Lessons from the book ?The Power of Now? that will help you rethink the way you live your life.
Illustration by (Alma Haser) ? haser.org
Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
I first discovered the book ?The Power of Now? many years ago and never read it. As it turns out, I wasn?t ready for the ideas the book discusses.
My journey into wanting to understand what higher consciousness was and going beyond the mind, didn?t start out that way. Each step on the journey involved studying a new idea, and the destination was completely unknown to me. These were the five stages, each with a topic to learn, that led me to study higher levels of consciousness:
- Stage 1: How to treat people
- Stage 2: How humans are all connected
- Stage 3: How you perceive time
- Stage 4: How you think
- Stage 5: How you unlock the next level of thinking
Those five stages led me one afternoon to scouring Amazon for a book that was special and could introduce me to new ideas. Every book I looked at seemed to cover the same topics over and over. That was until discovering The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
It?s a long book and goes really off track towards the end. The ideas inside of the book though are somewhat life-changing and I feel compelled to share them in a simpler form without all the filler in between.
The book teaches you how to unlock higher levels of consciousness and has many practical steps you can use that don?t require an understanding of science. The key topics we?re about to look at are:
- Perception if time
- Your mind vs. your Being
- The downsides of the ego
- What it means to be conscious
- Simple tips and tricks you can use to unlock the next level of consciousness
Here is what you can learn from the book The Power of Now about unlocking higher levels of consciousness.
Always Thinking Is a Disease and It Hurts
We don?t realize this because everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal.
You can?t unlock higher levels of consciousness if you?re always thinking. This has been my problem for most of my life and The Power of Now helped me see the error in my weighs.
When you think too much, you find yourself overthinking. Overthinking blocks your mind from going beyond itself. You overthink when your life is out of balance. Maybe there are too many parts of your life in the ?catastrophe column.?
You clear up the insanity in your life by taking a break from the thinking that causes it.
Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance.
?Mind-Made? Fiction
This is a brilliant idea from the book and a simple phrase that can completely rewire your brain.
The idea that what your mind produces is fiction, makes you question everything.
When you question everything, you start the journey to a high level of consciousness. You begin to look beyond the mind and not at the mind.
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A Higher Level of Consciousness Is Achieved by Realizing You Are Not the Thinker
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity ? the thinker. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
The simple idea that you can watch the thinker is a huge lesson. Giving the thinker a label helps you sit down and watch what the thinker is doing. When you watch the thinker, you see just how much chaos they are causing unintentionally.
Watching the thinker is peaceful because you begin to realize that you are not them. This is an incredibly freeing idea.
Beyond thought
You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought; that thought is only a tiny aspect of intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter ? beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace ? arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.
If I reflect back on the last few years of writing, my obsession with love, creativity and joy is clear. What I didn?t understand was that these concepts come from beyond the mind. You don?t truly understand them until you go beyond the mind and, for me, that happened by accident.
Questioning life, thinking about the connectedness of humans, and how powerful the concept of love is took me to that place. When I read the Power of Now, it reminded me of what that place was like, and most importantly, how one might get back there. All my previous attempts were a fluke until I understood just what intelligence is.
Somebody who can go beyond the mind might look normal, but they?re incredibly powerful. Someone trapped in the persona of ?the thinker? is held back from going beyond the mind. That person was me for most of my life.
What really matters in life can be found beyond the mind.
A New Dimension
So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in.
Witnessing thoughts is different to our default mode of thinking we create them. If you can witness thoughts, you can see which ones are serving you and which ones are holding you back, or even lying to you.
Your thoughts come from your experiences in life. All your thoughts are trying to do is make sense of the world and help you survive. Often, your thoughts are doing anything but helping you survive; they?re holding you back.
Witness your thoughts for a while. Take a bus ride, close your eyes and watch your thoughts. Don?t judge them; just listen to them. The experience unlocks a new dimension that has no label.
Learn to Disidentify from Your Mind
Every time you create a gap in the stream of your mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child.
