The Power of the Now Moment: Transcending Thought

By Chris Dhladhla

Discover the power of now with the distillation of transcendence, truth, purpose, and enlightenment. Broaden your understanding of the universe, character, and life essence from the overflowing fountain of wisdom. Go beyond your mind with the power of your inner light of being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Dhladhla
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386319962

Book preview

Overview

The Power of the Now Moment is a spiritual guide to living in the present moment, being aware of your inner and outer environment, and appreciating who you are, those around you, and fundamentally everything around you.

It shows that life is an infinite movement in the space of the eternal moment. The content is in a conversation format between two people (Chris and his guest) but it speaks directly to your inner being that is always present.

You can be in any tradition, religion, or culture and still know your purpose. Fundamentally the present moment is the only space we have that illumines reality, therefore a shift from struggling to simplicity and realising who you truly are in the process takes place in uncomplicated ways.

There is no specific tradition, culture or religion that is followed but the content is central in spiritual teachings from Dogen, Jesus, Allan Watts, Buddha, Rumi, Ram Dass, and other spiritually awakened persons who inspire the Power of the Now Moment.

The Power of the Now Moment is at the base of combining humour, short real stories, spiritual passages that have been misunderstood, power, awareness, and being. It is not focused on any formality. It only reveals the deepness of awareness in simple ways without ideologies, philosophies, and dogma.

Dedicated to all beings in the world

May the Power of Now bring you infinite enlightenment, joy, and peaceful life.

Teachings are found in everything, in people, in nature, or when you have a moment of uninterrupted silence.

A teacher is only there to show and guide you back home.

For this only reason, the material doesn’t try to change your life in any way but rather it shows the depth of the moment you will ever have – this moment.

Spiritual awareness is the inspiration that is without form which doesn’t only inform but also transform the way you lead yourself in life.

Awakening from the illusion and delusion of thought can only come from observing the limited thinking mind.

What is important here is to be intensely aware of the eternal moment, that which cannot be translated into words, expressed or extinguished.

In a moment of enlightenment, you are instantly one with this infinite force.

If you stay in touch with the moment, then the material will show and you’ll flow with ease and connect with yourself.

There’s nothing new that can be given or introduced to you in this material, therefore it is important for you to allow this moment to just be.

When you become aware of the truth in you, you will be aware of the truth in all. This is for you to realise, remember, and reveal who you are.

You are about to learn about a man named Chris Dhladhla who leads a simple life in a complex modern world.

He wants to share this moment with you, to be here with you, within you, as you go through the deepness of your being.

Chris is a very quiet ordinary man who only uses words as a guide to what he’s showing.

This moment is the only way one can get to understand him and connect with him without talking directly with him.

There’s less to say but there’s more to show.

*This symbol is used to remind you to take a break from reading in order to reflect and experience what is beyond language or logic – this moment.

Chapter 1

Listening In The Moment

Chapter 1

Listening In The Moment 

Once upon a moment, there was a young man who wanted to know more about living in the present moment. Upon discovering that a moment is the only real space he has, he decided to spend a day with Chris to learn more about living in simplicity.

The young man was ushered in for refreshments when he arrived in the location where Chris lives and was thrilled to meet with this mysteriously private man.

What called for my visit here is one thing and one thing only. I have realized that we only have a moment to live and so would like to know of what it’s like to purely live in the moment without any internal and external forces hovering around, the young man said.

Chris replied; you will know all that you want and all the burning questions you have will be answered when we dissect the profundity of life.

Morning dawned and the moment of learning had arrived. When last did we see each other, Chris asked. Yesterday in the evening, replied the young man. We last saw each other now, yesterday is from your memory – the mental storage – you’re not in this moment.

The young man had traces of tears in his eyes; it was a moment of realisation, yesterday belonged to the past, what is real is this moment – what is here now.

Learning by Listening

What is the first thing we should do when listening?

In the many years of meeting with different kinds of people, in different settings, I have come to observe that people are not really listeners – they pose to be listening, whilst they’re busy inside with the busyness of the mind.

When they intermingle and interchange with one another, they somehow lose the essence of listening more and talking less.

It is easier to always want to hear your voice than it is to listen to what others have to say.

