The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
By Eckhart Tolle
I am not really a spiritual person, and up to now I’ve been too busy simply surviving life to worry about spiritual quests of any sorts. But somehow, over the past few years, I’ve kept hearing about how "The Power of Now" has made a significant impact on several people I admire, so I figured I should crack it open and see what it’s all about. The teachings of the book are relatively simple and can be summarized as embracing the present moment and living it to its fullest. I can attest that practicing this philosophy to the best of my capabilities has made my life significantly better in a very short lapse of time. We all want more peace in our lives and "The Power of Now" has helped me find some, so I wanted to share what I learned.
What I Liked:
The teachings of the book are extremely simple and easy to apply and have truly helped me be happier and more at peace in my day to day life. They do not require exodus to a Buddhist temple atop a mountain in Bhutan. Anyone can try it out at no cost with really not much to lose.
What I Didn't Like:
The author’s solution to ALL of life’s problem is to live in the now. I believe that life is slightly more nuanced and complex than that and that it is at times necessary to revisit the past or to plan for the future, but I do believe that most people spend way too much time in either the past or the future or both, which leads to depression and anxiety, when we should really try to enjoy the present to the fullest.
Three Takeaways:
One of the teachings of the book which I found particularly enlightening was the philosophy that there is no past and there is no future. There is just the eternal present. You are always in the now. Therefore, it is extremely liberating to accept your present situation, no matter what it is, just as if you had chosen it, no matter what. This stops us from wasting energy in the past and/or from pointing fingers at ourselves or others and it focuses our mind on action: if I am presently unhappy with my situation what can I do now, in the present, to make things better or if I am happy with my situation, then all I really need to do is to thoroughly enjoy the present. It helps to focus on what actions you can do now because you can only influence the present. An analogy which I was once told by a psychologist is that if someone breaks their arm and goes to the emergency room, the doctor won’t ask how the arm was broken (the past) because it’s irrelevant to the concrete actions he needs to take now (the present) to make the future better. As for the future, we obviously still need to plan for it to the best of our abilities, but it’s important not to spend too much time in the future, because you can’t enjoy the present if you are too caught up in the future. I believe enjoying the journey is just as important if not more than arriving at destination, because at destination you’ll only be happy momentarily before you feel the thirst for your next journey and its next destination.
This one requires a little open-mindedness, but in "The Power of Now", Eckhart Tolle teaches that you are not your body and that you are not your mind. You are inside your body. You are consciousness. For example, when someone dies, you say “Charles has left us”, but Charles’ body is at the morgue, so therefore, by definition, Charles isn’t his body. It’s kind of like saying that your body is just a car and that you are the driver. For someone who has terribly suffered from self-consciousness over his appearance, even before gaining 100 lbs in 6 months due to medications, dissociating who I am from my body has been immensely liberating. It has awoken me to the fact that, just like a car, I need to maintain and repair it, but it doesn’t define who I am. My body is just a tool to help me accomplish my life’s work. I know I’m presently overweight, but I accept it and I don’t let it bring me down anymore, and since this revelation, I’ve begun exercising and eating better and I’ve lost 12 lbs in a month completely effortlessly. As for your mind, this one is a little more abstract, but from what I understood, your mind is just some type of computer interface that has helped the human race survive and get to where it is now, but you are not your mind so you don’t have to believe everything it tells you. You need to be critical of your thoughts and you need to decide whether you really believe them or not. We all have thoughts that aren’t true. They may seem true and logical but really aren’t. Challenging and evaluating your thoughts truly helps alleviate the stress and anxiety of daily life and helps you sort through your priorities to distill them to their essence.
This one requires a great deal of faith, but Tolle believes that if we all live in the now, it will create a shift in universal consciousness solving all of the world’s problems. The only way I can explain this is that being in the now is making me a better person more in tune with what is truly important in my life. Being a better person to me in part means doing good when I can for the people whose paths have crossed mine. I’ve noticed that this is somewhat contagious, therefore, theoretically, if everyone starts doing more good around them, it potentially could go viral creating a massive snowball effect. But obviously, this is extremely debatable and should be left to everyone’s own personal interpretation. Plus you can very well call bullshit on this and still apply the other teachings from the book and they will of their own accord greatly improve your daily life. But I like to hope...
You Should Read This Book If:
•You suffer from depression or anxiety
•You are unhappy with your life right now and want to do something about it
•There is a void in your life and/or a lack of meaning
•You are curious about enlightenment and higher consciousness
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