This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
Thoughts are like a river. They keep on flowing. Every so often there is a gap in the river where rocks cross its path and interrupt the stream of water.
The first few times you create a gap in your thoughts, your consciousness goes to a higher place.
The gaps in thoughts make you smile because you begin to see how crazy the thoughts are that you?re having. They are thoughts that exist in the future or the past, in a place where you?re not located and can never be located.
Seperate your self from your mind. They are two different entities.
What higher consciousness feels like
There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel.
What?s the point of higher level consciousness? Why would you even bother? The point of higher consciousness is to feel the peace that comes with it. Life takes on a different meaning when you feel that inner peace. Stress, overwhelm, depression and anxiety change shape; they look different.
Inner peace is a beautiful feeling to experience. Even if you only get it for a few minutes, once you do, you?ll be hooked.
The Leakage of Your Vital Energy
As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people?s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage in vital energy.
I spent a couple of years in and out of doctor?s surgeries. I saw western doctors, eastern doctors and natural medicine practitioners. The reason for all the visits was to try and understand why I was so tired.
Energy leakage without an understanding of higher consciousness looks like this:
- Eat better
- Exercise more
- Spend time with people who make you happy
- Do work you love
- Get your back fixed
These are all surface-level ways to deal with continuous tiredness and those late afternoon yawns. They are helpful ways to deal with energy loss but they?re only a small part of the problem.
The Power of Now taught me that energy leakage could also come from negative thinking. It?s exhausting to be unkind to yourself in your head or to be unkind to everybody you meet.
Many of our unhelpful thoughts are taking away our energy. Because every bit of thinking depletes some part of your energy. Angry thoughts suck away the most energy and our inherent survival thoughts have a similar effect.
Higher levels of consciousness can help you gain back your vital energy again so you can use it for good.
Thinking Is Only a Small Aspect of Consciousness
Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
?No-mind? is consciousness without thought.
The idea of no-mind was one I?d never heard of. I?d been to that place where thoughts didn?t exist, but previously, I had no name for it. When you can describe no-mind and experience it at least once for yourself, you start to see what higher levels of consciousness are.
The books I?d read before The Power of Now on consciousness all told me that our mind and our thoughts were consciousness. When I began to realize that this is only a small part of consciousness, it was a transformative idea.
If you have never experienced a state of no-mind, I cannot recommend to you enough how important it is to go there at least once. What you thought living was will completely change when you go there.
Artists Create from a Place of No-Mind
All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
This was the biggest lesson of all when I studied higher levels of consciousness. I had to read this one quote over and over. I finally, for the first time in my life, understood why I write and why my friends write.
Writing is art and it comes from a place of no-mind. When my life was in a mess from unemployment, broken romantic relationships, losing a business I loved and experiencing what it was like to come close to death, it was the art form of writing that saved me.
But it made no sense. How could writing save me?
The answer: writing took me to a place of no-mind. That place became addictive because it healed me from my negative thoughts.
You?re not chasing art; you?re chasing the feeling of no-mind.
The Space of No-Mind
By becoming aware of the empty space around you, you simultaneously become aware of the space of no-mind, of pure consciousness: the Unmanifested. This is how the contemplation of space can become a portal for you?Most humans are completely unconscious of this dimension.
I?ve been obsessed with space since I studied sound engineering. A lecturer said to me, ?The magic lies in between the notes.? I realized that my music didn?t breathe because there was no space; no silence.
The same is true with writing. The magic of writing is contained in the blank space. When you experience the blank space of a page full of words, you become present.
When you go out into a rain forest, this same space can be felt again. There is so much blank space and you are only taking up a tiny part of it to exist. When your mind is empty, you experience the vastness of space which is never-ending. Right now, if you went outside of Earth, all you would see is lots of black space that goes into the distance for as far as the mind?s eye can see.
Infinite space shows you how small you are and also how far the mind can travel.
Nothing could be more awe-inspiring and majestic than the inconceivable vastness and stillness of space, and yet what is it? Emptiness, vast emptiness.
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Another Window into Consciousness via Dangerous Activities
The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now ? the intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality.
