When you drop your expectations that a person, a situation, a place, or an object should fulfill you, it's easier to be present in this moment because you're no longer looking to the next one. Most people want to get what they want, whereas the secret is to want what you get at this moment.
Eckhart Tolle
WE WILL HELP YOU BECOME WHO YOU WANT TO BE.
Psychotherapy
There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysis or finding out about your past as long as you don't confuse knowing about yourself with knowing yourself. Whatever you learn through psychoanalysis or self observation is about you. It is not you. It is content, not essence. Going beyond the ego means stepping out of its content. Knowing yourself is being yourself, and being yourself is ceasing to identify with content.
Most people define themselves through the content of their lives. Whatever you perceive, experience, do, think, or feel is content. Content is what absorbs most people's attention entirely, and it is what they identify with. When you think or say, “my life,” you are not referring to the life that you are but with the life that you have, or seem to have. You are referring to content – your age, health, relationships, finances, work and living situation, as well as your mental-emotional state. The inner and outer circumstances of your life, your past and your future, all belong to the realm of content – as do events, that is to say, anything that happens.
What is there other than content? That which enables the content to be – the inner space of consciousness. This is what psychotherapy should focus on.
A good psychotherapist would ask these kinds of questions of you:
What is there other than content? That which enables the content to be – the inner space of consciousness. This is what psychotherapy should focus on.
A good psychotherapist would ask these kinds of questions of you:
What is your relationship with the present moment?
Is the Now a means to an end?
Is the Now a way to achieve something or get something in the future?
Or is the Now an end in itself?
Do you see the Now as an obstacle?
Are you making it into an enemy?
What is your relationship with Life itself?
These questions will unmask your ego and bring its unconscious activities into the light of day. Remember: the present moment is all you ever have, and life is inseparable from the Now. To the extent that you are living in the past or future, you are not living and you will not feel fulfilled and happy.
How do you go beyond a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment? The most important thing is to see it in yourself, in your thoughts and actions. In the moment of seeing, of noticing that your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, you are present. The seeing is the arising Presence. The moment you see the dysfunction, it begins to dissolve. Some people laugh out loud when they see this. With the seeing comes the power of choice – the choice of saying yes to the Now, of making it into your friend.
How do you go beyond a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment? The most important thing is to see it in yourself, in your thoughts and actions. In the moment of seeing, of noticing that your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, you are present. The seeing is the arising Presence. The moment you see the dysfunction, it begins to dissolve. Some people laugh out loud when they see this. With the seeing comes the power of choice – the choice of saying yes to the Now, of making it into your friend.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that.It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
Sylvia Boorstein
Sylvia Boorstein
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