It has been said that small people dominate by making loud noises. Big people carry the weight of essence and substance by clearing the mind of its impurities to assimilate more.

Most of what we do when learning is that, we appear to be attentive, we are very silent on the outside but we are actually listening to the shower of thoughts on the inside, we are comparing, labelling, analysing and having a dialogue with our own thoughts.

We are not really listening, we only appear to be. Your mouth may be shut now but your mind is loud – it is always busy broadcasting news.

When you listen, you have to be silent within, the mind should not be going on and on being noisy.

To slow the mind down is to disengage from wandering in your thoughts. When you withdraw yourself from thoughts, there’s a space that creates a gap and let thoughts to be and you just listen.

You can’t learn without listening, the two are inseparable. When you listen, you hear the truth. When it rains you listen to the dewdrops of the rain.

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When you hear music playing, any kind of music, even in a foreign language, you listen. You listen to the music – the harmonies, not the lyrics.

When birds chirp, you listen to the chirping speak beyond the grasp of the mind. What are the birds composing with the chirping? You don’t try to understand, you just listen to the creativity.

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Right now my mind is all over the place, how does one learn to listen without being interrupted by thoughts?

You don’t need a skill to be still. There’s a still presence in the background of the noisy mind, and you’re that presence.

When you’re aware of this presence, thoughts slow down, and the speed of thoughts is reduced, like when you reduce water when taking a shower.

Primarily, you’re not your thoughts, what you feel or what you want to be. What you are is a vast space which has no lack or excess. There’s no space with the mind, it is always congested with thoughts. 

The presence behind thoughts, in the background of the stream of thought, is the one listening, not the scattered mind.

A shepherd leads livestock from behind so that he can watch what is before him. You lead by being last.

When you lead by being forward, you follow every noise the mind makes. You will run into trouble, situations and problems when you cling to your thoughts. You even believe you are what you think with your ego.

The greatest shift you can ever make in your life is to detach from mind to moment.

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Close your eyes, look at what you think, and ask yourself who is looking at the thoughts.

Thoughts alternate, but the presence behind – the conscious watcher doesn’t change under any condition.

When you realise you’re not the fragmentary mind – all ego, past, future, thoughts, feelings will no longer bother you.

They all fleet through the transparent conscious watcher.

In your conscious presence, all falsity diminishes away and you can now listen to yourself, what others are saying, you can listen to the moment speak beyond the comprehension of the mind.

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Is it possible that I can hear the moment speak?

The moment is always speaking, but you’re usually not listening. You are usually caught up in the disorder of the thinking mind, in what is happening in the world, in what you want to become, in appearances. Give yourself a moment to just listen, without trying to gain an understanding.

When you wake up, just sit for a moment to listen, when you are with other people, give yourself a moment to listen, wherever you are, just be there and listen.

If you are not listening, the mind will drag you away to a mental chaotic place. You are there as a physical figure posing as a listener but you are not actually there, you are somewhere in the mind doing something in another illusory place.

Listen and you are certainly here, you are not divided into two – you are just here listening. When you are in the now moment, you become one with the moment and not disseminate in the mind.

It happened that I caught someone sitting alone, he was completely silent outward, but was in an internal conflict inward.

He was there sitting but wasn’t fully there, he was somewhere in the mind completely engaged with thoughts. 

It is no surprise that at other times you also get into a serious conversation with yourself, know this?

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When you’re ready to listen, the teacher appears in everything. A tree – a flower – a rock are listeners, they can receive your thoughts and they can teach you the art of listening.

The art of people who appear to be delusional when interchanging with them understand this essence.

People open up to a flower, a pet, a statue and speak to them and they are just there listening, no judgments, labelling, or rejecting. They are categorically always there consciously receiving.

Consciousness is still. The mind is split. It can’t listen. The mind can’t receive.

There’s nothing that wants to reign with independent preconceived concepts than the ego-entity.

The lives of people are completely wrapped up in the disorder of the thinking mind.

The mess you find yourself in, the meltdown and confusion that governs your life stems from the dysfunctional mind.

We can say that the mind has the power to engage you. It lures you in – it entices you to be occupied with it.  Once you are immersed in its domain, it tears you apart with polarity.