While I don?t engage in dangerous activities, I have experienced this same feeling through writing.
In a way, writing is dangerous for me because it involves me sharing my thoughts and being judged by friends, family and work colleagues. The risk of exposure or harming a relationship is high. Some people learn to hate you and even want you dead because of what you write.
Writing is removing my ego?s armor for a higher purpose and that?s dangerous.
If you want to see a person chase this feeling of danger to experience the bliss of present moment awareness, watch the documentary film called ?Free Solo.? The movie will show you the life of Alex Honnold who climbs huge mountains without a harness and has a high chance of dying, so he can chase the feeling of present moment awareness that comes with it.
Alex became addicted to higher levels of consciousness through his rock climbing and I became addicted to the feeling through writing.
Conscious People Are Missed by Strong Egos
Anyone with a strong ego would regard them as insignificant or, more likely, not see them at all.
The concept of conscious people is an interesting one. Their egos are very small and you may or may not have met one. The conscious people I have met are incredibly influential and say very little. They understand The Power of Saying Less.
Conscious people are incredible listeners and they make you feel special without trying to. They?re the type of soul that does kind acts in the world for the hell of it without telling anybody.
They slide in and out of situations bringing a little bit of consciousness with them and then slide out the back door without you knowing. The show is not about them because they have disconnected somewhat from their mind and gone beyond it. Their ego is small which is why you may miss them easily.
As your ego gets smaller through realizing the downfalls associated with it, you begin to discover these ?conscious people.? The peace they have in their life is stunning when you come into contact with it and you?ll want some of what they have.
Egos are drawn to bigger egos. Darkness cannot recognize light. Only might can recognize light.
Higher consciousness is found by saying less, listening, and being present.
Unwanted Amplification of Emotions
By dwelling mentally on the situation, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.
It?s interesting to look at where thoughts get their energy from. How does a thought like hating your boss become so powerful? How does that thought become so powerful that you decide to quit your pain-in-the-ass job?
It?s the process of dwelling on a thought that gives it power. Every time you think of the negative experience and how it made you feel, you give it power. It takes up more space in your mind, thus using up space that could be used for more helpful thoughts.
The entire process can become a pattern that acts the same way the theory of compounding interest does with money ? except it?s working against you, not for you. You dial down the emotion from negative thoughts by breaking the pattern.
How do you break the pattern? Using pattern interrupts.
Pattern interrupts are nothing more than ideas that can make you think differently and even rewire your brain. Here are some examples:
- Failure is only the beginning
- Rejection is misdirection
- Failure is the beginning not the end
- Tomorrow could be your last day
The Mind Is an Intrinsic Part of the Problem
The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the ?problem.?
The idea that the mind could be the problem in many situations was another one that knocked me to the floor (several times). Previously, I thought of the mind as the answer to everything.
When you open yourself up to the idea that your mind could be part of the problem, you again get closer to the concept of your self being the watcher.
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Love, Joy and Peace Arise from Beyond the Mind
Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being. As such, they have no opposite. This is because they arise from beyond their mind.
An introduction to states that exist beyond the mind is an interesting concept to explore. Love, joy, and peace are incredibly power states of human existence ? it?s love after all that allows you to be born.
Going beyond the mind allows you to get closer to these states. You can heal so much pain with joy, peace, and love.
Escaping the Egoic Mind
The more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering ? and free of the egoic mind.
My ego has been the cause of many problems ? that was until I read Ryan Holiday?s book ?Ego is the enemy.?
Seeing how powerful the ego can be and how it caused me to be a jerk for most of my 20?s allowed me to find an easy way to escape it. When I learned to dial down my ego, this happened:
- I gave credit to others
- I stopped seeing every human being as my competitor
- I became kinder
- I discovered humility
- I realized I really know nothing
- I stopped defending my ideas as being right all the time
The Power of Now helped me understand the ego better. By learning to go back to the now, I was able to quit taking so many trips to the past and present where my ego tried to explain what had happened, or what was going to happen, from its own position of authority.
