THE POWER OF NOW

by Eoin Scolard

Before I began to write this, I was looking at a blank page.  I like to look at life like that – as a blank page waiting for my input into it.  What will I write on this blank page?

Every moment of your life is effectively a blank page.  You get to choose what to write as you script your own life and your experiences of life.  The difficulty most of us have is that we’re not conscious enough to know this all the time.  And so we stumble through life as it brings us all kinds of experiences, some of which we have great difficulty with.  It appears as if someone else is writing on our blank page.  However, we can at least write up a heading on the page, can’t we?  Right now, your consciousness is focused on that heading, so right now you’re accessing the Power of Now.

Now gives you choice.  Being aware of the Now means you have infinite possibilities available to you.  You can at least begin to script the heading on the blank page that is in front of you.  Let’s imagine the page as the next 5 minutes.  What will you put down as the heading?  Make sure it is something that you can begin to sense with your inner body – that awareness that we being to touch when we drop deep within the Now.  So something like PEACE or TRUST or SURRENDER would be appropriate.  Notice your reaction, if any, to those words.  This is the beauty of the Power of Now – we can use it anytime to bring attention to the resistance or the defences of the entrenched opinions of the ego mind.  The ego mind cannot understand SURRENDER, it does not want PEACE and has no capacity to TRUST.   So when we begin the process of dropping into the Now, the ego mind will always rebel.  Eckhart Tolle says that

“the single most vital step on your journey to enlightenment is this; learn to disidentify from your mind.  Every time you create a gap in the stream of the mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”

That word ‘gap’ is a very powerful anchor which can bring you into a state of awareness of the vast presence within you.  Anytime you find yourself focusing on external things only (let’s say words or events) try and also notice the gap between the words and the space between the events.  Eventually you will also become aware of the underlying sense of space that allows everything to manifest – we call this space the unmanifested.  You can’t see it, you can’t hear it but at a very deep level you can sense it.  The simplest analogy might be when someone is playing the piano.  You hear the notes, yes. You sense the rhythm and cadence of the tune, yes.  But you can’t hear the silence between the notes and yet it is there and is a vital part of the music.  Without the underlying silence, the notes would have nowhere to be formed.  So pay attention to the silence too.  Enjoy the content (the form) and the underlying silence or space (the formless).

Everything that comes into creation comes from that formlessness – into form.  It’s the same as the blank page of your life.  It exists only to allow you to write on it, to put shape to it, to give it form.  As you become more and more aware of your connection to that infinite space, you begin to disidentify from your mind and the incessant stream, of thoughts that are mostly useless and repetitive.  You begin to deepen your connection to the here and now and the incredible potential within each moment.  Be careful though because you cannot use the mind to stop the mind!  The more you think about not thinking, the busier your mind gets.  So it’s better to begin to bring your attention somewhere else away from the mind, to your physical body.  Becoming aware of your breathing, for instance, takes some of the energy away from the mind.  Noticing each breath and the subsequent rise and fall of your diaphragm will gradually lead you deeper and deeper into your body.  You may discover physical manifestations that you weren’t previously aware of – tightness in the jaw, pain in the back, knots in your tummy.  This is one of the benefits of becoming aware – you can now breathe into the tightness and constriction anywhere you find it.

Sometimes you will drop below the emotional or physical levels and begin to sense the energy of the inner body.  You could call it presence but the labels aren’t important.  What is important is that it is this inner body or presence that resonates with those words I used at the beginning – TRUST, PEACE, SURRENDER.  The inner body comes really alive as you disidentify from your mind, your emotions and even your physical body.  You can clearly see all your fears and constriction, your suppressed aggression, your defence mechanisms, all the old patterns, conditioning and games your ego plays and you can smile at it all.  You are not defined by them anymore.  In the NOW you are FREE and, after all, freedom is   all that most of us want to experience in our lives.

I hope that you will come and join me for a highly experiential and deeply peaceful day at Chantry Hill on Saturday 26 November as we explore together The Power of Now and experience the freedom it has to offer.  Click here for more info and to book your place.