A walk on the slippery rocks...

I have spent a good piece of the past six months reading Eckhart Tolle, who I was first introduced to about eight years ago. Back then, I read his book The Power of Now and here in Costa Rica I have been reading his follow up book A New Earth. Both have been very powerful reads for me. I thought I would share some of the insights from his work.

The one paragraph that most stands out for me from The Power of Now makes this point. (I paraphrase) Thinking, he writes, is an incredibly useful tool. It is one that enables us to understand how the world works, to solve problems, to create new technologies and more. And, yet it is a tool and not more than that, just like a hammer is a tool. If we were to see a person using a hammer non-stop, banging and banging the hammer over and over during his or her waking hours, we'd quickly figure the person was insane, unable to stop the hammering. In the same way, many of us (me included) are unable to stop thinking. To just put our minds on hold and to be, rather than to think.

And the key to stopping our minds from thinking is simple awareness. If I am aware that there are thoughts in my head...who is it that is aware? The true I. The real me (no Who reference intended). There is something behind the thoughts, someone. And this one, suggests Tolle, is the Divine, the Truth, the I, inherently connected to God or the Source of Life or Energy (call this what you like).

I have found that what he writes is absolutely true in my own life. Often I use my mind for very important tasks: thinking about solving a problem in my screenplay, planning out a day or a to-do list, thinking about parenting issues with Tara. And many other times I use it for no purpose whatsoever: mind racing with song lyrics, with a grievance from the near or distant past, with a concern about the future that may or may not come true. It is a wonderful and remarkable occurrence when I suddenly become aware of what my mind has unconsciously been doing. In becoming aware of the racing thoughts, my mind suddenly quiets as if realizing the lack of value in those thoughts. And, the world immediately jumps into sharper focus. Colors brighten, sounds sharpen. I am living in the Now. The very present. This exact moment.

There is an interesting and I think counter-intuitive side to all this. My pre-Tolle perception of some of this "new-agey" thinking is that such thinking requires one to simply accept what is and do nothing to change one's situation. While acceptance of what is is indeed critical to Tolle's ideas, living in the present and refusing to allow one's mind to ramble on is a very pro-active way of being. It means that when I am presented with a situation, I do (should) not allow my mind to worry about it. Either I accept it and be with it; or, I decide to engage my mind in a thinking process to solve it or resolve it. When my mind has offered up what it can, I get back to living in the Now and drawing power from that deep source. It's incredibly empowering.

One exercise that Tolle suggests and that I have found very useful is to become aware of your thinking by engaging yourself deeply in the question: "What will my next thought be?" Imagine yourself a cat staring intently at a mouse-hole just waiting for the mouse to come out. The mouse is your next thought. I have found that when I do this, it takes quite a while for the mouse to pop out, for the thought to come. I am so intently being the cat, the observer, the one who is aware, that the mouse, unrelenting thoughts, has no power to emerge. Try it.

Pura vida...

Jerry