My ego told me it was right, but present moment awareness helped me to escape the mind and sit in the present.
In the present, the ego?s voice became quieter.
Your Creative Nature Is Covered up by the Feeling of Time
The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continuously to cover up the present moment with past and future, and so, as the vitality and infinite creative potential of Being, which is inseparable from the Now, becomes covered up by time, your true nature becomes obscured by the mind.
How you feel time can change. You can use flow states to make eight hours feel like one hour if you choose.
The mind plays games when it comes to time. If you can learn to feel time differently, you can uncover more of your creativity. Creativity is found in the present.
Only if you are able to be conscious with thought can you use your mind creatively.
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Live Without Creating Any More Time
If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of the past pain that still lives on in you, then don?t create any more time, or at least no more than necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life.
The idea that your mind creates time and you can create just enough of it to do what you have to do is another pathway to higher consciousness.
Timelines are a figment of your imagination.
Saying you need a successful business by thirty or kids by thirty-five is just your mind playing with time and using it to put unnecessary pressure on you.
Time is helpful when you have just enough of it in front of you that you can focus on what you need now. Too much runway, as it results to time, leads to a place where you may never be. You can think about the next ten years and what you?re going to do, but what if you never arrive there? What if cancer takes your life before then?
Then you?ve wasted all your time stuck in your mind creating timelines that are entirely unhelpful.
Don?t create time; live with just enough time in front of you.
?Make the Now the Primary Focus of Your Life?
This was a quote that stood out in the book. It?s the solution.
There is the past, the future, and the now.
What if you just adjusted your life to spend more time in the now, and lesser and lesser time in the past and future? What would happen?
Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.
Pain is an illusion
The pain-body that determines whether you feel pain doesn?t want you to see it. Once you can see it, it?s power is lost and the illusion is revealed.
Contemplate that idea for a moment. If pain wasn?t real, what could you achieve in your life?
A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it presence. You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body.
This means that it cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself through you. You have found your own innermost strength. You have accessed the power of Now.
Find Other People Who Have Become Conscious to Compound Your Results
When a log that has only just started to burn is placed next to one that is burning fiercely, and after a while they are separated again, the first log will be burning with much greater intensity. After all, it is the same fire.
The term ?becoming conscious? means going beyond the mind and experiencing present-moment awareness. It turns out, there are many more people who have been playing with this idea for years.
This is why conferences such as Vishen Lakhiani?s A-Fest are worth attending. It?s a room full of people looking to go beyond the mind and understand their own experience so that they may maximize the journey.
(Read Vishens?s book ?The Code Of The Extraordinary Mind? to discover more about higher levels of consciousness and the study of brain waves as it relates to things like forgiveness.)
If you surround yourself with people who want to achieve higher levels of consciousness, you amplify your own ability to experience that state yourself.
Most Live in a State of Fear (An Opportunity)
The number of people who have gone beyond the mind is as yet extremely small, so you can assume that virtually everyone you meet or know lives in a state of fear.
Knowing that almost everybody you meet is living in fear, is a useful feeling. When you?re scared to get up on stage, so is everybody else. When you?re afraid to start a family, so is everybody else. When you?re scared to quit your job, so is everybody else. When you face death for the first time and are fearful, so is everybody else.
We?re all doing the best we can and dealing with fear in our own way.
If everybody was scared sh*tless and you could see it and knew it, how much power would that give you to stop holding yourself back and to disconnect from opinions, rejection and failure?
Most people live in fear, so the opportunity for you to go beyond the mind is huge. It puts you in the 1% category of consciousness.
Your Ego?s Search for Completeness Is a Bottomless Hole
Ego gratification is a real problem. If your ego runs your life, you might find the following thought relatable:
So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete.
But even when they attain all these things, they soon find that the hole is still there, that it is bottomless. Then they are really in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore. Well, they can and do, but it gets more difficult.
If you find yourself chasing money, success, power or recognition, or a dream romantic partner, ask yourself why? If you?ve achieved any of those things, was it the answer?
