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The Power of Now

The Power of Now

by IanWilly · 96 things on Twos

Easily one of the greatest books that I have read and I cannot wait to finish it. I have taken some notes on the main points of each chapter for those of you unsure on if you want to start, but I can assure you, you will not regret this book. It really does put your life into perspective and relieves anxiety and past problems like no other. It doesn't beat around the bush, it gets to the point and truly will change you for the better! Happy reading :) P.S. there are a lot of typos, I didn’t have autocorrect when typing these. Sorry!
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Chapter 1
Use your mind, do not let it use you
My thoughts are not mine, simply observe them as a viewer, rather than the thinker
My inner voice is the result of all my past history as well as the collective cultural mindset I have inherited. So I see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a distorted view.
Listen to your thoughts, do not judge or condemn them. That is because you are then not only aware of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. It is a new dimension of consciousness
About 80-90% of most thinking is repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative in nature, it can be harmful. Observe your mind and you will see that this is true
The ego is addicted to the past and its effects, because without it - who are you?
Emotion arises at the place where the mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind
Every time I am high on emotion, I will ask myself what is going on inside of me right now
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today, will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain
Chapter 2
Why does the mind habitually resist the now? Because it cannon function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening
Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before, you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to the past and future when required to deal with particular aspects of your life
Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?
Accept - then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it
Pain can only feed on pain, it cannot feed on joy
Once you have understood the basic principle of being present as the watcher of what happens inside you - and you "understand" it by experiencing it - you have at your disposal the most potent transformational tool
Fear is of something that *might* happen, not something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future
You can alwasy cope with the now, you cannot cope with the future
To the ego, death is always just around the corner, In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such a seemingly trivial and "normal" thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong - defending the mental position and which you have identified - is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down
Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there
Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it it's available to you now
As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled
The secret to life is to "die before you die" - and find that there is no death
Chapter 3
Once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with the mind, which of course includes the emotions, you step out of it. You become *present*. When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. This mind in itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind and takes over your whole life
To be identified with your mind, is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation
The more you are focused on time - the past and future - the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is. Why? Because it is *the only* thing. It's all there is.
The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now - that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of personality
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, and observe the reaction. Don't make a personal problem out of them
Any lesson from the past becomes relevant and is applied *now*. Any planning as well as working toward achieving a particular goal is done *now*
The enlightened person's main focus of attention is always Now. They continue to use clock time but are free of psychological time
In the normal, mind-identified, or unenlightened state of consciousness, the power and infinite creative potential that lie concealed in the Now are completely obscured by psychological time. Your life then loses its vibrancy, its freshness, its sense of wonder. The old patterns of thought, emotion, behavior, reaction, and desire are acted out in endless repeat performances, a script in your mind that gives you an identity of sorts but distorts or covers up the reality of the Now. The mind then creates an obsession with the future as an escape from the unsatisfactory present
The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future - which of course, can only be experienced in the Now
If all your problems or perceived causes of suffering or unhappiness were miraculously removed from you today, but you had not become more present, more conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or causes of suffering, like a shadow that follows you wherever you go
When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you can find the life underneath your life situation
Problems are mind-made and need time to survive, they cannot survive in the actuality of the Now. Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment. A situation that needs to b either dealt with or accepted - yes. Why make it a problem?
"Problem" means that you are dwelling on a situation mentally without there being a true intention or possibility of taking action now that you are unconsciously making it a part of your sense of self
Some people get angry when you say "problems are an illusion" and that's because you are threatening to take away their sense of who they are
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
So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action- just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord
Chapter 4
First, you become aware of just how rarely your attention is truly in the Now. But to know that you are not present is a great success: that knowing *is* presence - even if initially it only lasts for a couple of seconds of clock time before it is lost again
The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person becomes more intensely conscious
