Forget your life situation and pay attention to your life!

Excerpt from Eckhart Tolle's 'Power of Now' : 

Your 'life situation' exists in time.  Your life is now.  Your 'life situation' is mind-stuff.  Your life is real.

Find the "narrow gate that leads to life".  It is called the Now.  Narrow your life down to this moment.  Your life situation may be full of problems - most are - but find out if you have any problems at this moment.  Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now.  Do you have a problem now?

When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution.  So, whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation.

Use your senses fully.  Be where you are.  Look around.  Just look, don't interpret.  See the light, shapes, colours, textures.  Be aware of the silent presence of each thing.  Be aware of the space that allows everything to be.  Listen to the sounds; don't judge them.  Listen to the silence underneath the sounds.  Touch something - anything - and feel and acknowledge it's Being.

Observe the rhythm of your breathing; feel the air flowing in and out, feel the life energy inside your body.  Allow everything to be, within and without.  Allow the "isness" of all things.  Move deeply into the Now.

You are leaving behind the deadening world of mental abstraction, of time.  You are getting out of the insane mind that is draining you of your life energy, just as [the collective mind] is slowly poisoning and destroying the Earth.  You are awakening out of the dream of time and into the present.

Worry

The more I worry, the less life flows, the more it all knots up until it comes to a head in thoroughly crap day or an explosive argument with Catherine, my beloved partner.

On a moment to moment basis I am aware (when I am alert enough, conscious enough) of my mind as it churns out possible things to be concerned about.  Future events that may happen (Ooh, I hope not!) or may not happen (Ooh what if that doesn't come through?) that my mind would mull over and, indeed, does mull over fairly constantly.

As I remain sober almost a year on, meditate and study all these amazing and simple teachings available to us,  I am becoming aware of how much useless activity is being generated by my mind.   And it's not just useless, but it generates worried and fearful emotions that cost me energy.  This in turn costs me in body tension and posture.

What I find myself doing in response to this realization is waiting for this process to stop.  And so, of course, it never does.  I am once again looking to the future when all will be well, when in reality all is well now.  As Eckhart Tolle is fond of urging us to ask, "What problems have I got now, in this moment?".

The real challenge is to accept in full the totality of one's self and where you are at now.

Interesting side effect of meditation or mind watching, is as one becomes aware of how much mental chatter is going on, it feels as if it is increasing.  I don't believe that this is actually the case though.  It's like, you see trees every day but only when you look at them closely do you notice how many leaves are on them.  And the closer you look the more leaves you see.  Sooner or later, if you're going to see the tree as it is, you have got to step back and stop following every branch.

Pain-body Attack!

Eckhart Tolle talks about the pain body as part of his teachings. A clever way of looking at the schizophrenic behaviour of humans. To paraphrase, we all have a pain body built up from years of (mostly self inflicted) suffering that takes us over from time to time. We then freak out and try to draw another human into an argument, or get wasted and/or do something we later regret.

So I'm looking at my bank accounts today and I am shocked to discover there's nothing left! Instant sinking feeling that comes out of years of living with 'not quite enough' and I'm taken over by the pain body for the next several hours.

Now I used to spend most of my life in the pain body, identified with my pain, angry at it, sad about it. I had several ways of dealing with it but they all involved escaping it temporarily.

Nowadays I feel it, and when I'm taken in by it I act it out but I always know it's just the pain body, it will pass, it's not me. I am not the sum of my thoughts and feelings, I am the witness, the observer.

This however does not quite cut the mustard when you apologise later to your partner for acting like an asshole over a few pounds. In fact, I find my pain body has succeeded in activating her pain body and I am now apologising to an entity that doesn't take any prisoners!

We could find ourselves in a vicious circle of abuse very easily, and the human race regularly does.
Jesus said, turn the other cheek and forgive them for they know not what they do. He knew the score. When you hurt someone it's not you doing the hurting. When they hurt you, it's not them. The trick to overcoming this madness, to evolving out of it is forgiveness. Don't take it personally. Laugh at yourself. Breathe and accept the shit for it's all completely temporary and impersonal.