When I started to make waves in the world of writing, I thought making money was going to change everything. It didn?t. Money and notoriety did absolutely nothing. They were pointless goals that I never set for myself. People focused on the surface level idea of success while I became addicted to what it meant to help people.
To realize that your life can be helpful and inspire other people is a hugely freeing feeling. Chasing the ego?s idea of success never ends. You can never have enough success, money, or fame. There is always more and so you begin the slow and steady path towards insanity; doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Go beyond the ego. Look beyond the mind. There you will find an empowering meaning for your life.
Understanding the Mind Won?t Take You Beyond the Mind
Studying the complexities of the mind makes you a good psychologist, but doing so won?t take you beyond the mind.
Understanding the mind is level one.
The present moment, the idea of ?the watcher,? and seeing your ego for what it is, is level two.
An Understanding of Unconsciousness Helps You Become Present
So once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with the mind, which of course includes the emotions, you step out of it. You become present.
We?ve talked a lot about consciousness, but the opposite, unconsciousness, contains many lessons too. Identifying yourself with your mind and its emotions leads to unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is like being trapped in your head and not being in control of the show. You?re at the mercy of your mind and that is an out of control place to be all the time.
Seeing unconsciousness helped me become more aware of whether I was living in the past, future, or present.
The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
It was a simple idea to understand and, therefore easier to implement than some intangible piece of advice you can?t take action on.
Image Credit: Shitterstock/Honza Hruby
Be Interested in Your Reactions
Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or the future.
This was an interesting experiment for me. I noticed while observing my reactions to situations and people that there was this continuing theme of impatience. I always wanted the answer so I could move on to the future while completely ignoring the present.
When you look at your reactions in-depth, you?ll see that they are often connected to your childhood and how you reacted as a child when you were climbing through the playground. Many people you meet are adult babies in their heads that have never grown up, and react that way.
The Present Moment Is All You Ever Have
The present moment is all you ever have. There is never a time when your life is not ?this moment.?
You can?t go back to the past.
You may never make it to the future.
I know you probably knew this but think deeply about what that means. What?s the point of the past or future if it takes you away from all that you have which is now?
Live in the now, and you?ll maximize what you already have.
The Signs of ?Too Much Future?
Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry ? all forms of fear ? are caused by too much future.
Fear is caused by too much future. Return to now and go to the future less if you have way too much of these diseases in your life.
Realizing There Are No Problems
Ultimately, this is not about solving your problems. It?s about realizing there are no problems.
This could easily have been a line out of The Matrix. It wasn?t.
Just imagine if you had no problems. Without problems, your mind would be free from 24/7 solutioning that drains your mind of the energy you need to enjoy your life.
The Power of One Thing You Can Do Now
Or you are carrying in your mind the insane burden of a hundred things that you will or may have to do in the future instead of focusing your attention on the one thing you can do now.
I love the concept that is The Power Of Doing Only One Thing and have written about how I used the philosophy to remove many pointless options from my life. There is probably only one thing you should be doing right now and deep down you already know what that is. For me, on this bright sunny Saturday, it?s writing.
All the things your mind thinks you should do, are just distractions for the one thing you must do.
Life Challenges Reveal Your Level of Consciousness
The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life?s challenges when they come.
Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep.
I?ve spent years being crappy at dealing with life?s typical challenges. It was a sign of just how unconscious I?d become.
Talking about consciousness can be a woo-woo subject if there is no way to assess which side of consciousness you?re on.
Looking at how you deal with life?s challenges and whether the answer is ?pretty well,? will help you gauge where you?re at. It doesn?t matter how unconscious you are; what matters is that you notice it because then you can work towards solving your issues using present moment awareness and separating your self from your mind.
Consciousness Is How You Start Living Instead of Existing
It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.
You can exist or you can live.
The sad truth is most people will never truly live; only exist.
This doesn?t have to be you, though. Explore consciousness for yourself and see where it takes you. To start living again is one of the best feelings in the world. You deserve it for yourself.
