If we have a pain body, and it is pretty much a sure thing that each of us do, then our most intimate relationships will certainly stimulate and activate it. Having a committed relationship is a great tool for developing one’s awareness and presents a unique opportunity to become aware of and ultimately to conquer one’s pain body. It is a fact that it is in personal relationships that we, as a race, exhibit the most extreme manifestations of our pain body. This is why it is much more dangerous to be a judge or juror in a divorce proceeding than a mafia trial.

Although we profess that we love our partner the most of anyone in our life, we also treat them the worst of anyone in our life when our pain body becomes activated. We say the most hurtful things and do the most hurtful things to those we proclaim to love the most. This occurs when something they say or do activates our pain body. For the most part this process is so automatic that we may not even notice it. Your partner will certainly notice it, at least in you. And your pain body will then activate theirs, and the intensity can escalate quite rapidly in many cases. You two can be having a peaceful day when one comment can, out of the blue, cause a chain reaction that has the two of you shouting at each other within seconds of that peaceful moment.

Some people’s pain body will not stop at shouting, however. Some are not satisfied until they have physically abused their partner. But it is important to see that even verbal abuse is abusive and damaging. It is a good idea for anyone seeking a new relationship to find out just how far your potential partner’s pain body will go when it becomes stimulated. To find out, you may have to ask their ex. Most people will not volunteer that information, or will fail to tell you the full extent of it.

Some people do not verbally or physically abuse their partner but instead will hurt them in other ways, such as withdrawal from their partner completely, what I like to call ‘take away.’ Since you hurt me, I will take away my love from you, forever, or temporarily. The important thing to know here that the way our individual pain bodies express themselves are all basically the same. When the pain body becomes active, it seeks only one thing - more pain. So, it seeks to either hurt their partner or to hurt themselves, or both. And generally speaking, once our pain body is activated, it will not stop until it feels well-fed with pain.

An innocent remark by our partner can activate our pain body. This is especially true when we are already ‘on the verge’ of a pain body activation. If I am tired, or irritated by some unrelated event or experience, my partner’s innocent remark is more likely to be misinterpreted as being against me in some way and blam! - my pain body is alive and fully awakened and seeking more pain. Most of us, when we are tired, such as at the end of a day, are much more likely to have our pain bodies activated. Just knowing this, or should I say, knowing yourself well enough to know when you have a short fuse, is a valuable awareness that can help you prevent your pain body from taking you over. The ‘I’ that we are when the pain body is not activated is always ’sorry’ about the things we do when the pain body is activated. But that ‘I’ seems to have little to do with the pain body. They are like two completely separate entities within the same person. The innocent ‘me’ that loves you and is so happy and grateful to have you in my life and the evil or insane ‘me’ that only seeks to hurt you or hurt myself. They do not appear to have any control over the other, not any communication between them. When the pain body is activated, it has no thoughts of love or concern for the other. It is like a person who is in a life or death situation and who will kill or hurt anyone else to survive. And, its survival requires more pain.

If I truly want to become more conscious in my life and have a life that contains more of the NOW and less of the past, future and pain body attacks, the pain body activations that occur as stimulated by my partner present a unique and powerful opportunity to cut through the illusion that keeps me from being my true self. To utilize this opportunity, I have to intervene, with awareness. First of all, I have to be more aware of myself, my inner moods and state of mind/emotions. I need to know when a pain body attack is imminent. This generally shows up as irritability or sullen-ness in some form. Little events that occur in a day can cause a greater sense of irritability, which in turn takes us either close to a pain body attack or right into one. We must have more awareness of ourselves or there is no hope of ever overcoming a pain body attack.

Practicing being in the NOW on a daily basis is also very helpful. Personally I take hikes almost every day out into nature where there are very few man-made sounds and I sit for a spell each day and disassociate myself from my thoughts and emotions and just become present to everything I can sense, both within myself and without. I sense my own feelings, my emotional state, but also the sounds around me, feelings in my body, and the inner stillness that lies behind all these sense perceptions. This practice has now given me the power to be able to focus in on the NOW more easily whenever I want to. And I can use this when something my partner does or says stimulates my pain body. I can become aware of my pain body and sit there and look at it instead of being swept away by it.

How do we know we are being swept away by our pain body? We know that because all our thoughts are focused on blaming our partner, thinking of ways to hurt them back, justifying our position or ‘rightness’, coming up with new thoughts or schemes to counter what they did to us. When the mind is involved in this manner, we are already lost in our pain body. It has us. But the practice of being in the NOW allows me to intervene in this reactionary behavior and to stop it before it takes us over.

