Opening Up To The Present Moment

“ ‘I’ll be whatever you want me to be,” says Life or the Now. ‘I’ll treat you the way you treat me. If you see me as a problem, I will be a problem to you. If you treat me as an obstacle, I will be an obstacle.’ “
-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

In honor of Valentine’s Day, this post is a love letter to one of my favorite books, a bit of an oldie but a goodie: A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. I hope I can inspire you to read it for the first time or maybe read it again to refresh your memory. A New Earth is a follow up to Tolle’s popular The Power of Now, which is also great, yet I find A New Earth to be more in-depth and transformative.

Before I get into the main message – I’d like you to ask yourself: have you ever watched your thoughts for a whole day? Really stopped and been a conscious observer of your constant, endless stream of thoughts? Some people live their whole life never watching their thoughts – completely asleep to the fact that their thoughts have taken them over. They have not yet heard the call to “wake up!” So as an experiment with yourself today, watch your inner thoughts as you go about your day. My guess is like me, many of you will notice how easy and comfortable it is to slip into just two different thought forms: thoughts about the past or thoughts about the future.
And likely very few moments of acceptance about what you are doing right now. Which is essentially just being. It sounds so easy – to just BE. But not quite, right?

So just WHO is that voice doing the incessant thinking? Eckhart Tolle does a wonderful job explaining this by helping us to recognize and label the Ego self, separate from the Higher self. He explains the Ego in A New Earth:

“Most people are still completely identified with the incessant stream of mind, of compulsive thinking, most of it repetitive and pointless. There is no “I” apart from their thought process and the emotions that go with them. This is the meaning of being spiritually unconscious. When told there is a voice in their head that never stops speaking, they say ‘What voice?’ or angrily deny it, which of course is the voice, is the thinker, is the unobserved mind.”

Who are you without the constant stream of thinking?

As you go about your day, be aware, and most importantly – dis-identify – with the voice in your head. For instance, notice your thoughts and feelings after reading a news article. Does your mind take you out of the present moment and somersault into fearful and repetitive thinking of the future and “what if”? Notice how much of the day is spent comparing things to something you saw or did in the past, something that bothered you or made you happy, or something you forgot to do or wish you had done differently. Or is your mind talking about what you’re looking forward to next week, or in 20 years, or telling you to lose weight, or nagging you for skipping a workout, or what if you get sick, or what if global warming melts us all, etc, etc. All a jumble of thoughts, worries, hopes, and fears clouding over the one moment that really matters: right now. And drowning out the one true voice that really matters: your Divine, higher self.

But don’t get discouraged. Gaining awareness of your thoughts is a huge step. You’re waking up. And by gaining awareness, we welcome change. And we open a door to a new way of living on Earth.

I too fall into this thinking pattern at times if I loosen the leash on my Ego. However, what has changed for me is the freedom gained from being aware of my thoughts. As you begin to consciously wake up and watch the voice in your head, you will soon come to recognize it for what it is: the Ego. Or as I like to refer to it: the “little you”.

As you watch and listen to the “little you” and begin to acknowledge it for what it is, you will begin to notice the stillness you possess in the background and the spaces between all of your thoughts. That stillness is your Divine Self calmly listening and waiting for her awareness to be known in the power of a quiet moment. She thrives in the spaces between your thoughts. The Divine Self is never fearful, always loving, intuitive, creative, and self healing – and is so often drowned out by the Ego.

Alright then! Still with me? So we all are human and we all have an Ego and a “little me” to contend with. But that doesn’t mean it needs to control us and keep us on a hamster wheel of thoughts! There is a positive to all this. How can we work and co-exist with the Ego and become a more present, creative, and purposeful person?

What I love about A New Earth is the guidance Toole gives on how to manage the Ego and take the power away from the “little you” so you can live the life you were meant to live.

• Observe.
• Wake up.
• Be aware.
• Accept the present moment.

When I notice myself thinking over and over about something that’s happening in the future, or if I hear my “little me” saying something negative about myself, I can now listen, detach, and sometimes even laugh at it. I “watch” the Ego. And by watching it, it loses it’s power and control. It’s that simple. The Ego starts to dissolve as you acknowledge it. As soon as you recognize the Ego for what it is, just a part of being human and not something that controls you, it loses it’s grip on you. You will notice that over time the constant chatter and thinking slows down, because you give less power to it and more power to the NOW.

This present moment awakening then allows you to gain true insight into what you should do or not do in the moment – from a space of awareness and intuition, rather than a space of fear or confusion.

Explains Toole,
“The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of the ego. The ego can never be in alignment with the present moment, which is to say, aligned with life, since its very nature compels it to ignore, resist, or devalue the NOW.”
-A New Earth

So I’ll wrap it up for now. I hope this has reminded or inspired you to watch your thoughts today – and begin to take away the hold the Ego may have on you. While it’s impossible to do justice to the full power of A New Earth in one short post, maybe this small taste will encourage you to read it. Toole’s words are written in such a way that the book takes on a frequency of it’s own that you can align to while slowly easing the grip of the Ego.

What if we all watched our thoughts more, released the “little me” voice and fear mentality, and existed right here in the present moment – where peace can reside? Wouldn’t our world change overnight?

Happy Valentine’s Day and happy reading!

In gratitude,
Nicki

“There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges – the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.”
-Eckhart Tolle