Who Would They Be Without It?

(Disclaimer:  These chosen excerpts from Eckhart Tolle do not apply to those who are in immediate physical danger.  This is for those who have their basic survival needs met, who live day-to-day existence in ‘the matrix.’  Also, this will be my third and final post of material from this book.  If people resonate, they may feel free to obtain and read The Power of Now.)

Observing without judgment allows you to step outside of reacting to situations in survival mode.

The present moment is your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of Being.  

The mind in itself is not dysfunctional.  It is a wonderful tool.  Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.   

The mind cannot know a tree.  It can only know facts or information about a tree.  My mind cannot know you, but can only know labels, judgments, facts, and opinions about you.  Being, however, knows directly.

There is a place for mind and mind-knowledge.  It is in the practical realm of day-to-day living. However, when it takes over all aspects of your life, including your relationships with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, unchecked, may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.

Once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with the mind, which of course includes the emotions, you step out of it.  You become present.  When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

The moment you realize you are not present, you are present.  Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it.  Another factor has come in – something that is not of the mind – the witnessing presence.

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time – the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.  This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be.  The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form.  Both are illusions.  

The more you are focused on time – past and future – the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.  

Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.

Past and future have no reality of their own, just as the moon has no light of its own.

There is never a time when your life is not “this moment.”  Is this not a fact?  When you think of the past or future, you do so now.

You can refer to past and future for practical purposes, but have your main center of focus be the Now.  Doing so makes your mind more sharp and focused when using it.

"Clock time" is time used to deal with practical aspects of life.  "Psychological time" is time that is stained with harmful emotions and attitudes.  Use clock time as needed, but don’t get ensnared within psychological time.  

Clock time is not just making an appointment or planning a trip.  It includes learning from the past so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over.  Also, setting goals and working toward them.  Also, predicting the future by means of patterns and laws – physical, mathematical, and so on.  But even here within the sphere of practical living, where we cannot do without reference to past and future, the present moment remains the essential factor.  Any lesson from the past becomes relevant and is applied now.  Any planning as well as working toward achieving a particular goal is done now.

In the absence of psychological time, your sense of self is derived from Being, not from your personal past.  The psychological need to become anything other than who you already are is no longer there.  On the level of your life situation, you may indeed become wealthy, knowledgeable, successful, free of this or that, but in the deeper dimension of Being, you are complete and whole Now.

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.  You don’t seek permanency where it cannot be found – in the world of form, of gain and loss, birth and death.  You don’t demand that situations, conditions, places, or people should make you happy, and then suffer when they don’t live up to your expectations.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.  Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free Now.

The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence.  The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.  Your degree of presence is what determines your quality of consciousness. 

If there is no joy, ease, or lightness in what you are doing, it does not necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing.  It may be sufficient to change the how.  “How” is always more important than “what.”  See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.  Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents.  This implies that you also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.

When you act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.

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

Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have any problem at this moment – not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now.  Do you have a problem now?  Find the life underneath your life situation.

There are no problems.  There are only matters – to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the 'isness' of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with.

Should a matter arise that you need to deal with now, your action will be clear and incisive if it arises out of present-moment awareness.  It is also more likely to be effective.  It will not be a reaction coming from the past conditioning of your mind, but an intuitive response to the matter.  In other instances, when the time-bound mind would have reacted, you will find it more effective to do nothing, and just stay centered in the Now.

When the compulsive striving away from the Now ceases, neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being.  You have found the life underneath your life situation.

Everything is honored, but nothing matters.  Forms are born and die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms.  You know that “nothing real can be threatened.”  When this is your state of Being, how can you not succeed?  You have succeeded already.

Some people get angry when they hear me say that problems are illusions.  I am threatening to take away their sense of who they are.  They have invested so much time in a false sense of self.  For many years, they have unconsciously defined their whole identity in terms of their problems or their suffering.  Who would they be without it?