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there, being in the present or wanting to be in the future. You can move fast and work hard. When you do, enjoy it and the flow of energy it gives, feel the stress convert to positive energy. You can also drop the whole thing and sit on a park bench. When you do, watch your mind. It might tell you you are wasting time and should be working. Observe the mind, smile at it.

Die to the past every moment, you don’t need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of being, feel your presence.

Do you worry? Have “what if” thoughts? Then you are identified with your mind, projecting itself into an imaginary future situation that it does not want to be in and consequently creating fear. You can’t cope with future situations, only with the now. Use your energy to identify what’s wrong with the current moment, and what you can do to change or accept it.

Is your goal taking up so much of your attention that you reduce the present moment to a means to an end? Is it taking the joy out of your doing? Are you waiting to start living? With such a mindset, the present will never be good enough, because the future will always seem better.

Do you wait for life to happen to you? Waiting is a state of mind, it means that you want the future and not the present.

You can improve your life situation but not your life. While its healthy to set goals and strive to achieve things, these goals and things should never be confused as a substitute for life and being. The only point of being is in the now.

Making millions will not satisfy the desire of being rich. The desire can only dissolve if you learn to let it go, to be in the present. What is the point of striving for situations and experiences when you are not equipped to live and enjoy them? How can you be grateful for something else if you cannot be grateful for things you already have?

The inner purpose of your life’s journey

Even when your life’s journey has a goal, the most important part of that journey is the step you take right now. It needs to be executed with precision and care, and in the right direction.

Your life’s journey has an outer and inner purpose. The outer purpose is the goal, the where. The inner purpose is the how. The how is in the step you take right now, in the present moment.

When you lose track of your inner purpose, the very act of taking a step and its direction, the only purpose then becomes the outer purpose, which, if hard enough, can impossibly be sustained.

The past cannot survive in your presence

We often think the future will free us from the past, when in reality, only the present can free us from the past.

The state of presence

You cannot think about presence, and the mind cannot understand is. The only way to be present is to feel present.

One effective way to be and remain present is to have some of your attention in the inner energy field of your body, to feel the body form within. Body awareness keeps you present.

You can also exercise presence in waiting. Usually, waiting is perceived as an undesirable obstacle to a (future) end. There is another kind of waiting that requires total awareness, as if something could happen at any moment.

Consciousness

Everything that exists has being, god-essence, some degree of consciousness. Ones consciousness is god-essence expressed in form. There is no cruelty in death when we consider a conscious being as just part of this vast amount of god essence, but only when we create a separate identity for each form. When you assign an identity to something, to its form, you get hold of a fraction of a dynamic process.

Humans are completely identified with their form, and know themselves only as their physical and psychological form, living in complete fear of either’s annihilation. When we watch our mind, consciousness awakens from its identification with form.

The feeling we get from using alcohol or drugs, or during sex, is similar to the feeling we get when we are fully present. The former are only external means to suppress excessive mind activity, and no sustainable solution. If we weren’t able to escape our mind every now and then, what would the world then look like?

If you are drawn to someone, it is because there is already enough presence in you to recognise presence in another.

The inner body

The illusion of the self is the illusion that you are nothing more than your physical body and your mind.

You are cut off from being as long as your mind takes up all your attention. When this happens, and it happens continually for most, you are not feeling your body. The mind absorbed all your consciousness and transforms it into mind stuff. Your whole sense of who you are is then derived from mind activity. Your identity, as it is no longer rooted in being, becomes a vulnerable and ever-needy mental construct.

You need to reclaim consciousness from the mind, freeing vast amounts of consciousness that previously had been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking. An effective way of doing this is take the focus of your attention away from thinking and direct it into the body.

Do not fight against the body, for  you are then fighting against your own reality. You are your body. The body that you can see and touch is only a thin illusory veil. Underneath it lies the invisible inner body, the doorway into being. The inner body is formless, it is what you feel when you are present fully.

Have deep roots within

The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body, to feel it al all times. You radiate energy and you will attract new circumstances that reflect this. By bringing your attention as much as possible to the body, you will be anchored in the now. You won’t lose yourself to the external world or to your mind. Thoughts, emotions, fears and desires may still be there, but they won’t take you over.

