I haven’t been posting much lately. I’m seeing a chiropractor
some mornings at the time I usually write. More important--trees are blooming. I
don’t mean apple and pear and plum, but maple and oak and alder, etc. The kind
of pollinators that many of us are allergic to. In the mountains of western
North Carolina, trees outnumber people by a thousand to one (I made that number
up; it may be three thousand to one).
But that’s fine, there’s a pill for allergies. Only the pill
makes a lot of us drowsy. When I’m taking allergy meds, I don’t have the usual
access to my brain. I can stare at a computer screen for quite awhile and have
no clue how to express anything that seems worthwhile to say about mindfulness.
I’m grateful, however, that as I study in the mornings, I
find others who have profound things to say:
---
Nobody’s life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn’t it
a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is
self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. The pain that you
create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious
resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of
judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity
of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this
in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind
always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more
you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like
this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free
of pain, of suffering — and free of the egoic mind.
Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because
it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and
future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in
fact inseparable.
Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this
world, but there comes a point where they take over our lives, and this is
where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.
An increasingly heavy burden of time has been accumulating
in the human mind. All individuals are suffering under this burden, but they
also keep adding to it every moment whenever they ignore or deny that precious
moment or reduce it to a means of getting to some future moment, which only
exists in the mind, never in actuality. The accumulation of time in the
collective and individual human mind also holds a vast amount of residual pain
from the past.
you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others,
if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in
you, then don’t create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to
deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating time?
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the
primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief
visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to
past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life
situation. Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile,
more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?
The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or
awful.
Yes--It is as it is.
Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling
process, this continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhappiness.
By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its
resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be. This will
give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external conditions, the
state of true inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if necessary
or possible.
-from Eckhart Tolle's The
Power of Now