Understanding Presence Is Being Present
It?s not what you think it is. You can?t think about presence, and the mind can?t understand it. Understanding presence is being present.
Topics that the mind doesn?t understand are fascinating. Topics like presence are beyond the mind, that?s why.
Freeing Consciousness from Physical and Mental Form
When consciousness frees itself from its identification with physical and mental forms, it becomes what we may call pure or enlightened consciousness, or presence.
What if your physical body wasn?t real? What if all that is real is your consciousness?
What if during every lifetime you got to be a part of, your consciousness just moved from one physical form to the next?
This is a deep topic beyond the scope of this article but it?s worth contemplating using present moment awareness.
Image Credit: Shutterstock/Michael Osterrieder
Flood Your Body with Consciousness Before Bed
When you are unoccupied for a few minutes, and especially last thing at night before falling asleep and first thing in the morning before getting up, ?flood? your body with consciousness.
Close your eyes. Lie flat on your back. Choose different parts of your body to focus your attention on briefly.
This one is practical and anyone can use it. By flooding your body with consciousness before bed, I?ve found, I sleep better. It allows me to fall asleep even when I have a heavy mind that is weighing me down.
Acceptance Frees Your Mind
Acceptance immediately frees you from mind dominance and this reconnects you with being.
If you stop trying to solve all your problems and just accept them, you will be free for a bit. Thinking you can go back and change a situation is a waste of time. Accept what has happened.
In comparison to everything else, your problem is small. It won?t matter when you get closer to death. So why should it matter right now?
An end to all drama
When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life. Nobody can have an argument with you, no matter how hard he or she tries. You cannot have arguments with a fully conscious person.
This might be the answer to all the drama in your life. If you could learn to be conscious again, arguments might just seem unnecessary. I?ve learned more and more over the last year to not bother with arguments. They achieve nothing and no one is right or wrong.
You?re right according to your values and experiences, but when measured against somebody else?s, you might be wrong in their mind. All of it doesn?t really matter. End the drama.
The Timeless Dimension of the Present
If there is no action you can take, and you cannot remove yourself from the situation either, then use the situation to make you go more deeply into the Now, more deeply into Being.
When you enter the timeless dimension of the present, change often comes about in strange ways without the need for a great deal of doing on your part.
If there is no answer to a situation or a problem, there is one option left.
Solutions come from the strangest of places and sometimes all you do by trying to keep on fixing, is stop the solution from surfacing.
The problem is probably caused by you and a higher state of consciousness can help you see that.
The Secret of Life Is to Die Before You Die
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ?die before you die? ? and find that there is no death.
I could seriously repeat this phrase over and over and never get tired of it.
When I was sixteen-years-old, I was almost murdered late one night when a gang attacked my friend and me. As he was getting stabbed and I was being beaten in the head repeatedly with a baseball bat, time began to slow down.
All of my problems, desires and goals in life disappeared. For a brief moment, I went beyond the mind.
I was free and at peace with what was happening to me. It didn?t matter whether I lived or died. All that mattered was I got to die before actually dying. If you have ever had a near-death experience, you may have felt something similar but not been able to describe it or understand what it was.
Dying feels like present moment awareness.
What I learned was that you don?t have to actually die to experience that feeling and be in touch with the peace it brings. Knowing what it?s like to die before you die will take you closer to a higher level of consciousness.
In a true emergency, the mind stops; you become totally present in the Now, and something infinitely more powerful takes over.
This is why there are many reports of ordinary people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds. In any emergency, either you survive or you don?t. Either way it?s not a problem.
Final Thought
Now you have what it takes to achieve higher levels of consciousness, look beyond the mind, see the ego for what it is, and rethink your perception of time to go from the past and present, and to journey into right now.
The ideas in this article are vast and many of them individually can take you down their own rabbit hole. The point of this article is to open your mind to new ideas and for you to experiment with going beyond your mind.
Even if not every idea makes sense to you now, it will as you keep exploring yourself and what it means to live rather than exist.
You were born to do incredible things in your life and higher states of consciousness can help you unlock the next level.
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