Practice doing things while you keep feeling your inner body. Observe how it affects your consciousness and the thing you are doing. When you are waiting, use that time to feel your inner body. When you feel discomfort arise or you are confronted with an unexpected situation, direct your attention to the inner body.

Before you enter the body: forgive

When trying to access the inner body, you may run into an internalised emotion. You then first have to observe the emotion, to experience it fully, before you can find the inner body’s calm. You have to accept the emotion, forgive yourself from feeling it.

The moment that you truly forgive, you have reclaimed power from the mind.

Effects on the body

As your habitual stage changes from being trapped in the mind to being in the body and present in the now, your physical body will feel lighter, clearer, more alive.

When you become one with your body, you will feel the things you do to it, both good and bad. If you then listen to what your body tells you, you will live healthier and better, which has all kinds of implications for your energy, appearance, and performance.

Exercise: when waking up or falling asleep, practice focusing on one of your body-parts. Feel the life energy inside those parts as intensely as you can. Then let your attention run through the body like a wave a few times. After that, feel the inner body in its entirety, and try to hold that feeling for a few minutes.

Breath as a portal

Sometimes, when you are tired or have been very active in your mind, it is hard to focus on the inner body. In these moments, you should start with conscious breathing. Feeling the air flow in and out of your body and you chest expanding and inflating with every breath.

Creative use of mind

When you are using your mind for thought, make it a habit to feel your inner body every now and then. When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative.

The art of listening

When listening to another person, listen with your whole body; feel the energy field of your inner body as you listen. This takes away attention from thinking and creates a still space that allows you to truly listen without the mind interfering. You are giving the other person space, space to be. It is the most precious gift you can give.

Most human relationships consist mainly of minds interacting with each other, not of human beings communication.

Portals into the unmanifested

To meditate, sit on a chair, but don’t lean back. Eliminate any possible distractions. Relax your body, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Feel yourself breathing, don’t think about it, only feel. Now feel the inner body, devoid of any shape or form. When you ‘wake’  from mediation, observe the world around you. Do not label, only observe.

The true nature of space and time

If there were nothing but silence, it would not exist to you. Only when sound appears does silence come into being. Similarly, if there were only space without objects in space it would not exist for you.

Death

Every portal is a portal of death. When you go through it, you cease to derive your identity from your psychological, mind-made form. You then realise that death is an illusion, just as you identification with form was an illusion. The end of illusion—that is all that death is. Is painful only as long as you cling to illusion.

Enlightened relationships

Most people pursue physical pleasures or various forms of psychological gratification because they believe that those things will make them happy or free them from a feeling of fear or lack. This is the search for salvation from a state of unsatisfactoriness or insufficiency. Invariably, any satisfaction that they obtain is short-lived, and a new sense of desire takes place. This is the unconscious mindset that creates the illusion of salvation in the future.

True salvation is fulfilment in the now. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is not felt as a passing experience but as an abiding presence.

True salvation is a state of freedom—from fear, suffering, a perceived lack and insufficiency. It is a state from free from wanting, needing, grasping and clinging. It is a freedom from impulsive thinking from negativity and above all from past and future as a psychological need.

Your mind is telling you that you cannot get there from here. Something needs to happen, or you need to become this or that before you can be free and fulfilled. It is saying that you need time, that you need to find, sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become or understand something before you can be free or complete.

The truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there. You get there by realising that you are there already. There is nothing you can ever do or attain that will get you closer to salvation than it is at this moment. You cannot do this in the future, you do it now or not at all.

Love/hate-relationships

Unless and until you access the now, all relationships but particularly intimate ones, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional. It seems that most ‘love relationships’ become love/hate-relationships before long, and usually end in termination of the relationship altogether.

It may appear that if you could only eliminate the negative then all would be well. But by definition, this is impossible. You cannot have one without the other. The positive contains within itself the as of yet unmanifested negative.

The feelings of love in most romantic relationships are like consciousness. Most people only get glimpses of it and never experience it whole.

