The Power Of Now

It's another book by Eckhart Tolle and I happen to have the audiobook version and have been listening to that today.

To say that the book, A New Earth, arrived at the right time for me is an understatement.  With all that is happening in my life at the moment, some I can tell you, some I can intimate to you but all of it can be summed up as the most intense 14 weeks of my entire life and it's still going on.

I've gone from being pretty low to complete ecstasy and everywhere in between.  I've demolished the old me and rebuilt a new version, for us in the software world I'm around about Version 2.1.9 at the moment :-)  I've had to let go of the old me and found in myself so many new things that were there all along.  I've made some people very happy and I've made some people very sad.  I am upset myself about the sadness I've caused and I'm happy about the joy (I think) I may have brought to other people.

Talking in riddles as I am leads me to saying why the book A New Earth arrived at a good time for me.  Something happened to me on Monday night that was as powerful as the death of my father although I knew he was dying and had been for a while.  On Monday I had an inkling of what was going to happen but it hit me anyway and it hit me very hard.  I had to go for a very long walk at night, in the drizzle but I hardly noticed that or indeed where I walked.  I then stood outside looking up at the stars for about an hour - saw some shooting stars and wondered at the immenseness of it all.  I got back indoors and had the merest of claustrophobic attacks as I lay in bed so I got up again and went outside again and spent a few hours just gazing at the sky and trying to work out what sort of animal was at the end of my garden with golden eyes that stared at me and blinked in the reflected light from my kitchen lights pouring through the window.

The hurt was immense, as if someone HAD died but that wasn't what it was at all.  I knew that I'd just have to take the pain and the hit of it and there was nothing I could do about it.  I also knew that I could actually do something about it now, I finally had the toolkit to make the pain go away and to deal with this and many other things that had - up until recently cursed me.  The destructive voices, the pain body and my overactive mind.  All these things are addresses in a New Earth and it's been less than a week since I finally was able to be at peace with who I am, what I am and started to pull down the last bastions of my destructive inner self.

For whatever reason Monday night was only one of the "issues" I am dealing with at the moment and post embargo I'll let you know what on earth is going on! :-)  So after having that episode of being upset and then finding it all too much I remembered that I could o something about it.  There are a few methods Eckhart Tolle uses to remind you how to get past problems like the one I was feeling on Monday.  Firstly, the event had already happened and it was in the past.  I could do nothing to stop it, it wasn't my actions and I could do nothing to change it.  As it was in the past it could no longer hurt me.  So "this too will pass" is a good mantra to repeat to yourself.  You have to also get yourself out of the thinking about it or listening to the pain body part of your head that enjoys making you suffer.  So looking up at the stars, concentrating on your breathing disengages the thoughts, the voices and the pain body and repeating the words "this too will pass" referring to the pain I was feeling took it away and I was able to control it to some extent.  It didn't quite work when I was trying to go to sleep but I just carried on with the breathing and the moment and repeating the words and eventually fell asleep.  

In the morning, I did wake early but I was in a much much better place.  The day was a bit up and down but a long walk in the woods once again connected me to the outside world and allowed me to just be still out there and again I used the mantra every time I felt the thought coming back that was making me sad.  Then, amazingly, my head or something came up with a really positive spin on the whole sad story and suddenly, it wasn't sad at all, it was a joyful thing, a positive experience but, and here is the but.  It was in the past, it had happened and so nothing I felt about it mattered anyway but I liked the positive spin because it means if the feelings come back that I also have that to help.

I feel quite strange at the moment because I have stopped the incessant planning and plotting and scheming I used to do.  I have been using this new found freedom, let's call it space for want of another word, to consider what I should now do with myself going forward.  It's not planning, it is more introverted and inward looking than that.  I'm finally getting nearer to the point where the answer lies and yet I don't have the answer by any means.  I no longer have the voices in my head putting me down, nor does the pain body exist anywhere like it used to.  I'm in charge of those, when they appear I can combat those and it doesn't take up much time.  In combatting them I've also got rid of the planning and the whir or calculations and scenario crunching I used to do.  All of this has left the feeling of space in my head and in my chest - it is a most bizarre feeling a sort of emptiness and lightness.

Talking of lightness and going off subject, I finally dipped below 15 stone this morning and was delighted that I weighed 15 stone clothed and with a jumper on (it is pretty cold all of a sudden).  But I digress.  The main point of the post is that the book arrived just in time, the situation could not have been foreseen 48 hours beforehand but happen it did and under normal circumstances it would have sent me into a tail spin for at least a week if not a month.  I was in a tail spin for about 2 hours, in a shallow dive for about 5 hours but after that, I was OK with what had happened, managed to alleviate the majority of the pain it caused me and was able to quickly and positively see the upside of the situation.  It's only 48 hours since then and I'm back under control again.  I'm sure there will be the odd trigger that will bring the pain back and I've had a few of those today but a 30 second stop, breath, focus, mantra and it goes away again.

If you get a chance to read A New Earth then do so - you have to be ready for it and I hope that it turns up in time to make a difference in your life.  Quite how it did for me is interesting, could there really be that level of Karma out there?  Perhaps there is after all....