The Book That Changed My Life

I come from a long line of worriers. We’re incredibly good at it. I have vivid memories of my grandmother from when I was a little girl, anxiously waiting at the door when we would arrive for a visit, and laying into my dad for being (a few minutes) late. She had us in a terrible accident, gravely injured and en-route to the hospital, rather than simply a tad behind schedule. The modern age of cell phones could have saved her a lot of worry.

Then there’s my little girl. She’s rather accomplished at worrying, too. She worries about tests. She worries when she doesn’t feel well. She worries if someone looks at her the wrong way. She worries about the status of her friendships. She even worries if she realizes she’s not worried, because that makes her worry that she’s forgotten what she’s should be worried about. Seriously. She told me that.

And then there’s me. I definitely honor my worrying heritage. I had all the same worries as my daughter, and then I went through a decade of infertility and miscarriages, and high-risk, high-stress pregnancies, and my anxiety/worrying soared off the charts. Sometimes I could barely breathe. It’s probably partially why I developed Bell’s Palsy while pregnant with my son (who doctor’s warned us, you may recall, wouldn’t make it.)

So there I am one day when my husband sits down with me and tells me he wants me to read a book. At that point I was still voraciously reading fiction (before two kids I actually had time!), and he was handing me a non-fiction book. More than non-fiction, it was one of those self-help jobbies. To say I was skeptical is an understatement. But being on bed-rest left me lots of time, and eventually I cracked the pretty pale green cover and checked out what was inside.

 

Within hours, my life changed.

Aptly named, THE POWER OF NOW by the wonderful Eckhart Tolle deals with living in the moment. Too often we sentence ourselves to a prison of the past, living the darkest moments of our lives over and over, saturating ourselves with them–punishing ourselves. Or, conversely, we travel forward, projecting ourselves into moments yet to come…frequently dark moments, worst-case scenarios…moments that may never come. It’s like a mammogram. We go in for the test and almost automatically feel the twist of anxiety over a possible bad result. And if we get that call about some abnormality, our mind takes off, and suddenly we’re already battling cancer and thinking about the devastation of not being around to raise our children. And these thoughts are like poison. They flood our body with their toxic power, forcing us to live through the horror of what we’re imagining, a horror that may never come to pass…even though the moment that we’re in is a perfectly fine moment…a moment that we’ve just lost, because we were projecting forward, rather than staying where we are. Thanks all the same, but when it comes to the bad stuff, I’d much rather experience it only once, rather than over and over again. It’s like taking a drive through the worst part of town. Maybe you have to do it once…but why do it daily if you don’t need to?

Our bodies respond to our thoughts. It’s the whole fight or flight thing, with the flood of adrenaline to keep us safe from the wooly mammoth. But when our thoughts are trapped in fight or flight mode 24/7, our body is constantly primed for battle—and survival. And nobody can live like that, not healthily. What fascinated me was to learn that from a purely physiological standpoint, our body cannot differentiate between reality, dreams, memories…or any other kind of thought. You know the dream you wake up from, the really amazing dream or the really terrifying one, and your heart is slamming and your body is on fire, as if what you’d seen behind closed eyes really happened. Or how when you meditate, you close your eyes and focus on a happy memory, a sun-drenched beach or snow-topped mountain, a babbling stream in a field of poppies. These are peaceful images, and when you wrap your mind in them, your body responds as if you’re really there…because your body can’t tell the difference. Your body reacts to your mind…and the real power comes when you realize that you control your mind (not the other way around.)

Tolle’s insight was life changing for me, having often destructive life-patterns spelled out for me like that, the way that I was torturing myself with my own thoughts. I realized that even though bad things might happen, I only wanted to live them once, rather than over and over. I realized that, more often than not, the dooms day scenario my mind concocts (and I react to) never comes to pass. And I realized that the past was over. Truly, it is. Yes, events of the past shape us and change us, and yes sometimes really horrific things happen, but to actually go back and relive those moments amounts to self-torture. A far more productive path is to live in the present moment. We can’t change the past. Ever. It’s over, done. We can only move forward…and if you keep looking in the rearview mirror–or worse, turning backwards–you’ll never see what’s ahead.

A few of my favorite quotes:

“Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body”

“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within”

“Nobody’s life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn’t it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?

“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath”

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.

The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind.”

“The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future — which, of course, can only be experienced as the Now”

“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are cause by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence” (SERIOUSLY…think about that!)

“Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”

Truly, I can’t recommend Tolle’s book enough, particularly if you struggle with anxiety or find yourself prisoner to the past. Do yourself a beautiful favor. Give NOW a try. It might just change your life, too.