To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way good or bad. There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of failure when they wither or disintegrate, and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise or for transformation to happen. If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refusing to go with the flow of life, and you will suffer. Dissolution is needed for new growth to happen. One cycle cannot exist without the other. --Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now Someone recently was asked whether they were left wing, right or center in the spectrum of politics. Their reply was probably the best I have ever heard. Why do we always have to be left or right..why cant we go UP for a change. This article is about going UP in our thinking and processing this experience of religion. Eventually the only sane choice is to leave the Flatlands of two dimensional thinking, groups and movement and simply go UP. The first step in rising from this limited dimension in thinking and being is to experience, which is far beyond just learning, the Art of Acceptance of how things are and not how we wish them to be. All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain bodyThe ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get what it wants.... The fact is, of course, that negativity DOES NOT WORK. Instead of attracting a desirable condition, it stops it from arising. Instead of dissolving an undesirable one, it keeps it in place. Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done-by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. IT IS ALSO INSANE. Power of Now It takes a lot of energy to not accept things as they are in life. Look at all the energy we spend thinking, talking, relating, bitching, moaning and following the religious drama from our past. Carolyn Myss, author of Energy Anatomy uses the simple analogy of a day beginning with each of us having 100 energy points to use to keep our mental, emotional and physical life going. Lets say it takes 75 units just to have a normal day of running the body so we dont simply want to lie down and sleep it away. If we give another 25 energy points to ruminating about the past, being angry and bitter, 15 points specifically to those few names in our past who hurt us or whose actions we cannot fathom, another 20 points to fear about the future, which in turn ignites another 15 point need to be angry about the pastwe are in deep trouble. 75+25+15+20+15=150. Since we only have 100 to begin with, and we are expending another 75 units of negativity, we really end up with 25 to run our life and 75 angry, bitchy, moody, bitter and hard-put-upon units of energy that will give us everything from insomnia and cancer to anxiety and depression. Its an oft told tale and remember. IT IS INSANE. In Western culture we find great lessons in the determination, energy and drive of the Salmon. It swims upstream, sometimes jumping into the jaws of waiting bears, sometimes landing between the rocks where the journey ends with no way out, but mostly making it back home to spawn, and of course dying relatively soon in a heap of stinking fish. We are encouraged to swim upstream against the current and fight, fight, fight to be successful or to win. I say remember the Sunfish, which also lives in the same river, reproduces and lives a heck of a lot longer in eddies and calm pools along the way. Sunfish just are. They dont subject themselves to waiting bears and expending enormous amounts of energy to get someplace when the someplace they are, is just fine. Sunfish are an accepting lot and while they no doubt notice the Salmon streaming by the thousands, do not seem to have a need to follow or join that particular swim into oblivion. They have their own. Dont look for peace. Dont look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender. When you accept what is, every moment is best moment. That is enlightenment. The Power of Now Getting Out of the Past and Staying Out of the Future. People in recovery from various life experiences spend an inordinate amount of time in either the past being angry, or the future being anxious. Withdrawing ones attention and energy from either when really not needed to better your understanding or day is a genuine skill in healthy recovery. Why do we take medication for depression? Generally because we are angry about the past and cant let it go or feel unlistened to and unencouraged to move on. Why do we take medication for anxiety? Generally because we are thinking into the future and coming up short of answers to how and when going from if only of the past to what if in the future. It is all non-acceptance of the NOW and takes an awful lot of negative energy to maintain. Hospitals are filled with us humans who have let the disappointments of the past and the fear of the future fill our bodies with cancerous tissues and our minds with spinning thoughts. What you refer to as your life should more accurately be called your life situation. It is psychological time: past and future. Certain things in the past didnt go the way you wanted them to go. You are still resisting what happened in the past and now you are resisting what is. Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the NOW and therefore your unhappiness. Forget about your life situation for awhile and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is NOW. Your life situation is Mind-Stuff. Your life is REAL. The Power of Now A word about Ego The term ego means different things to different people, but for the sake of this discussion, it simply means the false self and the part of our mind that simply spins out thoughts to survive. Tolle calls it, the phantom self. