In his book The power of now, Eckhart Tolle discusses the origin of fear. In the picture above, these lines especially jump out at me- “You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap”. While this may sound simple, its that one thing that keeps us entrenched in ego-suffering.
What Eckhart is urging us to do is to use our awareness to recognize the anxiety as it occurs, to then become aware that while our body exists here, our mind has wandered to a future (or past or imaginary) place and that our ego stories have entrapped us in an untrue web of fear and deception. Personally, I have come to imagine it as ego stepping on my neck and dragging me through a field of broken glass, its very painful and brings me huge amounts of unnecessary suffering.
Once this awareness hits, I purposefully bring my mind back to here and now and anchor it to my body. I find I do this in three major ways.
1) Bring my mind to the objects/persons in my surroundings here and now and elaborately describe how these objects/persons bring me comfort and joy, feeling fully grateful for each, repeat, repeat.
2) Prepare a mental list of all the things I enjoy in my life just the way it is, small things like a warm cup of tea, walk through the woods, petting my dog, etc; then bring my mind back to the present moment and examine which of these are available to me here and now and relish being fully nourished by each, repeat repeat.
3) When the anxiety story is large, I bring my minds attention to my body. Starting with my feet, I give thanks for my feet, for all they do for me, send them love and healing, then move up to my ankles, calves, knees, each internal organ, so on and so forth, repeating and returning as often as I need to. This is the most effective way to bring mind back to the body here and now in the present.
What are some of your techniques to bring your awareness to the present moment, to close the anxiety gap? thoughts? comments?