The negative side of a relationship is more easily recognisable as dysfunctional than a positive one. However, the positive sides too you might find has a neediness and clinging quality to it. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug. You are on a high when the drug is available, but even the possibility or the thought that he or she might no longer be there for you can lead to jealousy, possessiveness, attempts at manipulation, blaming and accusing. If the person leaves you this can give rise to the most intense hostility or the most profound grief and despair.

If love can so easily change to dreadful grief in an instance, was there even real love in the first place? Or just an addictive grasping and clinging?

Addiction and the search for wholeness

Romantic relationships seem to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, lack and incompleteness. On the physical level this manifests as irresistible urge for an end to duality by attraction to the opposite sex. Sexual union is the closest one can get to wholeness on a physical level. But it will always be a glimpse of heaven.

On the psychological level, this sense of incompleteness is even greater. When you are identified with the mind you have an externally derived sense of self. You get your sense of who you are from your social role, possessions, external appearance, successes and failures. This mind-made self feels vulnerable, insecure and is always seeking things to identify with in order to evoke a feeling of existence.

A romantic relationship may seem the answer to all the ego’s problems. All the things that you previously derived your sense of self from are relatively insignificant compared to ‘the other,’ your new world centre. This new world centre however, lies outside of you, and your sense of self still comes from the outside.

What you may feel isn’t love, its attachment of the ego and addictive clinging. It is the ego’s substitute for salvation, and for the short-term it may very well feel as such.

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever addiction, you are using something or someone to  cover up your pain.

From addictive to enlightened relationships

The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is the acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way.

Love is a state of being that is always within you. It does not depend on someone else, some external form. In the stillness of your presence, you look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realisation of oneness, of love.

Love is not selective. Through presence, you are in a love relationship with everything; a bus, a bird a stone or flower. However, with some things, or some being, you may find this love relationship more intense.

Relationships as spiritual practice

If you pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is there to make you conscious instead of happy, than the relationship will offer you salvation.

You need not wait for your partner to be conscious, as it only takes you to make your life a spiritual practice.

When you agree with your partner to make your relationship a spiritual practice, you create an environment where it is safe to express oneself, without blame.

It is very hard to live with an enlightened person, because it is extremely threatening to the ego, which needs problems, conflict and enemies. The ego’s fixed positions aren’t resisted, which means that in many cases they become shaky and weak.

Give up the relationship with yourself

There is no need to have a good relationship with yourself, just be yourself. When you have a relationship with yourself you have split yourself in two; I and myself. That mind-created duality is the root cause of all unnecessary complexity, of all problems and conflict in life. In the state of enlightenment you are yourself. You do not judge yourself, feel sorry for yourself, feel proud of yourself or love yourself.

Beyond happiness and unhappiness there is peace

Things that happen cannot be positive or negative. Even pain, failure, loss or illness can be the greatest teachers.

When something ‘negative’ happens in your life, there is always a deep lesson concealed within it, though it might be hard to see at that time.

Things are positive nor negative. They just are as they are. When you live in complete acceptance of what is, all things become a higher ‘good.’

Moving beyond good and bad to what is, is an essential aspect of forgiveness. To forgive you must first acknowledge the things as they are, for else what are you forgiving?

It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept, before they will forgive.

The end of your life drama

The ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as a potential threat or which it will attempts to use for its own ends. The ego’s basic patterns, such as resistance, control, power, greed, defence and attack, are designed to combat its own deep-seated fear and sense of lack. But solving the ego’s problem won’t solve anything, because the ego is the problem.

Two egos will eventually result in drama, or conflict. But also when you are alone you can create drama, e.g. through feeling sorry for yourself, feeling guilty or anxious, or letting future and pas obscure the present.

When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life. Nobody can have an argument with you, no matter how hard he or she tries. An argument implies identification with your mind and a mental position, as well as resistance and rejection of the other person’s position.

Impermanence and the cycles of life

Through allowing the ‘isness’ of all things, a deeper dimension underneath the play of opposites reveals itself to you as an abiding presence, an unchanging deep stillness, an uncaused joy beyond good and bad. This is the joy of being.

