Monday, March 24, 2008

Being here now:Maybe when I'm done multi-taking


Like millions of others around the world, I have been reading Eckhart Tolle's book, "A New Earth"and trying hard to practice what I'm reading.
I've always been aware of how much I am in my head a lot the time, but reading this book is making me see I'm ALWAYS in my head - listening to music, the TV, on the phone and always, always several steps ahead of myself - so not being in the moment.
So this weekend I tried to do something different. Instead of listening to music while I was in the shower, I was just quiet, and tried to keep my mind just on what I was doing. I focused on feeling the warm water on my body, the way the shampoo felt in my hair, the roughness of my little bath scrubby as I lathered it up. And it actually worked for a couple of seconds at a time. I don't seem capable of not getting ahead of myself and into the next thing on my list for more than a couple of seconds.
I'm assuming I'm not alone, given the fact that about 700,000 people have signed up for the online "A New Earth" class with Oprah. Every week hundreds of thousands tune into their computers and watch the live version of this discussion. Thousands more boot up their computers and watch the recorded version throughout the week.
Why do I even care? What I'm doing is sort of working for me, so why try to change? I think I see that all too often I'm not in my life, I'm living some future version of it. See, I am sort of a self-help junkie, and as a former life coach, I've done my fair share of reading and encouraging of others. So I've been trying to balance this "be here now" philosophy with the law of attraction way of thinking. You know, the visualizing, affirming and speaking about how you want things to be (always keeping it present and affirmative- got it? Yeah, it's not easy).
So for now I'm walking the tight rope of trying to be where I am at any given moment - and allowing myself to feel where I am and what I'm doing, and balancing that with letting myself visualize where I want my life to be. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. But I figure as long as I'm trying to do better it's got to help a bit.
I must admit that there are times in my life where it makes things easier to not be completely present, and I actually think it's an intergral part of being a writer. I do some of my best thinking when I'm doing something else. Vacuuming is a perfect time to try to figure out a writing challenge - that white noise thing. And the fact that I come up with story ideas or solve a writing dilema while I'm cleaning the cat litter makes that job a lot less yucky. I create scenes for my book and write dialogue in my head while I'm on a treadmill at the gym. When I walk outside I even carry a pen and paper in my pocket in case something wonderful pops into my head.
The more I write this the less I am seeing the benefit for me to be more present. Maybe the solution is taking moments here and there to be here now. Like in the shower. I think I can handle that. At least for a few seconds.

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