Coming to Now

My heart is not pure.
This is a thought I have about myself. This is one of many thoughts I have about myself.

Something I tell myself about my life.
So I can recognize myself, find myself in the throng....remember who I am. Find my way through my life. See myself.

Through current readings in Eckhart Tolle, I am perceiving a space behind-beyond-around-within my thoughts. A space he calls Being or the Now. A space where I divest and dis-identify with my thoughts and simply observe.

It is a profound practice. And I am disinclined to speak or write, or have been for awhile.


Typically, reading stimulates thinking for me. It is a curious experience, then, to be reading about not thinking.

Typically, reading also triggers a strong compulsion to talk (a thought-based activity) about what I'm reading, as well as what I think about what I'm reading. And I have done some talking about Tolle.

But
because I am absorbing the ideas
because my life perspective/paradigm is shifting
the experience of "talking about what I'm reading" is not the same. I'm especially aware of a diminishing need to convince or teach in these conversations -- usually a defining characteristic of my conversations about spirit...

I had lunch with friends on Saturday and observed myself talking about Tolle (and other things). There were moments when I was simultaneously disinterested and amused by my performance.

Other moments when I stood in God-consciousness and watched my ego dancing and felt nothing. At least, felt nothing about ego, had no "opinion"...felt only the vast, unfettered vitality of being.

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This morning I observe with fascination the feisty (if not downright frantic) persistence of certain thought patterns. As I delve deeper into Tolle's teachings on Being, more and more I am drawn to relinquish identification with whatever I am thinking and it's almost as though ego resents the shift in attention. Starts yammering "Hey! Over here! Where are you going? We've got gripes and opinions and fears and judgments to tend! Pay attention!"

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In a few weeks, what feels like a new chapter will begin for me. Relocation of home base, new social circle, travel for training opportunities in Theater of the Oppressed, new projects... These things do not exist. They are anticipated, near-future, to-be illusions.

Now, right now, I feel weightless and energized. And I am hungry. Hash browns and lightly scrambled eggs...