In all of the power of now literature, whether it be by Eckhart Tolle or anyone else, there is always this injunction to be in the now. One example that is often given is the awe we experience when faced with a wondrous landscape that nature offers us. Staying with that feeling of awe is usually held up as an example of "being in the now" which is the ultimate spiritual objective (if you buy into the literature, but also because it does feel good to be in that zone/feeling/state of mind...). So when does it all go to bits this wonderful feeling of being one with nature, the universe and everything? When you name it. That is, when you start to 'speak', even without words, when you describe it, when you say to yourself or someone 'it is so beautiful'... But putting this into the perspective of my last blog post, it is all really, and simply, a question of the left hemisphere speaking up to interrupt the blissful observation of the right hemisphere. Like the left is talking to the right while the latter is saying 'shut up will ya, I'm trying to watch'...
Actually, I had an idea about left-right that maybe in the Bible, in Genesis, there would be a mention of Adam observing first and naming all of the animals later but it was a dead end. However, if you will allow me the digression, I found it funny to reread the passage where God asks Adam, did you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? And Adam says, well yeah, but it's the woman you gave me who incited me to nibble. And then the woman says, well yeah, but it was the snake who incited me to eat it. Unfortunately for the snake he had no one to pass the blame along to and ended up legless and destined to slither forever in the dust. Very childish behavior on the part of our uber-parents, very 'it wasn't me' or 'he started it'...
Anyway, back to the Power of Now, which I just reached for following paragraph one's mention of it and here are a few nuggets that I found that I want to share with you.
The first is a basic premise of the book (a worldwide bestseller - assuming that counts as a positive), or rather of the author, is that "not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction..." (page 14 of the paperback edition), pointing out that Descartes' famous quip "I think, therefore I am" had it all wrong. For Tolle, to "equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking" is a major error - "the most basic error". Bringing in the left-right argument again, allows us to rethink the 'problem' a bit, for example, understanding that there is more to the mind than the chattiness that goes on in, and is the result of, our left hemisphere.
Later in the book (page 41) Tolle admonishes us (in the face of pain or beauty or whatever) "don't let the feeling turn into thinking". Once again, using the two hemisphere framework, it seems like we need to remain in observation with the right hemisphere (the silent brain that perceives but does not speak) and not allow the left hemisphere to start naming and rationalizing (or to re-use the metaphor, talking in the middle of the film that we are watching).
Being in the now, in a state of timelessness, is something that Tolle suggests we do (more often). And it is one of the characteristics of the right brain, while the left hemisphere counts, checks the watch, wonders how much time has gone by, etc. It really makes me think that the Zen (or Zen Buddhist) paradigm is about being 'right-minded', but literally! While I still don't know how to do that, it does make it a bit more easy to understand the 'requirements' and/or approach...
To finish this post, I want to share with you a wonderful little vignette that Watzlawick quotes in the book that got me going on this whole left-right theme, The Language of Change. It has nothing to do with anything, and I think he knew that too when he put it in his book, like I'm doing with this blog, but it is a great parable by Chuang Tzu that should help us all in 'anger management' when 'stuff' happens...
Suppose a boat is crossing a river, and another, empty boat is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But suppose there is someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout for him to keeep clear. And if the other did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case, there was no anger, in the second there was; because in the first case the boat was empty, and in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only roam empty through life, who would be able to injure him?Of course, my anger management idea, and my final thought for now, is 'consider all those boats to be empty..."
No comments:
Post a Comment