Now, I have the ability to stop my mind from going that extra step when I become activated. I can sit there, with the pain I am feeling from whatever my partner did and just be with that pain, without going into retribution, arguing, justification, or other pain-body thought forms.

As Eckhart Tolle says, the pain body is an “insubstantial phantom that cannot face the light of your conscious awareness.” If we can just be with the pain that comes up in a situation, just shine our awareness upon it, we stop the pain body activation process and make room for miracles to happen in terms of our interaction with our beloved partner.

For those who are just starting on this path to greater awareness I will say that it is a bit slow-going in the beginning. But even at the beginning there are many benefits so that we are rewarded every step of the way in this process of gaining more awareness of our true self.

I got a funny feeling about this movie before it was released. The name Dark Knight, the dark and foreboding trailers and the death of Heath Ledger all gave a sort of creepiness to the movie. I am a devoted science fiction guy and generally never miss a movie so I was going to see it anyway.

I saw it just a few days ago. Funny but just before that, I had listened to an Eckhart Tolle video on YouTube where someone asked him if violent movies activated the ‘pain body.’ His response was that pain bodies make violent films and that pain bodies watch violent films. He also indicated that the popularity of such violent films essentially mirrors the general state of consciousness in the world today. I reflected on this for myself. My ego has an identification with being a warrior type guy. I am competitive, I like playing video games where I compete against the computer or other players, I also enjoy playing billiards competitively. I usually will only compete in something where I at least have a chance of winning. An ego like mine gets very threatened when it loses. So, I also watch war films, warrior films and I love science fiction and comic book movies, for the most part.

I didn’t care much for the Dark Knight though. I never really was a batman fan to begin with but I did enjoy previous batman movies. I also have enjoyed Christian Bale in other movies and I respect him as an actor. It is interesting that he spent 4-5 hours in jail the day of the screening of The Dark Knight in London for supposedly assaulting his mother and sister. Charges were dropped but I would bet that he really did do that. Or should I say, his pain body did it.

The Dark Knight was a little too much pain body for my liking. It is dark and menacing throughout with very few moments of light or truth. The story line has holes that never get filled and we never really know why certain things happen the way they do. But overall I would just say that it is a depressing and violent movie. I like movies where the good guy beats the bad guy and gets the girl in the end. None of this really happens in this movie. There is no closure or completion, no happy ending. It ends pretty much the way it starts, with no chance for salvation and no hope for the future. I suppose I don’t like this because I don’t want to see my own life this way. I want to believe that there is always going to be a happy ending, not only to my life but to the lives of others.

Having said all of this, this movie broke the all time box office figures on its opening weekend. In the theater where I watched it, everyone applauded at the end of the movie, well not everyone because I didn’t. But a lot did. This movie is perfect for today’s society. It is a reflection of our consciousness at this moment in history. The dark and foreboding essence that this movie conveys must really hit a chord in many of us today. Maybe there is no hope for the future. Perhaps this movie is showing us just how many of us feel today in this world dominated by violence and injustice.

It was interesting for me to see that I have limits of liking violence. I also see that I do not like so much darkness in any movie and that I insist on movies with happy endings. All of this is food for reflection and self-understanding. And I was never a DC comic guy, always a Marvel comic follower, ever since I was eight years old!

This actually does not work. And it is what we will do because that is how our mind works. As Eckhart says, “The mind loves to make a problem out of things.” So, if you are practicing being in the NOW you will soon find, as I have, that it now becomes your new problem - getting to be in the NOW. My ego gets in there too telling me all the good reasons why I should be in the NOW. The big ego way of looking at it would naturally be, ‘ I want to be in the NOW so I can feel superior to others, or to be better.’ or ‘Wow, won’t I be so great when I am in the NOW all the time!’

These are all mind tricks. And if you try to just stop thinking, that will not work either. Eckhart teaches that all we really need to do is become aware of what is. Even just becoming aware that we are lost in our heads is the process of coming more into the NOW.

In each moment, with the constantly changing forms running through, we can become aware of something. Our awareness never leaves us. It (or should I say, the real us) is always present. Thus, all we need do is become aware of what is and be with that.

The present is our friend and ally.

