The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle
This book is a very powerful insight into the ability for humans to surrender the egoic state and fall into the present moment, to live in the now and discard fear of the future, regret and pain from the past. It is not an easy read! It literally boggles the mind, even though, the irony is that he advocates we “get out of our heads and thoughts”.
There are some beautiful ideas and viewpoints throughout the book, and this is certainly a journey I would advise is taken more than once to really embed the learning. Tolle argues that for the most part, humans are never fully awake to the present moment. We are thinking about a meeting next week, or an argument we had last week, or a job we are worried will end, or a bill we cannot pay. We miss out on the right nowness of life!
He taps into the psychology of the mind, the idea that we are split from ourselves by the ego using an example:
“I cannot live with myself any longer!” If I cannot live with myself there must be two of me, the I and the myself? He goes on to study the concept of the thoughts in our minds, and tries to take us beyond these, looking deeper within. He creates questions for us, drives the need to ask who we really are. He describes enlightenment as “being”. Being is the everlasting one life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Talk about mind boggling, and we are supposed to be getting “out of our thoughts”!
Tolle challenges a lot of historical ideas, one from Descartes,
“I think therefore I am”. This identifies “being” as with our thoughts, where Tolle argues that our thoughts are the egoic state of distraction from what is here right now. Have you ever been so lost in your mind, either dwelling on a previous conversation, or catastrophizing about a future event, that half an hour has passed, and you missed the sound of the rain, of the rise of the sun, or the beautiful bird song in your peaceful garden.
The moment you begin to watch the thinking and separate yourself from it (meditation) you begin to see that you are not your thoughts, you are the observer of them. Who then, are you! Well, if you go further into a state of meditation and no -mind, you reach enlightenment. I talk of this state in my other blogs, the beautiful state of being, where you connect with a higher vibration, and sense the spiritual nature of all things.
Tolle brings your attention to right now. He encourages us to realise that we only have right now. The past was “right now” now, and the future will never exist unless right now and we will never reach a future, because once it is here, it is now. He takes you through some basic steps of being in the moment. For example, when you take your morning shower, focus and really feel the temperature and pressure of water on your skin, hear the water running, and smell the scents of your body wash. Really “be” in your body, feel the vibration of your “aliveness”. How often are we too busy thinking about the report we need to write, or the traffic we have to beat to get to work. Before we know it, we are downstairs putting our shoes on, worse still, if we are so stuck in our egoic state, someone else’s shoes.
Now we are conscious because we are alive! But how conscious are we? When, for example, we arrive at work and haven’t even witnessed the journey from home to the office? This is because thought cannot exist without consciousness, so we are alive, but living in thought and missing our existence. However, consciousness can live without thought. And what a place to get to! No-mind is consciousness without thought. This has got to be the best kind of meditation there is!
Tolle describes joy, peace and beauty as that which is a deep state of being. Whereas pleasure is derived from somewhere outside you joy comes from within. Budda means “the awakened one” and this state of being requires no external force to maintain a state of peace and inner joy. Forget money, material gain, external validation, all we need is to “be”!
I admit, it is going to take a couple of reads of this wonderful book to get my brain around this way of “thinking” (I am reluctant to use the word now, lest I fall into the trap of thinking and not being). This book provokes a deep change in the concept of our very existence and at its core, is the potential to rise above the chaos that is our lives, and to elevate to a deeper peace, joy and love, which, we learn, as we read each chapter, is within us all, in reach. The book attempt to break through our continuous flow of thinking, which only attracts negativity, rumination, procrastination, catastrophizing and depression.
So, the next time you have a chance to pause, do so with a clear mind. Consider yourself, where you are, how your body feels, what you see and hear. You might just surprise yourself and be faced with absolute beauty. A joy that was always there, inside, that, given the time and silence to witness it, illuminates from the core of you.
Happy reading!
