Changing the Focal Point of Our Lives to the Present Moment 
by Alice Gardner

Something totally unprecedented is happening right now—spiritually, culturally and technologically. Oprah Winfrey has offered her massive media presence to the movement of spiritual awakening in our world and has created a huge ten-week online web-cast classroom with Eckhart Tolle. Together they are teaching Eckhart’s new book, A New Earth, point-by-point, chapter-by-chapter. 

Eckhart has a wonderful way of saying inspiring things using such plain language that we can all relate to no matter what our spiritual or religious backgrounds might be. This has meant that Oprah and Eckhart’s massive media presentation is appealing to unprecedented numbers of people around the world and breaking new ground technologically through the numbers simultaneously participating. No matter which religious or spiritual vocabulary we usually use, through this online class millions of people are connecting with the message in this wonderful book about awakening to our life’s purpose and creating a new earth. 

The class is running live on Monday nights for ten weeks, having started in early March. It is still possible to join at the time of this writing by going to Oprah.com. If you are not available on Monday nights, you can still download the video or the audio for free. The entire class is free. But more significant than the unprecedented numbers of people focusing on such a topic worldwide is the actual content of the class and book and its potential effect on such large numbers of people. 

We heard in Eckhart’s earlier book “The Power of Now” about the importance of the present moment—about how the past and the future are not real in the same way that this present moment is real—past and future are just ideas that are programmed into our minds.  This must have resonated with many of us, because the Power of Now has been on the best seller lists for so long. Now Eckhart has written A New Earth and it has already sold 3.5 million copies, even before Oprah started this class. We must have an abiding interest in this message! And we want to know—after exploring our interest and enjoying these wonderful books—is there a way that we can actually experience this reality that Eckhart is talking about in the midst of the commotion of our busy daily lives? 

What would it really mean to change the focal point of our lives to the present moment and to stay living in the world? If we are willing to really have that happen for us, what would it mean for our lives?  The content in each of our lives is different, obviously, so the exact details of what would change would be as unique as we each are as people.  On the other hand, there are universal patterns about this inner shift that Eckhart is referring to. One of these is expressed so succinctly by the description he uses of having a space develop between our sense of self and our thought processes. This space occurs and expands as we dis-identify with our thought processes and relate to them instead as a wonderful tool that we (an identity outside of them) use. 

In our lives up to this point, we have been fused with these thoughts that go through our minds, as if our ideas about ourselves are actually equivalent to who we are. When we stay in the present moment and notice that our thoughts are arising and are something quite separate from who we are, then a space is appearing. At first it may seem vague and fleeting, but over time, if we keep giving this our attention, the space seems to widen and become permanent and “normal.” We notice our thoughts, as if from a slight distance, as only being thoughts and not having anything to do with who we are.  We no longer look to our thinking processes to provide us with crucial information about who we are, and so are freed in a wonderful way from reliance on our thoughts, feelings or circumstances conforming to our preferences. They no longer affect us in the same way. We are in the world but are not centrally affected by its constantly changing vistas. 

This lack of reference to thinking for clues about our identity doesn’t leave much possibility for using the past and future as focal points for our daily living. Past and future turn out to not exist outside of our thought processes. We can watch our thoughts creating both. Meanwhile it is all happening in a present moment that seems to be pregnant with possibility and vitality. When we stay with it enough to recognize the incredible beauty of the life force expressing itself around us in a myriad of forms, it can feel quite overwhelmingly and radiantly beautiful, no matter what the content of it is. 

If what we are going to do today, or how we are going to behave in a particular situation, has been a compulsive recreating of the past (making today be much like yesterday and projecting that into tomorrow) we become freed from that.  Although such freedom from the past is generally felt to be wonderful, what is sacrificed to get there is the knowing of what will be happening in the future.  To the mind, this tends to be a profoundly unacceptable situation because of its need to control life, and mind may be making noisy complaints about that. The noise, however, is occurring on the sidelines of awareness once we are experiencing the space that we have been referring to. It is just mind doing what minds do, making noise and being a tool that is trying unsuccessfully to retain control over its rightful master—you.  It no longer is needed for that particular job. You already know who you are. 

As we allow the present moment to be the focal point of our lives, we are freed from the domination by our thinking that has been the normal human condition for thousands of years. We are freed to live our lives without compulsive referencing to ideas about what is possible and the world opens up to us. We use the mind to reference practical things—we don’t want to forget our phone number or forget how to cook dinner. Mind is the most amazing and practical tool when it comes into its rightful place of serving something beyond itself. And when it is not needed, it can rest. What is here in this focal point of the present moment, then, is the simple yet vitally alive world that surrounds and includes us. We feel the wind in our hair again. We see the incredible vitality in the world around us—we see God (or call it Life, or Love) peeking at us out of everything. We experience the joy that every birdcall has all along been offering us.  The veil of thinking has been lifted off of the world, and life as it is, including our own, can now be experienced. 

Experiencing the world in this way is such an overwhelmingly wonderful experience that once it is felt, it forever remains as a motivation for the sometimes time-consuming process of learning to live it in the midst of everyday life. At first it may be that even little disturbances like a harsh word or a traffic jam will jump-start mind into such compelling noise that the experiencing of the present moment may not be possible until that event is long passed.  But gradually over time, with steady attention to who we really are, we are able to stay conscious in the little things, and only more charged and potent events can throw us. Gradually we come to live our whole lives in this new world. We have changed the focal point of our lives to the present moment, and our world reflects back to us the incredible gift of the Life that we have been given and that we are. 

© 2008 Alice Gardner
Author of "Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice"

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ALICE GARDNER found herself radically transformed after a retreat with spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle in October of 2002.  This completed her 30 year spiritual search and was the beginning of a new and vital exploration about fully living the realization while in the very human moments of everyday life. Alice has also been influenced strongly by the teachings of Adyashanti and by having lived at the Findhorn Foundation for seven years. Since 2003, Alice has maintained a website at www.wideawakeliving.com providing support and inspiration to the awakening process. It includes a free monthly e-newsletter, along with poetry, a reading list, nature photography and much more.