Day 214

Thoughts: The Power Of Now. 
You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are! Says the author of The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle. Words from his source: 
The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. 
I wonder what my next thought will be. Then become very alert and wait for the next thought.
Waiting- it is not a waiting in which your attention is focused on some point in the future and the present is perceived as an undesirable obstacle that prevents us from having what you want. There is a qualitatively different kind of waiting, one that requires your total alertness. Something could happen at any moment, and if you are not absolutely awake, absolutely still, you will miss it. In that state, all your attention is in the now. There is none left for daydreaming, thinking, remembering, anticipating. There is no tension, no fear, just alert presence. You are more fully yourself than you ever were before, or rather it is only now that you are truly yourself. 
Beauty arises in the stillness of your presence. To become aware of such things, the mind needs to be still. You have to put down for a moment your personal baggage of problems, your past and future, as well as your knowledge; otherwise you will see but not see, hear but not hear. Your total presence is required. 
Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them.
There is nothing that you need to understand before you can become present. 
CREATING GAP MINDThis can start with a very simple thing, such as taking one conscious breath or looking, in a state of intense alertness, at a flower, so that there is no mental commentary running at the same time. There are many ways to create a gap in the incessant stream of thought. Meditation. 
SURRENDERThe letting go of mental emotional resistance to what is-also becomes a portal into the unmanisfested. The reason for this is simple; inner resistance cuts you off from other people, from yourself, from the world around you. It strengthens the feeling of separateness on which the ego depends for its survival. Its up to you to open a portal in your life that gives you conscious access to the unmanifested. Get in touch with the energy field n your body, be intensely present, disidentify from your mind, surrender to what is, these are the portal you can use, but you only need to use one.
SILENCE Do you hear that dog barking in the distance? Of that car passing by? Listen carefully. Can you feel the presence of the unmanifested in that? You cant? Look for it in the silence out of which the sounds come and into which they return. Pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to the outer silence creates inner silence; the mind becomes still. A portal is opening up. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. This is why it has been said that nothing in this world is so like God as silence. All you have ot do its pay attention to it. Even during a conversation, become conscious of the gaps between words, the brief silent intervals between sentences. As you do that, the dimension of stillness grows within you. BE STILL.
SPACEJust as no sound can exist without silence, nothing can exist without no-thing, without the empty space that enables it to be. Every physical object or body ha come out of nothing, is surrounded by nothing, and will eventually return to nothing. Inside every physical body there is far more ‘nothing’ than ‘something’. Space is just as easy to miss as silence. Everybody pays attention to the things in space, but who pays attention to space itself? So what happens if you withdraw attention from the objects in space and become aware of space itself? What is the essence of this room? The furniture, the pictures, and so on are in the room, but they are not the room. The floor, walls and ceiling define the boundary of the room, but they are not the room either. So what is the essence of the room? Space of course, empty space. There would be no ‘room’ without it. Since space is ‘nothing’ we can say that what is NOT there is more important that what is there. So become aware of the space around you. Don’t think about it. Feel it, as it were. Pay attention to the ‘nothing’. If you withdraw attention from things, -objects in space- you automatically withdraw your attention from your mind objects as well. In other words you cannot think and be aware of space, or silence.
We are not trying to understand it. There is nothing to understand. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. 
THE TRUE NATURE OF SPACE AND TIMENow consider this: if there were nothing but silence, it wouldn’t exist for you, you wouldn’t know what it is. Only when sound appears does silence come into being. Similarly if there were only space without any objects in space, it would exist for you. Nothing could BE without space, yet space is nothing.


Challenges: My chattering mind. 
Triumphs: Presence that is available to me at every moment, every time, always there. The door is always open. 
What I Ate Today:
Meal 1: Strawberries. 
Meal 2: A grapefruit and orange juice. 
Meal 3: Macadamia nuts mmm my favourite!
Meal 4: Some sprouts, alfalfa, clover and chickpeas, 2 nectarines. 
Meal 5: 3 nectarines and some cherries. 
Meal 6: Blackberries, blueberries, cherries and brazil nut chunks. 
Exercise: A one hour workout at the gym - I worked out my arms, legs, abs, you never feel worse after a workout! ;)