This Explains A Lot

Just in case anyone out there has noticed that I’ve turned a corner and seem to be veering off into annoying preachy mode these days, perhaps I should explain.  It’s all Eckhart Tolle’s fault. 

I normally avoid ’self help’ books like the plague, so I don’t know what made me pick this one up.  But I cannot deny the fact that it is something I needed to read, and that it came to me at exactly the moment when I needed it the most. 

The part about ‘life’s purpose’ is what caught my eye I guess.  Does my life actually have a purpose?  Hmm.  Who knew.  So with all kinds of stuff going on around me I started reading it and could not stop.  On almost every page there is some sort of idea or statement that produces an OMG moment.  I know these things are true.  So why have I been living my life like they’re not?  It’s made me completely rethink the purpose of this blog, for one thing.  Has this been just a way for me to constantly revisit the past trying to define who I am, and thus remove myself from the present? 

I took the book with me when I flew to Ontario.  At that point I was only about halfway through it, but already I was seeing how easy it is to focus on being present in the now.  I was able to go calmly through a time that otherwise might have been unbearably stressful.  I was not distraught because there was and is no point in being that.  I felt a lovely sense of peace and I sincerely hope my presence conveyed that to the people around me.  I finished the book just before I flew back home, and I left my copy with my sister.  I bought another copy the day I went back to work, two days after mom passed away, and began to re-read it.  And how amazing is this – there were whole sections that seemed to be completely new, as if I hadn’t been capeable of absorbing or understanding them the first time around. 

I gave that copy to my daughter and am now on copy number three.  Then as I was leaving work yesterday, walking past a book display, 

this book was suddenly in my hand and headed for the check out.  So what is happening here?   Am I being completely brain washed??  I think so, but in a good way.  It’s like all the ridiculous crap that I’ve been carrying around in my head is being washed away.  Things that had the power to make me feel bad and unhappy and sad and stressed are still there, but they’ve lost their importance. 

I’m reading the books in the wrong order, but that’s not important either.  What is significant is the realization that it is so incredibly easy to feel joy and aliveness in everything I do.  And if I can’t quite reach the joyous level, there is at least a peacefull acceptance. 

If all this blather is making you quite gaggy, sorry about that.  I’ll stop now.  No one can force their personal experiences onto someone else or make them feel the same things.  But Eckhart Tolle is pretty good at pointing a person in a new and interesting direction, where things are better.