With great gratitude to Eckhart Tolle* who has profoundly influenced my thinking concerning the necessity of living in the present:

“Enlightenment conciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life.  It means choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time.  It means saying yes to what is . . . choice implies consciousness – a high degree of consciousness.  Without it, you have no choice.  Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present.  Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking.  This means that you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind.  That is why Jesus said: ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do’ . . . the mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with.  Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar.  The mind always adheres to the known.  The unkown is dangerous because it has no control over it.  That’s why the mind dislikes and ignores the present moment.  Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum.  Nothing truly new and creative can come into the world except through the gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.” (226-227)

We will continue this discussion thread in the coming posts.  I hope you will join the conversation.

Grace and peace

*Tolle, Eckhart.  The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.  Novato, CA:  Namaste Publishing and New World Library, 1999/2004.