For Whom the Bell Tolles

"Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are cause by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence". Eckhart Tolle

While I'm not particularly a deep person, I have to give this one up to Eckhart. A friend is reading A New Earth. I like the IDEA of reading A New Earth - and other spiritual treatises designed to enlighten and make one a blast at parties. However, I don't really get through them easily. This quote however, stands out as almost a manifesto for the recovering Nazarene.

In the theofallacy that is most Nazarene thought, there really is no present. This moment is not even a construct. There is the regretted, confessed past that haunts us with our sinfulness. It is the stuff of weepy altar calls and mind-numbing guilt. There is the future with its promise of eschatological mayhem: the final judgement with either ultimate relief and a mansion or split level with a rec room or whatever, or the spewing out of God's mouth that is eternal damnation.
Past. Future. No present.

I kind of get it really. When your basic view of humankind is fallen, disgraced, and wanton, the view from your rearview mirror is interpreted pretty harshly. Mind you, people do some seriously shitty things - and by people I mean me. So the past can look pretty grim. But come on, how many times do you need to weep into the nine pound KJV of an altar worker for saying "shit" when you hit your thumb with hammer?

And I kind of get the Nazarene need for future. Many, many of the Nazi faithful live lives that suck - poor, drowning in polyester, uneducated, superstitious, and terrified. Hell, who wouldn't want to think of brighter days just beyond Jordan with that shitty existence. Seriously, if that's all there is, would you want any kind of faith at all?

So the ideas set forth by Tolle are really the most unnazarene type of thinking. To live in the now is not to feel consumed by guilt about past transgressions and to not be anxious and crazy about what happens in the hereafter. It is, in fact, the very opposite of what we were taught.

Somewhere along the line, I lost most of my ability to regret. I think it is like nerve deafness that comes from listening to your iPod on max volume for 20 hours a day. After a while, you don't hear it, you don't feel it, you don't give a shit.

But I do have problems with the unease, anxiety, stress, tension, and worry bit. I always have to have things just so - controlled, neat, emotionally tidy and not too involved. A plan for every contingency is my goal the moment my feet hit the floor.

Tomorrow morning, I am going to live int the present, in the presence. I will not care what happened or will happen, but only about what is happening.

I hope.