The “now” is always a “worry-free zone”

A Worry-Free Zone

by Paul Kowalewski

I recently had a lengthy conversation with someone who told me that she is “always worried.” In fact, she worries so much that she finds it hard to get to sleep at night. I asked her if she was in touch with her constant anxiety, and she had a ready answer.

She told me that several years ago her life had “fallen apart” – she had no sense of direction, a long-time relationship had ended, her health was failing. Then things got better for her – she went back to school, started going to a gym, made new friends.

But now she fears she may be relapsing – she isn’t eating well again, the sense of losing direction has returned, and she’s worried about it. In fact, she worries all the time, and so she can’t even get to sleep at night.

As we talked with one another, I immediately thought of something author and spiritual director, Eckhart Tolle wrote a few years ago in his book, The Power of Now:  “Fear and anxiety are always a product of remembering the past and thinking about the future.”

This is exactly what was happening in the life of that young woman. She was always “thinking.” She was thinking and remembering what had happened to her in the past and thinking about the same things (or worse) being repeated again in the future – that’s why she was “always worried.”

In his book, Tolle talks about the “domination of an unobserved mind.” Many people are victims of this domination. They are unaware of how much they think about past and future.

They are unobservant of how much and how often their mind is so constantly cluttered and preoccupied with past thoughts and future worries. And so the unobserved mind dominates their lives, trapping them in the grip of relentless anxiety.

But the truth is that there “really” is no past, and the future simply does not exist in real time. These are all artificial constructs- products of thinking. Tolle wisely observes: READ MORE

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