How Presence Healed Me

"Ultimately you are not taking responsibility for life until you take responsibility for this moment—Now. This is because Now is the only place where life can be found.”—Eckhart Tolle (Stillness Speaks)

It all started with 16-year-old me ordering a few new books on Amazon. I was never much of a reader at all, but I was getting very interested in the self-help book category. I ordered The Untethered Soul, The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer.

At the age of 16, I was going through a tough time. I was just transferring high schools; I was a lonely girl with no siblings, living with my alcoholic and verbally insulting mom; and I was more lost than ever. My constant fighting with my mom, since basically birth, had more damage on me than anything else.

The months leading up to me reading this book were focused on self-care, positive change, and open mindedness. I had just turned vegan, quit all of my old bad habits, was journaling everyday, and was learning more and more about spirituality and inner healing. After reading The Untethered Soul, a major shift occurred for me.

The major shift that occurred for me cannot really be defined by words, but you could call it "spiritual awakening," "ego-death," "waking up," etc. I wrote in my journal, “It felt like I was uncontrollably riding a high-speed train my whole life, and then it hit a brick wall, and now I am awake and here and now.” Kind of a weird way of putting it, but that is what I wrote.

To this day, no experience has ever compared. It is now 2019, and I still look back on this span of time in my life and I am still in shock. What really happened to me, emotionally and spiritually, or mentally?

I have just begun to get back into reading my self-help books. This summer, I picked up one of my favorite books in the entire world, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle’s book was a finger pointing to myself, and myself only. His book screamed, “Look within yourself; the answers you are looking for are in this present moment, and within you.”

Reading The Power of Now took me back in time to my 16-year-old self, to solve some unanswered questions.

I learned how to detach myself from identity with my thoughts, and feel into the present consciousness deep within myself. I could not do this with my mind, because only with the absence of thought could I feel still, and free.

It took a lot of dedication and meditation practice, but I found myself in true stillness and presence. I also found that I was identifying with external form around me, such as the material items I owned, the people I hung out with, my external appearance, and other factors.

The most important factor I learned to disidentify from was my past.

The past is not me, and it has already happened, and so let it be.

Most of us, to this day, explain who we think we are based on what has happened to us in the past. This could not be further than the truth.

What has happened to us is not who we are.

I found true inner-healing from disidentification from thought, practicing stillness, and finding presence in the now and nowhere else.

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry—all forms of fear—are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”―Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)

I highly recommend you read The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle, if you have not already!

Thank you so much for reading! (: