All We Have is Now (thank you Flaming Lips)

The following is one of my favorite pictures. I didn't take it in the Caribbean, but rather at the Bonnaroo festival outside of Manchester, TN in 2008. A delightful wall surrounds the grounds and is covered with graffiti-style portraits of music icons and other bits of art and wisdom offered by festival patrons.  

The mispellings don't even bother me.

That's how much I like it.

I loved this proverb because it's a punchy, scatalogical summary of Eckhart Tolle's primary teaching. (Isn't it fun when the obscene and the divine co-mingle?) I, along with millions of other Oprah fans (ain't no shame) and spiritual seekers, had been studying Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. I was really struck by his observation of how most people spend the majority of their lives in their head, either reliving past experiences or worrying over future ones, and thereby not truly being in the one moment we ever have in life, which is the present one. Well, I certainly recognized myself in this description.

While we were studying this particular part of the book, I discovered the same message in the lyrics to a Flaming Lips song that I'd listened to many times before without every really thinking about what it meant.
The song is aptly named, "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell"-- the ego being an entity much discussed in Tolle's teachings. One night while listening to my headphones during the long trek down the hall to my old apartment building's laundry room, I noticed that the lyrics seemed to speak to this exact same idea.

I was waiting on a moment

But the moment never came

All the billion other moments

Were just wasting all away

I must have been tripping

Just ego tripping

                         

I listened to the song for days. It was a rock and roll balm. I listened in my car, in my bedroom, and on my mp3 player when necessary-- trying desperately to remind myself to embody the present moment in a way that I will listen. I have no idea what Wayne Coyne had in mind when he wrote those lyrics. To me, hearing them that night in the stuffy corridor of my Minneapolis apartment complex was a little bit of synchronicity, the universe pointing out something that might be able to help me enjoy this life a bit more.


For the last couple of days, I've been listening to an interview with Eckhart Tolle by Krista Tippett on Speaking of Faith. This has been after taking a long Tolle break for reasons I won't elaborate upon at the moment. I enjoyed hearing his soothing, yoda-like voice again, teaching his lessons in a way that makes them seem so simple. He mentioned using what he calls a pointer when you notice you're in a state of mental suffering. This is something to ask yourself when you feel stress or anxiety settle in your body. "What is my relationship with the present moment right now? Am I friends with the present moment or are we enemies?"  This pointer has, indeed, been helpful to me, albeit far from a magic bullet.

My decision to move to St. Thomas is for some reason wrapped up with my desire for living an anxiety free life. (This might be considered ironic since moving here has conjured up a host of fresh worries). I realized the other day that there will always be something for me to worry about. Right now I'm worried about not getting a job down here (since we already know my last resort option of bartending is out) and not being able to pay my bills...those student loans for the college degree that I so value but don't seem to be using. Soon I will be employed, and my current worry will no longer be valid. By that time something else will have me worried. Some drama at work or perhaps worrying that I'm not doing a good enough job. Or something will occur in my family life. The point is, you can always find things to worry about. Me especially; I've been a pro since childhood. So the key is not to just solve whatever it is that worries me right now, but to discover a way of living in which anxiety has no part.

We're working on it...
And by "we", I mean the royal collection of voices in my head.