Alexandersmap

    Tag: Eckhart Tolle

    • Working With It

      “Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” — Eckhart Tolle

      I’m working through a blip in the old WordPress blog, dealing with changes I inflicted upon myself, not happy about that but accepting of the moment. life is change, and not all changes are welcome. Amor fati.

      We must work with what we’ve been given. Today I was given some never-ending tasks and a blog site that turned upside down. So it is. All that is to be done is to make the most of it, and here we are. Our only real choice in life is to carry on.

    • Here’s Your Miracle

      “No matter how long your journey appears to be, there is never more than this: one step, one breath, one moment – Now.” — Eckhart Tolle

      For all the times I’ve reminded myself that there’s only today (memento mori, so carpe diem), I often get swept up in distractions and comparison. Living is a daily wrestling match with what we know to be true and what we wish it to be. So I’m continuously reminding myself that we ought to celebrate the moment more for what it is: a miracle of presence amongst the living. This is it, friend. Do something with it. And strangely, out of nowhere, the sound of Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald filled my head with harmony:

      For once in your life, here’s your miracle
      Stand up and fight
      Make no mistake where you are
      (This is it)
      You’re goin’ no further
      (This is it)
      Until it’s over and done
      — Kenny Loggins & Michael McDonald, This Is It

      I had to face facts. After returning from the epic of Iceland, it was hard to celebrate the miraculous in the routine I’d returned to. And when we can’t possibly celebrate, we ought to at least savor the miracle of being. So for the last two nights I walked out to watch Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites parade past in a long line. There’s something inspiring about a satellite streaking through the sky, and that feeling is amplified into something altogether surreal when you see dozens of them following one another in a long line at exactly the moment that they’re supposed to.

      So in a way, that parade of satellites playing to the soundtrack of a cheesy 70’s song were just the ticket to shake me free from the post-vacation funk that a return to routine subjected me to. It was a good reminder that there’s nothing routine about living. The funk is derived from not being present with being here, now. Step outside of yourself and look up. We must make the most of the miracle while it’s here. And tell me, what’s more miraculous than pulling Elon Musk, Eckhart Tolle, Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald together into one post about Stoic philosophy?

    • In The Here

      “Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It’s a split that tears you apart inside.” – Eckhart Tolle

      If there’s a cause for frustration, resentment and dissatisfaction in life, it’s this battle between here and there. The have’s versus the have-nots. There’s a lot to be said for aspiring for more. After all, if we don’t have a vision of where we want to go, how do we find the most efficient path to get there? But when you focus too much on “there” it just makes you miserable inside. And who wants to be a miserable snot?

      No, the better approach is to practice gratitude for what you have now, in the here. Several people I follow advocate for writing down what you’re grateful for every day, to reinforce that spirit of gratitude and appreciation for what you have. And most of us have a lot. We’re truly wealthy, yet focus on what we don’t have. What a waste. Give me gratitude, and a focus on what I have today, even as I steer a course for tomorrow.

    • Our Cosmic Dance Together

      “Move on to the next moment, uninfluenced by the previous one… eternal life is now, in the timeless now.” – Anthony De Mello

      It’s that time of year again, when you start thinking about time passing.  It’s not just the end of a year, it’s the end of a decade.  Whoa. Another decade passed by?   So it goes.  Ten spins through space around the sun; our cosmic dance together.  The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older…  Ain’t that the truth.  But so what?  What’s timeless anyway?  Granite?  The ocean?  Khakis? We’re all just spinning around on the same planet as it moves around the sun, and doing the best we can in our moment.

      “All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.” – Eckhart Tolle

      The more trips you take around the sun the more at ease you become with yourself.  At least for many of us.  There are plenty of people who grow more insecure with age, as if their entire identity is wrapped up in youthful beauty or athletic talent or the hustle of burning the candle at both ends.  There’s a Twitter debate going on right now about how successful people work 80+ hours per week.  That’s not my definition of success, that’s my definition of serfdom.  I’ve worked in toxic cultures before, and anyone telling you to sacrifice your life for work is toxic. Time is the ultimate currency, why give yours to a con artist with big promises? Better to dance to your own beat, I think. Eventually we all have to leave the dance floor, so why not enjoy it while we’re on it?

      So our odds of seeing 2020 improve by the hour, but if you aren’t learning and growing all you get is a better pair of New Year’s Eve glasses than 2019 offered. I’ve grown a lot this year, and I’m optimistic about the future too. Hopefully we all arrive back at this point on our next trip around the sun better for the journey. Whatever that time brings, I plan on appreciating each moment.

       

       

    • Great is Today

      If you want to fully feel the urgency of “now” watch a veteran roofing crew begin work on a house. There’s no time to get in touch with their feelings, they pull up, assess and get on with it. Get it done ASAP, and move on to the next house tomorrow.

      It’s the first Tuesday in September, and the first day of school pictures will be snapped all over Massachusetts. New Hampshire went back last week, but really that’s just to get a head start on snow days to come. School begins in earnest this week from kindergarten to college. And so [unofficially] summer ends, Autumn begins, and there’s a heightened sense of the moment.

      I read Leaves of Grass last week. More precisely I finished Leaves of Grass last week. Walt Whitman has some brilliant prose, and some sprinkled liberally throughout this work, but there’s a lot of chewing to get this one down. Lot of Walt getting in touch with his sensuality stuff in there that proved controversial for the time, but this isn’t going to be a post about the work as a whole. Instead, this line jumped out at me:

      “Great is today, and beautiful, It is good to live in this age… there never was any better.” – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

      Whitman wrote that sometime between 1850 and 1855, when Leaves of Grass was published. It was before the Civil War and other dark days in Whitman’s life. But there are always dark days, and always vibrant days throughout history. Life is the ebb and flow. Don’t bury your head in the sand when darkness reigns, but don’t ignore the extraordinary gift of now we’ve been given either.

      “Look around. Look around. How lucky we are to be alive right now.” – The Schuyler Sisters, Hamilton

      Be alive, right now. That’s all there is. We can’t time travel backwards, and we can’t hit fast-forward.  We all know Aesop’s fable about the ants and the grasshopper, but he wasn’t saying there’s no time for play, he was saying that we need to harvest first, then dance and sing.  So by all means work, and build that nest egg, but don’t lose sight of this magic moment along the way. 

      “Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action – just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.” – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

      I’m weighing that fable as roofers strip the roof over my head and I contemplate Whitman. The irony isn’t lost on me, I’ve been on construction crews and know their world. They don’t stop to smell the roses for very long, but sometimes a moment appears. As I spoke with them before they started I pointed to the ripe grapes they would soon cover over to protect them from debris and told them to help themselves. They savored the sweetness of the grapes with audible pleasure, even as they got on with the work at hand. The fruit came of it’s own accord, then it was time to get back to work.