The Power of Now
#Drafting#Spiritual#November2025StudyProject#OnTheWay
Introduction
The Power of Now is a spiritual self-help book by Eckhart Tolle, first published in 1997.
- Eckhart Tolle aims to awaken us to the spiritual truth that lies deep within. He argues that we have forgotten this truth and that reconnecting with it can lead to inner transformation.
- He posits that our unhappy and fearful self-identity is a "fiction of the mind" or a "mental illusion." This false self prevents our consciousness from breaking free from suffering.
- After all, even the most beautiful experiences are temporary. Our relationships, jobs, homes, and social identities are all fleeting and do not define our true selves on the physical plane.
You Are Not Your Mind
The enlightenment of Being and a deep, unshakable peace have always been inside us, yet we act like beggars who have not found this greatest treasure.
- Despite great material wealth, we constantly look outside ourselves for scraps of pleasure, fulfillment, validation, security or love.
- Our natural state is a felt oneness with Being, a state of wholeness, therefore at peace. This state is essentially you, yet is much greater than you, because you have found your true nature beyond name and form.
- The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation from yourself and the world around you. When you perceive yourself as an isolated fragment, whether consciously or unconsciously, fear arises. This is why the Buddha defined enlightenment as the end of suffering.
- The relentless mental noise of identity thinking makes each and every individual feel separate, living in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflicts. This world, in turn, reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of our mind.
When our sense of oneness is replaced by an identification with our thoughts, our minds begin to control us, where we are no longer able to switch off our thinking at will.
- Mind includes not just thought, but also emotions, which are the body's reaction to your mind, such as anger or fear in response to a perceived attack.
- When thought and emotion conflict, pay attention to the emotion, because the body is always a truthful reflection of what is happening in your mind.
- The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the voice in your head - the thinker.
- The voice in your head could be a continuous monologue or a dialogue that comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on.
- This voice is not necessarily relevant to the situation you are in at the moment; it might be reviving the recent or distant past, or imagining possible future situations.
- It often imagines things going wrong and conjures negative outcomes, which is the very nature of worry.
- For the ego, the present moment barely exists, as only the past and future are considered important.
- When a higher level of consciousness is activated to observe the thinker, you listen to the voice impartially and without judgment. In doing so, you sense your own presence as the witness of the thought.
- When you begin to see beyond thought, you realize that all the things that truly matter - intelligence, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. These cannot fully flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance, but you may still experience glimpses of them in between.
- With practice, the gap of "no mind" where thought subsides and loses control over you will gradually become longer.
- At the selfless state, the whole external world becomes relatively insignificant.
- Instead of "watching the thinker," you can also create a gap of "no mind" simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now (i.e., the present moment).
- Pay close attention to every step, every movement, every sight, every sound and every breath.
- Being highly alert and aware, but not thinking, is the essence of meditation.
Consciousness: The Way Out Of Pain
Our mind can never truly fight or remove emotional pain (such as resentment, hatred, self-pity, guilt, anger, depression, and jealousy).
- All it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily.
- Yet, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain becomes.
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary and is self-created by our unobserved mind.
- This pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance or resistance to what is in the Now - for example, a judgmental thought or a negative emotion.
- Remember, the mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. The more you are identified with your mind, the more your suffer.
- Therefore, when we are able to honor and accept the Now, we cease to create pain in the present.
Dissolving past pain that still lives on in our mind and body.
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