Living in the Now

Lately, I've been reading Eckhart Tolle. He is difficult at times to understand. Mostly it's just a way of speaking, doing and being that seems foreign to me. He has a book called Stillness Speaks that I've been mulling over at night or sometimes early in the morning before the day has gotten fully underway. He talks primarily about living in what he calls the "now." If I'm getting it (and I don't know that I am entirely)...his idea is that we are often focused on the before, the after, the not yet, etc. In being and doing this way, we miss the current state we are in - just being. He suggests that instead of just "being" in the things we do everyday we construct or deconstruct everything to the nth degree, and that we miss much of our lives and the point life is making to us because of this.

As I said, I don't totally get him, but I think he has a lot of good points. For instance, instead of just "letting the truth" be. We create stories and myths about the truth to try and describe it.

With the loss of my marriage and much of my security lately, I've been in "mighty deconstruction" mode. I've went back to therapy. I've been trying to figure out how I got here, what happened along the way and what lies ahead. While identifying patterns and how to not repeat them is important, I think that fundamentally that is part of my problem. Rather than just feel the pain, the sadness, the anger over the events of my life (both the ones I could control, and more importantly the ones I could not control), I deconstruct them until they are no longer my life, but someone outside of me. I create an "other" that is me - but the hurt, wounded me that no one gets to see.

I recognize the "reward" aspect of doing things this way. It's easier. I can blame someone else for my issues...or I can do what I normally do, blame myself then hurry stuff those feelings down with some obsessive behavior and keep on keeping on. I don't have to feel the painful feelings that way. I can keep up the illusion that is that I am the strong one, the person everyone knows has it together. What a crazy world I've created for myself. But perhaps instead of spending lots of energy figuring out how I got here, I should just be "here." Live in the now and stop the damn analyzing. Afterall, for all of my well-laid plans, I am where I am. And I don't mean that in a bad way.

I actually feel really lucky these days. I'm approaching my 34th birthday and I'm finally letting all of my assumptions and presuppositions fall away. What I "should" and "must" do is giving way to a new, renewed sense of life that I can't begin to explain. I woke up this morning. And I was healthy in mind and body. My babies are healthy and happy. I have a job that I am good at, and can earn enough to support myself and my babies. I can laugh. I'm learning to love myself. I mightve taken the long way around, but I'll make it all the same. I feel the Divine in and around me. Last night I talked to my grandmother (dead for 11 years) in my sleep. I know all is well. So, if this is living in the now, I don't want to wake up to the life I knew. I think I'll stay awhile. Even when it hurts. I know I'm alive. Amen.