You can be active and enjoy manifesting and creating new forms an circumstances, but you shouldn’t be identified with them. You do not need them to give you a sense of self. They are not your life, only your life situation.

When a condition is judged as ‘good’ by your mind, be it a possession, relationship, social role, place or your physical body, the mind attaches itself to it and identifies with it. It makes you feel happy, makes you feel good about yourself, and it may become part of who you are or think you are. But nothing lasts in this dimension. Either it changes, ends, or undergoes a polarity shift. When a condition or situation that the mind has attached itself to and identified with changes or disappears, the mind cannot accept it. It will cling to the disappearing condition and resist the change. It will revisit the past and set desires for the future.

When your are perceived to have a beautiful physical appearance, and you let your mind attach to this condition—let it make you happy, you set yourself up for unhappiness. Your beauty will fade. But when you connect to the formless and timeless life within, you could watch the fading of external form from a place of serenity and peace. The external form would become increasingly transparent to the light shining through from your ageless true nature. The external beauty would transcend to a spiritual one. A beauty that never fades but can perceived just as well.

Happiness and unhappiness are in fact one, only the illusion of time separates them.

This is not to say one shouldn’t appreciate pleasant or beautiful things. Quite the contrary, you should appreciate the pleasant and beautiful things with your fullest attention. It does however mean that you shouldn’t seek something through them that they cannot give—an identity, a sense of permanency and fulfilment—is a recipe for frustration and suffering.

The whole advertising industry and consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy.

Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused but arises from within as the joy of being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, which is also the natural state, not something you need to work hard for or struggle to attain.

When you realise that nothing can give you true fulfilment, you are one step away from despair—and one step away from enlightenment.

The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of being.

The goal of life is not to be happy but to be at peace.

Using and relinquishing negativity

All negativity is resistance. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair.

The ego beliefs that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get what it wants. It believes that through it, it can attract a desirable condition or dissolve and undesirable one.

When you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let go or create positive change, it would mean losing part of your identity. You will ignore, deny, or sabotage the positive in your life. It is common, and also insane.

Humans are the only species in nature that can experience negativity. Watch a plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, let it teach you being. Let it teach you integrity; being one, yourself, and real. Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how to not make living and dying into a problem.

The resistance created by the mind has the aspiration to dissolve undesirable conditions. But this is an elusion. The resistance that it creates, be it anger or irritation, is far more disturbing than the original cause it is attempting to resolve.

Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment that you completely accept your non-peace, the non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace.

When you accept what is, every moment, is the best moment. That is enlightenment.

The nature of compassion

Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. There are two sides to this bond.

First, you share the vulnerability and mortality of your physical form with every other human and with every living being. Second, on the level of being, you share eternal, radiant life.

Toward a different order of reality

The best way to make the world a better place is to be at peace, and let other experience your mode of being. Surely you can focus on the external, the physical, but true lasting change that will transform the human condition is through consciousness.

The meaning of surrender

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and reconnects you with being.

We should practice to surrender to the present moment and eliminate the mind’s resistance to what is.

You do not need to be happy with the way things are, but rather recognise them as they are, and focusing on finding the most suitable approach to address it.

Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. Not only your psychological form but also your physical form becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different parts of the body, and the body as a whole contracts.

Through non-resistance, the quality of your consciousness and therefore the quality of whatever you are doing is enhanced immeasurably. The results will then look after themselves. It is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that is the main determinant of what kind of future you will experience, so to surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change.

From mind energy to spiritual energy

The first step to surrendering is acknowledging that there is resistance. Observe how the mind creates resistance and how it labels the situation, yourself or others. By observing the resistance you will see that it serves no purpose.

Surrender in personal relationships

If you cannot accept what is, by implication you will not be able to accept anybody the way they are. You will judge, criticise, label, reject or attempt to change people.

If you continuously make the now into a means to an end in the future, you will also make every person you encounter or relate with into a means to an end. The partner is then of secondary importance to you.

When in pain, face it and feel it fully. Don’t think about it, feel 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.

The power to choose

Choice implies a high degree of consciousness, without it, you have no choice. The mind is conditioned by the past and always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with. Dis-identification with the mind enables choice.