The Power of Now (and then)

I think this Tolle guy has understood something with his idea of living in the Now, rightly understood. So, it is kind of amazing that this just suddenly was revealed to him after just sitting around. It is also kind of amazing that he didn't know it already, since it's been part of any number of religious traditions - even in the wider sense of religion - for thousands of years. But such are the times. I guess you really can reinvent the wheel of Dharma.

We can see how unfamiliar this is when we are in any social gathering (of non-Raccoons, obviously). There will usually be one or more or a whole lot of people who are not quite there. Or rather, you are not right there in their mind. Instead, the room is populated by that person and any number of cardboard signs depicting types of humans. They are the only person that is really real. And because of this, you just cannot connect to them. You are not really there to them, even if you are right there. That is why there is no connection, no matter how much you'd want there to be. You are there, listening to them talk to those cardboard signs. It is an unsettling feeling.

(I am pretty sure I was one of those guys when I was younger, by the way. I guess people just took it for granted, because I don't think anyone ever told me. Or perhaps I just did not notice.)

This is what happens when people are not really present in the Now. The pinprick size of their Now has dwindled to near extinction.

The opposite happens through spiritual growth, or the influx of eternity into mundane time, creating sacred time, which is both personal and at the same time freely shared, wide open. As the "bubble" of personal Now-time increases, a person becomes ever more present. So someone who is spiritually advanced, even if it is in a different tradition than yours, will be almost disturbingly present. Even ordinary people will notice it.

I believe that the greater someone's presence, the less presence does it take to recognize it. So if a person was filled with unimaginable amounts of eternity, even the complete amateur in all things spiritual would be able to connect to them even thousands of years later. Well, that is easy for me to speculate since it already happened. ^_^

Saying grace?

Do Americans still say grace at meals? My guess would be not, since I notice that the average American has grown a lot fatter over the last generation. This has happened here in Norway too after most people stopped saying grace. Saying grace was a common behavior when I was a child; in Norway it was called "praying for the food", which caused some confusion since a) the food was already there, or alternatively b) the food was probably beyond rescue. In any case, already in my teens this practice was growing rare outside small conservative sects. And not long after, Norwegians began to grow fatter and fatter until this day.

I am not sure about cause and effect here, actually. I think if I was obese from overindulgence, I might find it hard to commune with the Light at mealtime. Kind of like it is hard to pray before going to bed if there are steadily new people in your bed. But also the other way around, it is probably hard to get ever new people into your bed if you keep praying there. So again, cause and effect is a strange couple. It would be kind of interesting to gather a bunch of obese people and record them saying grace on a regular basis and see what happened to their weight and general health. But I suspect the current government would not fund the research. So how are things over on the west side of the sea?