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through CONSTANT THINKING. I call constant thinkingspinning. Mind spinning in the past or future is total non-acceptance of what is. If I had been asked, who are you in the past, I might have said I am a minister, or I am an EMT, or even now, I am a Massage Therapist. Of course, this is not who I am; only what I did or do. The real answer to who are you is simply I am who I am. (Sound familiar?) I cant resist a bit of theology here. When Moses asked God who He was the answer was I am who I am. Evidently a good case can be made in the Hebrew that this is not such a lofty statement as it is an idiom for None of your business. So perhaps the concept of the Great I Am is simply a call to mind our own business! At any rate, the ego hardly knows itself. It lives mostly in the past and keeps us angry over the past or fearful of the future. It is the dysfunctional mind and in no way accepts the present moment or how life really is. It is a basic faithlessness that God, Life, Being knows what it is doing. Because of it, we often have to medicate to cope. Which leads to a few observations about emotions. Emotion is the place where the mind and the body meet. Emotions are the effect of the mind upon the body. Our experience with religion has provoked many emotions and this recovery from religion can take its toll if we allow it. Successful recovery depends on our being in touch with our emotions and not denying them. I was always brought up not to say that or feel that way and it causes us to bury our real feelings, get stepped on and sometimes used as a punching bag by others, reluctant to speak up and scream enough! If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotions, or rather FEEL it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between the, 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. The Power of Now In short, if your church, or your beliefs or your decisions give you a stomachache, but your mind says dont feel that way, or dont let the devil fill your mind with such thoughts, your truth lies in the stomachache. Your true beliefs are be being held in place with fear, shame or guilt. The beliefs are bogus and your body knows it! Accept the truth of your emotions and dont let the mind (ego) spin you an answer that will only keep you in place for a short time before another stomach ache comes up to remind you of the truth of the matter. Make it a habit to ask yourself: Whats going on inside me at this moment? The question will point you in the right direction. But DONT analyze it, just watch it. The Power of Now I was always taught to repress my emotions and feelings for the greater good. It is destructive, painful, dishonest and also INSANE. Dont do it! A word about Suicide Some few, who simply cannot cope with the emotions of loss, or disillusionment (in reality we dont want illusions so DIS-illusionment is an excellent and powerful form of recovery), take their physical lives in a despair over change and loss that only the person so burdened can understand. I have lost minister friends and members to suicide. I have, in very brief, yet real, moments of despair, felt that feeling myself. I have had many people, who hear me acknowledge that, tell me so have I. Its a thought most have from time to time when confusion of thought is overwhelming. When Saul fell on his sword it was stated that the reason was that the battle went hard against him and I have used that in funeral sermons to comfort those who are going to be tempted to take on the guilt of not having done enough. Sometimes the battle simply goes hard against one and a mistake is made in understanding what exactly is going on in ones life. Suicide is an extreme form on non-acceptance of what is. It can come at a time in life of great change, confusing the death of an idea, a way of being, a system, or a hope with physical death. What is really dying the ego, the false self and it is at this time when mistakes of understanding are made. In short, that evil little bastard of our ego that lives in the past and projects into the future but wont accept reality is taking a hit. In a bad moment, it spins and thinks and thinks until the mind eats the mind. Confusing the death of an idea or way of being it manifests itself in the wrong idea that the person must die too, and we have a tragedy. We can honor those who through no weakness or fault of their own, simply did not know or did not have the support, or whose perspectives did not allow for mistakes either personal from within, or inflicted from without to survive. Suicides dont go to hell. There is no hell and the God you think you know is not the God that is. 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 pat powerless and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever don to you could touch even the slightest radiant essence of who you are. When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. The Power of Now The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle is not just an answer to acceptance of the way things are, but THE answer to how the mind and spirit really works in us. It gives us guidance as to how we can get out of the past that fuels our anger and stay out of the future, which amplifies our anxiety. It also is a higher and more mature way to be in a world that deludes us into merely moving in the two-dimensional world known as Flatland. Go up. Rise above the experience of Religion gone bad and uncomfortable change and grow through. Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment of resistance---surrender---is the end of mind as your master., the impostor pretending to be YOU, the false god. All judgment and negativity dissolve. The realm of Being, which has been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. Within that peace, there is great joy Within that joy is love --The Power of Now A truth that will help survivors of religious abuse and change to accept, surrender to what is and leave Flatland behind. |