If you have read any of Eckhart Tolle’s books, you are familiar with what he calls the pain body. Essentially it is that part of our ego that lives on our pain and the pain of others. It is what we are identified with when we are upset about something. The more I observe my own pain body the more I realize how it operates and I am developing a greater awareness of when I am in my pain body. It is really a gift to be able to catch myself going into my pain body and stop it before it goes on with its tyrannical ranting. I caught myself just this morning. What triggered it in this case was that our yard man trimmed back more of our fruit trees than I wanted. The fear of not having enough fruit this season was all it took. I am sure glad I caught that one. I could see it was leading to a fight (verbal).

The cards can be a great help in identifying the triggers and nature of our individual pain bodies. It is really a good thing to get to know your pain body and all its triggers, manifestations, and behaviors. This sort of awareness is the only way to rise above it. The first Karma Card is a good place to start. For example, my first Karma Card is the 3 of Diamonds. For all us Queen of Diamond people, this 3 of Diamonds first Karma Card often means an underlying and hidden fear of not having enough. This can translate as not enough food, money, love, sex, or possessions. It can manifest as just some of these or all of these, depending upon the individual. But what is true in the case of all Queen of Diamonds is that this Karma Card can be the trigger of a pain body activation and further expression.

If you know your card, get to know your first Karma Card. This is a key to understanding your link to your pain body. There are other cards in our Life Spread that are also connected to our pain body. The Saturn Card, the Pluto Card and perhaps the Mars Card too. Actually pretty much any card can have some connection to it but some are much more likely than others.

What is so cool about practicing the Power of Now is that we can actually rise above the manifestations of our Birth Card and its associated Life Spread and Karma Cards. People have often asked me if our Birth Card is a ‘life sentence’ so to speak, like a box from which we can never escape. I have always answered that this is true in most cases, and it is. However, when any of us connects to the NOW, we are immediately free from all of the Karma represented by our Birth Card, or astrological chart. All Karma is dissolved in the NOW.

The trick is getting there. Which is funny, because it is here, right now. But our minds and egos have become so strong that we struggle to have even a few seconds of now-ness. That’s why you will find me, and mostly likely forever more, practicing being in the NOW.

This question comes up for many who study the cards and also study Eckhart Tolle’s work as I am. Personally I see no conflict. Eckhart says in the Power of Now that in dealing with our ‘life situation’ it is good to use our mind to make predictions about the future using our experience and the knowledge of cycles and patterns. He certainly wasn’t referring to the cards or astrology. But these two sciences are the best at the analyzing of one’s patterns and cycles.

Of course one could also use the cards to completely stay out of the now. If you or I are caught up in fear of the future, as it appears in the cards, or waiting for something great to happen because the cards depict it, we are in that way using the cards to avoid the now and strengthen our sense of a false identity. This is very common and it will happen to everyone who studies the cards sooner or later.

The truth is that only being in the NOW will bring us a happy future. If I am unable to enjoy myself now, I will not be able to enjoy something in the future that the cards may be predicting. As Eckhart puts it, our current state of consciousness will ultimately create our future. No matter which way we look at it, we have to get back to NOW to have anything that we really want in life. It is all HERE and NOW anyway!

1. I am fixated on the past or future.
2. I am ignoring the present moment.
3. I am imagining some horrible future event or reliving some horrible past event.
4. I am stuck in my thoughts like a hamster on a wheel.
5. I am the victim of my thoughts and imagination.
6. I see no possibility of success or happiness.

1. I am watching my mind as it goes crazy, from one thought to the other.
2. I catch myself being defensive when someone’s comments or actions threaten my false identity, which is mostly about being a know-it-all.
3. I see how hard it is to enjoy any given moment and how afraid my mind is of being here and now.
4. I see how my ego constantly wants to compare myself with others and make them seem lesser than me so I can feel okay about myself.
5. I catch myself when my pain body is awakened and am able to stop myself from reacting or going into ‘getting others back’ mode.
6. I have more compassion for others and can see how they, like me, are the victims of our egos. This allows me to accept them on a very deep level.
7. I can take more responsibility for myself, knowing that I always have a choice when I am confronted with a difficult situation, or one that I do not like.
8. I can see all the ways in which my mind/ego habitually escapes from the now and thus perpetuates my own suffering.

My little talk on Life and Being in the Now:

The Key To Everything

This only happened recently, around the middle of March 2008. I have often gotten meaningful messages from fortune cookies that I get at Chinese restaurants. But this one was very different. It read, “You will be compelled to manifest self-transformation.” Maybe we just get out of something what we put into it. But for me, messages like this are ones that I take seriously. I took it to heart. A self-transformation is what I felt in the depths of my soul I needed. Approaching my 55th birthday, I had been feeling that my life needed something, something that I could not describe. But I took that little fortune and taped it to the bottom front of my computer screen. As I write this, it is still there and I read it every day. Though I did not know what I would do or how I would achieve this transformation, I kept the notion in front of my thoughts. Within a week, answers began to appear.