However, when you listen, you can distance yourself from the mind field. Disengage yourself from turning into the ego captive.

Let the mind be and start listening to yourself – listen to the easiness of everything that is.

Be still and watch the mind – observe that it can’t remain in one place – it is drunk with thoughts.

A drunk is unpredictable. You won’t know where he would go next, where his footsteps will head on. The scattered mind also entangles you into a web of disorder.

You don’t know what thoughts the mind will manufacture next.

When you listen, you come back to the real moment, you come back to the now moment. Mind goes around in a field trip to other places eliminating you from knowing the moment.

You have always been away – you are never here to listen.

When you’re with someone, you pretend to be listening to them but inside you are far away, you are torn in the middle, you are there with them physically but you are not with them mentally, you are mostly occupied in the mind.

Most of your listening is done when you fix things up, you make it seem like you are there listening but your mind keeps telling you about a long disorderly story.

This is what you do in your mental body while you pretend to be listening:

Listen to compare – looking at your views, what you have, what you want to hear and what you are against

Listen to commentate – commenting about your likes and dislikes, weighing your beliefs or opinions, and the knowledge of others

Listen to criticise – looking for faults where there are none so you can separate others and what you see from you

Listen to condescend – reject what others are saying so you can appear to be better than them

Listen to condition – when you tell what’s right or wrong, acceptable and non-acceptable, what you expect and insist on.

Basic listening is to be still within and take in the flow of energy. When you listen to the flow of the rivers, you take in the flow. The flow and stream travels within, with you and inside you.

When you are listening to music, the mind slows down, you go deeper within. The harmonies and melodies welcome you in; they travel with you, pulsing in every atom of your being.

The rhythms go through your entire body and suddenly, you are not only listening, but you are also dancing within, your entire being is there vibrating with the flow of harmonies.

One afternoon, Guillermo took his counterpart on a short trip to a nearby dessert from where he lived. When they got there, the man asked, ‘what are we doing here?

‘Weren’t you supposed to show me how to be a better listener?’ asked the man. Guillermo replied, ‘how are you supposed to learn when you’re leaning on your convoluted mind?’

There are a lot of things the mind misinterprets in order to arrive at a conclusion. If I tell you to look at yourself in a mirror, mind will get ahead of you and start spitting out a range of ideas of what you look like.

It is almost impossible to look at something or someone without big mind jumping around commentating about what it sees.

The request is easy, look at anything without throwing around the predetermined ideas and opinions you have on what you perceive. 

This is hard for the mind, your ego. It does the exact same thing it always does – skip around and blurb opinions.

When mind looks at anything, it begins to plaster labels and form ideas. It wants to arrive at an ending.

Without an ending, it gets confused. This is the nature of the mind – it is complicated. 

Look at when you tell someone to do something for you and they turn and go do something you never said – mind is busy with its operation. 

When you’re calm, the mind instantaneously becomes clear. You regain the power you have abdicated. 

You and I are King and Queen. We are embedded with the infiniteness of the Creator. The not so deep mind has hidden this jewel from you.

It has taken over your life you gave up without your knowing. 

The mind rules over you. Your entire life has been a series of thought.

You have always thought you are what you think.

However, you are not the mask of the mind. Behind the scenes, in the background of the mind lies a static truth about you.

Truth is not a thought. The truth is beyond any thought your mind can conceive.

The background presence, the conscious watcher is a light.

It’s the most beautiful presence humanity has ever seen. 

Behind the scenes of the dramatic mind is a lake of pure stillness.

But when you’re not aligned with this stillness, your life attracts an incessant trail of disorder. Know this, the ego feeds on this disorder, it feeds on any disorder.

A series of drama is the most watched content in television, followed by news that is dominated by negative events, and the social media that gives you a place to engage with the ego like-minded.

Where there’s peace, unity, or acceptance, you get bored.

The ego has nothing to feast on. If there’s any kind of action, scandal or drama, now you get excited, you want to see some action.

The ego expands on entanglement. It grows with conflict and confusing actions. It dies in the presence of clarity and certainty.

One morning, I walked in on two people who were ready to throw feasts in the air. I pulled one of them aside to get him to let go of