Steven Spielberg once said that, he loved what he do so much he didn't feel like he is "working" a single day. I often wonder what does obstacles mean to him? Has that ever made him think of the future and worry him? But perhaps it is the idea of "living in the NOW" that carried him from one day to the next? The fact that he enjoyed what he do seems to justify that. This interestingly mirrored what was advocated in a book that I recently read, "The Power of NOW" by Eckhart Tolle.What appeals to me in this book is the writing style, the sometimes poetic way to discuss the importance of the awareness of NOW. I have not finished reading it yet, but I can see what the writer had written so far, was aimed at "describing" the process of living in the NOW, rather than "explaining" the importance to do so.
The author used two time frameworks that human mind adapt in daily life: psychological time frame and clock time. Psychological time is where the human mind brought the thought back to the past or into the future. Clock time is the time indicated by the actual clock time, i.e., the NOW. Explaining the rationale to live in the NOW, the author wrote "... if you no longer want to create pain for yourselves and others, if you do not want to add to the residual of the past pain that still lives on in you, then don't create anymore time...." This implies that the past or the future would cause a stir in your mind and living in the NOW will help you become peaceful and calm. This is not about avoiding the past or the future, just as a mean to see the way forward. Someone who know how to deal with "living in the NOW" should be also able to handle their psychological times as and when they need to
The author also related the issue of "time" to "death", an issue that I wrote about a few times in my recent blog. He wrote "..... You will know it at the latest when you feel death approaching. Death is the stripping away of all that is NOT you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" - and you find that there is no death..."
The "stripping away" is such that before we die, no matter how rich or poor we are, we are ourselves, we face ourselves, not our possessions, not our physical self or our friends and relatives, as they are NOT us. At that point, things in our life we genuinely try to avoid or ignore, for example, will come and haunt us. Haunt us because we are reaching our "exit" (i.e., death) and like a huge storm, we will be drown by it totally and so, we will have to face it. It is good to know what these are before we die, so that even if we may not overcome those issues we face, we at least address it. To do that, we need a calm and peaceful mind, to live in the NOW, learn to make sure our past or the future does not disturb us the slightest. That, I think, explains the power of NOW.
0 comments:
Post a Comment