Where would we be without Vince Exley? This guy really does warm the heart of this community with his occasional commentaries. He's been at it for years going right back to the earliest days of the CathNews Discussion Board. Today he presents another wonderful, down-to-earth grounded commentary on some great practical spirituality that is worth thinking about ………… and perhaps applying in your life if you haven't already done so.

THE ETERNAL NOW!

"Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal."

"You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. That voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry.

"Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continually attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as disease.

"We are addicted to thinking because we are identified with it, we derive our sense of self from the content and activity of our mind. We believe we would cease to be if we stopped thinking. As we grew up, we formed a mental image of who we were based on our personal and cultural conditioning. This phantom self is often called the "ego or false self." It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking.

"To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there.

"The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

"The more the dysfunction of the human mind plays itself out on the world stage, clearly visible to everyone in the daily television news reports, the greater the number of people who realize the urgent need for radical change in human consciousness if humanity is not to destroy both itself and the planet."

Eckhart Tolle

So comments Eckhart Tolle one of the world's leading spirituality teachers today.

Franciscan priest and much traveled speaker and author Fr. Richard Rohr says of Eckhart Tolle:

"The genius of Eckhart Tolle is that he expresses ancient Christian Spirituality in Non-Religious terminology, which makes it much easier for people to access and understand Christian spirituality today"

DVD cover

Fr. Richard Rohr and Cistercian monk and priest Thomas Keating conducted a weekend retreat on "THE ETERNAL NOW" which was recorded on a set of DVD's and information about these can be found at: www.cacradicalgrace.org (Please note: If you are thinking of carrying this further and purchasing the dvd's there is also a special link on that page which leads you to an Australian distributor.)

According to Eckhart Tolle in his best seller book, "THE POWER OF NOW", the beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not "the thinker". That the moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, and that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken. YOU FIND GOD WITHIN YOU.

"As you listen to the thought you feel a conscious presence — your deeper self — behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking."

"When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream a gap of "no mind". At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind.

With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

Realise deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say "yes" to the present moment.

Break the old pattern of present moment denial and present-moment resistance. Make it your practice to withdraw attention from past and future whenever they are not needed. Step out of the time dimension as much as possible in everyday life. If you find it hard to enter the Now directly, start by observing the habitual tendency of your mind to want to escape from the Now. You will observe that the future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.

Through self observation, more presence comes into your life automatically. 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.

Be present as the watcher of your mind of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react.

Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don't judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don't make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.

ALL PROBLEMS ARE ILLUSIONS OF THE MIND

When you create a problem you create pain. All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: No matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself I will create no more problems.

Ask yourself is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing? If there isn't then time is covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as a burden or a struggle. 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.

Beyond the beauty of the external forms there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are present.

Could it be that this nameless essence and your presence are one and the same?

Would it be there without your presence?

Go deeply into it. Find out for yourself.

When you are ill or disabled do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance.

If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything "bad" that happens in your life use it for enlightenment.

Withdraw time from the illness. Do not give it any past or future. Let it force you into intense present moment awareness and see what happens.

Your first chance is to surrender each moment to the reality of that moment. Knowing that what is cannot be undone because it already is you say yes to what is or accept what isn't.

Then you do what you have to do, whatever the situation requires.

If you abide in this state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering, no more unhappiness. You then live in a state of non-resistance, a state of grace and lightness, free of struggle.

The way of the cross is enlightenment through suffering. The way of the cross is the old way to enlightenment, and until recently it was the only way. But don't dismiss it or underestimate its efficacy. It still works.

The way of the cross is a complete reversal. It means that the worst thing in your life, your cross, turns into the best thing that ever happened to you, by forcing you into surrender, into "death," forcing you to become as nothing, to become as God because God, too, is no thing.

You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are.

When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.

I speak of a profound transformation of human consciousness, not as a distant future possibility, but available now — no matter who or where you are. You are shown how to free yourself from enslavement to the mind, enter into this enlightened state of consciousness and sustain it in everyday life. All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.

A list of books, CD's, DVD's, Audio Books, and other resources by Eckhart Tolle can be found at his website: www.eckharttolle.com

Christian spirituality…

Christian spirituality invites us to move into our "inner room" where we are intended to make ourselves vulnerable to the present. Here we encounter God who is always waiting there for us. Here we receive the gifts and fruits of the Spirit.

Fr John Main OSB

The World community of Christian Meditation recommends the ancient form of meditation using a mantra. This form of meditation was rediscovered by Benedictine priest Fr. John Main over a quarter of a century ago. Instead of regarding it as a form of meditation only for monasteries he saw it as a great yet easy form of prayer for ordinary people. In the last twenty-five years it has spread throughout the world and is practiced by hundreds of thousands of Christians every day. You can learn more about this on the WCCM website: www.wccm.org

Meditation, of course, is a Universal Tradition found in all the great religions. As such, it offers an important common ground for inter-religious dialogue and a basis for peace in the world. Many Christians have been helped to recover contact with their own tradition of meditation, or contemplative prayer, because of the work of Fr. John Main, who is the inspiration of the World Community. His teaching of this ancient tradition of prayer is rooted in the Gospels and the early Christian monastic tradition of the Desert. Meditation helps people of all ages and cultures to find a simple, practical and meaningful way to awaken and deepen their spiritual life

Meditation leads to compassionate action. In The Fruits of Meditation you can see examples of this and how meditators around the world have found meditation making an impact on their lives and relationships.

HOW TO MEDITATE: Find a quiet place. Sit down with your back upright. Sit still. Gently close your eyes and begin to recite your prayer-word, or mantra, silently, interiorly and lovingly throughout the time of your meditation: "Ma-ra-na-tha". Say it as four equally-stressed syllables. It is an Aramaic word (which is the language that Jesus spoke) and it means "Come, Lord". It is found in the Scriptures and is one of the earliest prayers in the Christian tradition. Do not think about the meaning of the word. Just give your attention to the sound of it throughout the time of your meditation, from the beginning to the end. Whenever distractions arise, simply return to your mantra. Meditate for 30 minutes each morning and each evening, every day of your life. Father John always said: "Just say your word." Meditation is a way of pure prayer marked by silence, stillness, and simplicity.

Thomas Keating

Laurence Freeman

Brisbane is famous for having the largest group of Christian Meditation prayer groups of any city in the world. In the Townsville diocese Christian Meditation is taught and practiced in every Catholic school in the diocese. I believe this will be a great support to these kids in latter life.

A weekend of dialogue on contemplative prayer is to take place on December 7-9 December between Fr. Laurence Freeman the present leader of WCCM and Fr Thomas Keating (see above). I hope a DVD will be prepared of their talks as they are two of the most renowned teachers of contemplative prayer in the world today.

So if young people, as some people claim, are looking for spirituality but not organized religion, there is all the spirituality they need in the Catholic Church.

Vince

IMAGE SOURCES: Click on the image to go to the original source. The image used in the main headline was adapted from an image by claudmey, "Earth reflection" on stock.xchng

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©2007 Vince Exley

[Index of Commentaries by Vince Exley]