I want to
recommend a book, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I'm working my way through it
slowly, as the author suggests, stopping to let it sink in, let it be absorbed.
I love what it teaches!
The author tells me that my mind is
not me, it is only a tool to be picked up and used when needed. My way of
thinking of it is that my mind is my internal computer. It has various apps:
word processing, calendar, visualization, skills, entertainment, etc. I can
close apps at will, and open them, too. The apps are all under my control. I can
have more than one open at a time and quickly switch between them when a
multifaceted task is at hand. When I don't need any of them, I can close all of
them and simply be here now. That was my first big breakthrough.
The second is ego awareness and watching
out for it to act out and make a mess of things. Do I get defensive? Whoa!
That's the ego at work. I have to turn that baby off and let my real self be.
If an endless reel tape of some ancient mistake starts playing in my head,
making me crazy, that's the ego at work. It seems to be chastising me for not
being perfect. But I can control the ego's illusions. I can turn it off and
listen instead to the sounds of silence.
One more important learning that is
beginning to develop – and this one is very important to m – is my ego’s view
of my aging process, which is moving right along. My ego’s idea of who I am is
being shattered to bits. My ego is an idealist. It doesn’t know how to cope
with old age. I’ve been inclined to let
my ego drag me down. It has thought “why do anything when I’m could die any
time.” Yes, you silly goose, any of us could die at any time. That is no reason
not to live until then.
Only halfway through the book, I'm
feeling more peaceful and more present in the now. And I’m finding that when
all of my mind’s apps are all turned off, my creative juices start flowing.
For example, we always keep leftover
pie uncovered in the cold oven to protect it from insects and dust. (If we put
it in the fridge uncovered it would dry out, and if we covered it in the fridge
the crust would get soggy.) The only problem with this storage method has been
that I tend to forget the pie's in there and turn on the oven. Recently, when all my
mind’s apps were off, I envisioned a warning magnet to place near the oven controls. Then I turned on my mind's "MakeIt" app and quickly made the vision a reality.
When there’s no pie in the oven, the sign waits on the range hood until it’s needed again.
But right now there’s half an apple
pie in the oven, so the warning sign is up.
Say, I think I'll have a piece of that pie right now. Wish you could join me.
Copyright
2016 by Shirley Domer
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