Nowism versus Balance?

In recent years among the many, many spiritual books, self-help books and assimilated, there have been two competing "truths". The first, embodied by 'the power of now', living only in the present instant, with books like the one with the same name by Eckhart Tolle, and the second embodied by this more fluffy notion of 'balance' accompanied by the injunction to find balance in your life, balance your personal and professional lives, eat a balanced diet, etc.

However, it seems strange to me that no one I have seen in the spiritual and self-help circles has written much about balance in relation to the power of now. I guess the main reason is that if you do you tend to invalidate the whole notion, I mean you can't live mostly in the present moment and be in the now. It's kind of like the joke about being somewhat pregnant, it's actually an either/or situation.

Trying to live only the present moment can, without too much intellectualization required, could lead the unsuspecting 'nowist' to hedonism, short-termism, egoism and probaly many other isms. That said, applying the notion of 'nowism', living in the present, participating fully in what you are doing, is something that is important to remember and, more importantly, to do, when appropriate. It is definitely easy to be so preoccupied with the future or the past that you don't participate fully in 'what's going on' and in that sense the injunction to live in the now is very useful.

A wider application of the power of now mandate of living in the present moment, as the future does not yet exist and the past only exist in our minds, is more difficult to apply. On the one hand, for those of us who have studied a bit of physics there is no such thing as past-present-future in such straightforward terms. While the injunction is probably useful for highly-evolved beings, if something like that exists, for the rest of us who are living in the time continuum it would be quite dangerous to apply the injunction 24/7. Which leads to my thinking on why we have not seen more people reminding us to balance this too. The tyranny of balance has been thrown at us at all levels in recent years, "you need to find balance", from balancing your finances to balancing all aspects of your personal, social, professional, educational, emotional, physical, and 'leisureal' (couldn't find an '-al' for that one) lives...

So what would balance in respect to the power of now look like? I guess it would imply that you experience the present fully (whatever that means) while still planning for the future (e.g. making plans) and remembering the past (e.g. using experience to avoid past mistakes). Could it be that simple???

PS Just for fun and thought: What's going on, Marvin Gaye

Mother, mother - There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother - There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way - To bring some lovin' here today 

Father, father - We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer - For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way - To bring some lovin' here today

Picket lines and picket signs - Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see - Oh, what's going on
What's going on - Ya, what's going on - Ah, what's going on

In the mean time - Right on, baby - Right on - Right on

Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us - Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way - To bring some understanding here today

Picket lines and picket signs - Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me - So you can see - What's going on - Ya, what's going on
Tell me what's going on - I'll tell you what's going on - Uh
Right on baby - Right on baby 

PS2 Thanks Marvin

More thoughts on the left-right brain dichotomy

Well, I keep on thinking on the difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the implications it has in spirituality, in observation, in regards to ego, in regards to understanding things and I find it all quite fascinating.

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..."

[Living the now] On pain (and pleasure)

Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) and Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddha, and so many others exhort us to live the now, live the present moment without anticipation, expectation, reservation, preconceived notions, fantasy, judgment, etc.

Just be. Don't name the sunset, don't describe the sunset, don't even watch the sunset, just be with the sunset. Some say be the witness, some say be the observer, some imply detachment, others immersion. Tomorrow does not exist, yesterday is gone, all that we have is the eternal now.

In a recent blog post, I mentioned that Thich Nhat Han (TNH) even says that hope is tragic as it is a projection into the future, which means that we are not correctly living the present. You can't change the future, you can only effectuate change in the present.

Most of these writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, philosophers who exhort us to live in the present, usually imply that living the present brings us close to bliss, which we imagine to be joyful.

Eckhart Tolle tells us, probably rightly so, that "the mind creates an obsession with the future to escape from the unsatisfactory present." Or "die to the past every moment, you don't need it." That "There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future."

I also find an interesting link between Tolle and TNH and the idea of hope (and goals). The former says, "There is nothing wrong with setting goals and striving to achieve things. The mistake lies in using it as a substitute for the feeling of life, the Being."

And a final quote from Tolle on hope and expectation and waiting for a better day:

When you catch yourself waiting... snap out of it! Come into the present moment.
Just be and enjoy being.

Now all of this sounds nice from the top of Maslow's pyramid, but I have always wondered how being in the now handles things like hunger, cold and, especially, pain.

I am sure that much has been written about it but I don't seem to remember much writing about being in the now which concerns pain management. Pleasure and pain have often been mentioned together as the two river banks in between which we navigate our lives, trying to row our boats closer to the bank of pleasure and inevitably being thrown against the shoals on the banks of pain.

In particular, I do not recall having seen any discussion on the spiritual nature of pain. Why do I call pain's nature spiritual? Well it seems to me like the only time that we are able (or condemned) to completely live in the present moment, a moment that seems like the eternal now.

Take a migraine headache for example. When you have a migraine attack (or just a bad headache) it seems nearly impossible to think of anything else but the present moment (even just thinking is difficult). You just live the present moment and all concentration is on the present moment and the pain. It seems like the pain is so strong that we cannot think of anything else and we cannot imagine a world in which this pain does not exist. It is all consuming, it is blinding, and it does away with the past and the future quite effectively. So is this a spiritual moment? I doubt that anyone would say so... and I haven't seen it written anywhere.

However, it is interesting to read in the lore of many mystics and yogis the mention of bouts of intense, all-consuming, all-body, pain from which the person (I think I have only heard of men having these experiences) emerges enlightened. In one account of a yogi that I read in "What is Enlightenment?" magazine, the yogi says he felt like he was replaced within his body with another entity, i.e. he really was changed by the experience.

So these extreme situations can be enlightening, but what about the migraines?