Last summer I picked up The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle for the first time, and at once something clicked. With incredibly lucid1（明晰的）, unadorned（朴素的） prose, he describes exactly how we perpetuate2 our own suffering in our minds, keeping our pain and worry alive with our repetitive thoughts about past and future. We expend3 a great deal of energy this way creating problems for ourselves, and making ourselves a problem, when what would actually free us is a return to awareness4 of the present moment . Although Id read something like this before in other books usually by prominent Buddhist5 teachers it hadnt sunk in on more than an intellectual level. And I had certainly never known how to apply it in my day-to-day life.The key word he used was nonresistance. Which meant neither running away from discomfort6 nor fighting it. Instead of immediately commencing the usual struggle, he recommended that we allow the feeling, and give it no more attention than nonjudgmental observation. I honestly didnt know if I could I sit still and just be with an experience, even when the experience was wholly unpleasant, but it was worth a try. Could I refrain from jumping on the thought train and turning everything into a major issue Could I break a lifelong, ingrained, unconscious habitThe answer turned out to be yes when Im paying attention! Im a lot more conscious of my unconscious reactions now than I was, so when the intense anxiety possesses me, as it did when I was in the midst of packing for my latest move, I can sometimes catch myself in the act of resistance.I was in the car with an old and dear friend, on the way to what I had hoped would be a lovely Sunday brunch7, when it seized me, violently, like a blindsided hostage. I was seasick8 with dread9; my stomach knotted and my heart raced. The downtown streets looked ugly, squalid, and hostile. At first I tried to fight the feeling, then despaired at the thought that our outing was ruined.Suddenly I remembered Tolles words: resist nothing.I relaxed into my discomfort. As if it were the most normal thing in the world. Okay, I decided10, so Im going to feel like this right now. I neither battled nor ignored the sensations, but simply allowed them to blow through my system like a minor11 typhoon, as my friend continued to tell me about her new house. By the time we were parking, they were already ebbing12 away. When we sat down at a table, it was hard for me to believe how I had felt only minutes before, and we did have a lovely brunch, after all.Who woulda thought it Certainly not me. But thats the beauty of not thinking.
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