Over four years ago a girlfriend handed me the book, The Power of Now, by Eckart Tolle. At that time I had the habit of telling everyone that “I don’t read books anymore.” But because she insisted I sat down one day and began to read it. After reading only four or five pages I had to put the book down. The message there was so powerful, I could not continue reading until I had put into practice what I had already read. I could tell that the book was profoundly spiritual in the deepest sense of the word. But for whatever reason, I wasn’t ready to practice something so profound at that time. I put the book away, lent it to friends and at some point lost it. The book would reappear often after that. A friend would mention it or someone I knew would show up at my house with it. But I had already decided I was not going to read that book, not until I was ready to give it the attention it deserved.

Then, this year, my new wife Desiree came home from the bookstore one day with a copy of Eckhart’s newest book, A New Earth. Because of my little fortune on my computer’s monitor I took it aside one day when she wasn’t around and began reading it. Soon I wanted a copy of my own and Desiree picked one up. As I read this book, I began to see things about my life very clearly. I also began to yearn for the experience of being in the NOW and free from my mind and ego. The book was so profound to me in those first days of reading that I would usually have to take a 20-30 minute nap after I had read just a page or so. I felt like my psyche needed those little sleeps to digest what was being said on those pages.

Reading A New Earth got me wanting to go back and read The Power of Now again. But instead of buying the book again I acquired the books-on-tape version of Eckhart reading the book in audio form. And just at that time I had planned a cross-country road trip, from California to North Carolina and back. This would be a perfect opportunity, I thought, to really focus my attention on Eckhart’s teachings. With 30 hours of driving each way ahead of me, I got the audio forms of both books as I prepared for my trip.

I want to digress here for a couple of minutes to just explain my relationship with books. This may be a common way of relating to books but I don’t think so. All of my life certain books have had a profound and positive impact on my life. I sum this up to my having Jupiter in the sign of Gemini in my natal astrological chart. But whatever the case, I have been able to attract certain books that were so great for me at that time, that my life was positively changed by them. I have also kept copies of most every book that has affected me this way, starting with books I read while still in my teens. I was always reading self-help books. Those have always been my favorites. But I have also had very good fortune with just practical books like books on how to program computers or do maintenance on my cars. Somewhere along the line I learned and realized that I can usually find a good book to help me accomplish any goal in my life. I could spend pages telling all the different books I have read and how great they were, or are, but I want to continue.

Another thing about me and books is that I don’t think a book is just something to read. For the most part, if I read something, I think that this is something that is intended for me to make real, not just another thought or new idea to think about and later forget. Books have always told me what to practice, what to do. And I always knew that I needed to do those things so that I could achieve the results I wanted. I say this because I see so many people today who just read book after book and their lives never change. This, for me, is somewhat unfathomable. Why read a book that could change your life, but never put it into practice? A quick anecdote here will explain it better.

When I was around age 30, two good friends of mine met me for lunch. They were very excited and told me they had something really exciting to share with me. They showed up at lunch, both of them carrying a stack of 3-ring binders full of some sort of information and forms. They told me they had just returned from this really cool weekend seminar on how to make a lot of money. They had each paid $500 to attend, and back then that was a lot of money! Their course was all about how to become a real estate investor. As they talked I was noticing their piles of books and binders. I caught the title of one of the books. It was called No Money Down by Robert Allen. After lunch I rode to my local bookstore and purchased a copy for about $9. When I read this book, I got very excited too. This was something I could sink my teeth into. Within 3 months of reading that book I had purchased my first two rental properties using the methods taught in that book. I went on from there to purchase ten more buildings over a period of about 2 years. I literally became rich overnight. As for my friends, though very excited that day, they never did purchase their first rental property, and as far as I know, they still haven’t. I hope you are getting my point here but just in case, here it is: Knowledge is worthless unless it is somehow put into practical purpose, or made real. This is why I could not read any more of the Power of Now back a few years ago.

I have a deep respect for books. I keep a small bookshelf of all my favorite books. I honor books and feel that it would be a dishonor to read a book and not practice it or make it real. Now I am reading both of Eckhart’s books and practicing them.

To realize something is to make it real. Another way of saying it is that to realize something is to have the direct experience of it. When people use the term, realized master, they are referring to someone who has truly come into the world, as it is, and fully accepted it in its true form. They are also referring to someone who has made his or her true self real.