Power Of Now

Power of Now

By Jonathan Aquino

Saturday Stories

June 15, 2019

I

Eckhart Tolle writes in The Power of Now, "The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved minds runs your life." I love Eckhart Tolle. I feel a sense of comfort when I hear his voice in YouTube. But his spiritual awakening came in the midst of a severe depression. "I cannot live with myself any longer!" he thought, and then he wondered if the "I" is the same as the one who was thinking the thought. Then he felt himself drawn to what felt like a vortex of energy, and he was afraid, but a voice said "Resist nothing." He surrendered to the power, and when awakened, he was the never same person anymore.

II

But understanding is different from knowing. I understand the sense of bliss he felt, but I can't say I know it because I haven't experienced it in that way. But I know the feeling of looking outside of yourself because it happened to me, and it happened most recently at a crucial time in my life. It is not something that I would normally share with the public, but I have to say it because it is part of the story. I was at a hospital emergency room last Monday night after I suffered massive pain on my chest for over an hour. I never felt pain so intense, and I thought it was the end for me. Yet, my soul was at peace, and I was ready to die.

III

But I didn't die. A part of me was looking forward to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but a part of me believed I would survive and move on with my life. I lay at the bed, watching the nurses attach all these wires on to me – the heart rate monitors, the oxygen, the I.V. drip – but I was also watching myself watching them. I was thinking that I don't want a funeral – I repeat, I do NOT – yet I was also watching my thoughts. There was no future, there was no past, only that moment, and I finally understood the meaning of being in the Now.

IV

Eckhart taught me a deeper way of meditation and prayer. Instead of doing what I normally do, think, I would just sit in silence, and contemplate the Presence within the silence. The Presence is the space of consciousness that lets me observe my own mind, helping me to be aware that the "I" of my consciousness is more than than my thoughts. "So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought," he writes. "A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, a you feel a conscious presence – your deeper self – behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power of you."

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