You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into an even deeper sleep
Only the way in which you deal with challenges will show you and others where you are as far as your state of consciousness. Not how long you can sit in a room with your eyes closed or what visions you see
Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real change
Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others
To complain is always nonacceptance of what *is*. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. You speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or leave it in the past. All else is madness
Ask yourself what "problem" you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. Now what is wrong with this moment? You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future - nor do you have to
Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got
Deal with the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a "self" out of it
Don't seek to understand the past, but be as present as you can. The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence
Chapter 5
Beauty arises in the stillness of your presence
Beyond the beauty of the external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineddafble, some deep, inner, holy essence, Whenever and whereevr 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?
Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them
Most humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, and madness
Chapter 6
Being can be felt as the ever-present I am that is beyond name and form. To feel and thus to know that you are and to abide in that deeply rooted state is enlightenment, is the truth that Jesus says will make you free
You are cut off from Being as long as your mind takes up all your attention
When this happens - and it happens continuosly for most people - you are not in your body. The mind absorbs all your consciousness and transofrms it into mind stuff. You cannot stop thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease. Your sense of who you are is then derived from mind activity. Your identity, as it is no longer rooted in Being, becomes a vulnerable and ever-needy mental construct, which creates fear as the predominant underlying emotion.
Just as the sun is infinitely brighter than a candle flame, there is inflintely more intelligence in Being than in your mind
Chapter 7
If you take the focus of your consciousness deeply into the inner body, you are tracing the course of this river back to its source. Chi is movement; the unmanifested stillness.
The unmanifested does not liberate you until you enter it consciously
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free
When you are intensely present, you don't need to be concerned about the cessation of thinking, of course, because the mind then stops automatically
The unmanifested is not only present in this world as silence; it also prevades the entire physical universe as space - from within and without. Everybody pays ayyention to the things in space, but who pays attention to the space itself
This one was a bit harder to take notes on but was a 10/10
Chapter 8 (Must read)
Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. It is here and now
"when I obtain [this] or am free of [that] - then I will be ok." This is the unconscious mind-set that creates the illusion of salvation in the future
You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God
You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite. If your "love" has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment. To disidentify from the pain-body is to bring presence into the pain and thus transmute it
So whenever your relationship is not working, whenever it brings out the "madness" in you and in your partner, be glad. What was unconscious is being brought up to the light. It is an oppurtunity for salvation
If you observe unconsiousness behavior in your partner, hold in the loving embrace of your knowing so that you won't react
Instead of "being" the pain-body, you could be the knowing that watches the emotional pain in itself, thus accessing the power of Now and initiating the transmutation of the pain
If you are consistantly present in your relationship, and our partner is not, that will be your biggest downfall. They will not be able to tolerate your presence for very long and stay unconscious. They can always walk through the door that you have opened them to and to join the present state with you. If they do not, you will seperate like oil and water. The light is too powerful for someone who wants to remain in darkness
Life is to be insisted, not resisted
As long as you make an identity for youself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will inconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain. Why? Simply because you want to keep youself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious
The pain-body is an energy field, almost like an entity, that has become temporarily lodged in your inner space. It is the life energy that has become trapped, energy that is no longer flowing. It is the living past inside of you and if you identifiy with it, you identify with the past.
A victim identitiy is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present which is the complete opposite. It is the belief that other people and what they did to you are responsible for who you are now and for your emotional vulnerability. The truth is that the only power there is, is contained within this moment: it is the power of your presence. Once you know that, you also realize that you are responsible for your inner space now -- nobody else is -- and that you cannot prevail against the power of now
Chapter 9
It is not true that the up cycle is good and the down cycle bad, except in the mind's judgment. Growth is usually considered positive, but nothing can grow forever. If growth, of whatever kind, were to go on and on, it would eventually become monstrous and destructive. Dissolution is needed for new growth to happen. One cannot exist without the other.
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness
The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance
Next time a negative thought enters your mind, think of it as an alarm telling you to wake up, to breathe, or be more present. Look at the sky and appreciate its beauty, have a sip of water, or even just look at the person next to you and feel their energy, feel their presence and be thankful for the time you have with them. You never know when it’ll be the last time
Chapter 10
I read this at the park so I didn’t take notes but was amazing nonetheless