The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

by Eckhart Tolle

In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the “problem.”

Interesting

Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain.

So interesting difference between joy from within and pain pleasure cycle.

For example, even such a seemingly trivial and “normal” thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong — defending the mental position with which you have identified — is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation.

Soooo interesting....

So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action — just give attention to the action itself.

Intellectual agreement is just another belief and won’t make much difference to your life. To realize this truth, you need to live it. When every cell of your body is so present that it feels vibrant with life, and when you can feel that life every moment as the joy of Being, then it can be said that you are free of time.

Facts

If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.

As you become more conscious of your present reality, you may suddenly get certain insights as to why your conditioning functions in those particular ways — for example, why your relationships follow certain patterns — and you may remember things that happened in the past or see them more clearly. That is fine and can be helpful, but it is not essential. What is essential is your conscious presence. That dissolves the past. That is the transformative agent. So don’t seek to understand the past, but be as present as you can. The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.

Quite important

Try a little experiment. Close your eyes and say to yourself: “I wonder what my next thought is going to be.” Then become very alert and wait for the next thought. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole. What thought is going to come out of the mouse hole? Try it now.

I couldn't sleep and I literally instantly fell back asleep doing this !!

Free from what? Free from the illusion that you are nothing more than your physical body and your mind. This “illusion of the self,” as the Buddha calls it, is the core error. Free from fear in its countless disguises as the inevitable consequence of that illusion — the fear that is your constant tormentor as long as you derive your sense of self only from this ephemeral and vulnerable form. And free from sin, which is the suffering you unconsciously inflict on yourself and others as long as this illusory sense of self governs what you think, say, and do.

This is where it resonates I can feel a resistance in my body when I read these lines. A fear. Becaue I recognize that beyond those limiting beliefs there is infinite possibility, infinite potential, no attachment and complete freedom, and it is terrifying.

No, you are not. Feeling will get you closer to the truth of who you are than thinking. I cannot tell you anything that deep within you don’t already know.

This is such a turnaround from the Enlightenment period where the rational thinking brain was at the core of science and development, it is the foundation of most of our human constructs. Thinkers such as Locke, Hume, Rousseau and Descartes are known for their rational foundation. Eckhart Tolle is challenging this deeply embedded reality by stating that the biggest error is to identify and derive a sense of self from the thinking brain. I have to think of Descartes cogito: "Cogito, ergo sum" --> "I think, therefore I am" : that sounds like mind identification to me ?

This is one reason why most people are always trying to escape from the present moment and are seeking some kind of salvation in the future. The first thing that they might encounter if they focused their attention on the Now is their own pain, and this is what they fear. If they only knew how easy it is to access in the Now the power of presence that dissolves the past and its pain, the reality that dissolves the illusion. If they only knew how close they are to their own reality, how close to God.

This feels like we're all idiots and the truth is dangling right there in front of our faces yet, we are too dumb to realise the illusion. It is described so simply, that it almost feels pretentious.

How many people does it take to make your life into a spiritual practice? Never mind if your partner will not cooperate. Sanity — consciousness — can only come into this world through you. You do not need to wait for the world to become sane, or for somebody else to become conscious, before you can be enlightened. You may wait forever. Do not accuse each other of being unconscious. The moment you start to argue, you have identified with a mental position and are now defending not only that position but also your sense of self. The ego is in charge. You have become unconscious. At times, it may be appropriate to point out certain aspects of your partner’s behavior. If you are very alert, very present, you can do so without ego involvement — without blaming, accusing, or making the other wrong.

This is very interesting. Because to me here, he responds to my problem of pretentiousness. There is no pretentiousness or this notion of "I am now enlightened and you are not" (judgement). From this space I understand that there is no judgement of the self nor the other. Everything seems to happen within love and comprehension. Not in an attempt for ever lasting self improvement but as a nudge to a different and new opportunity of existence. Eckhart Tolle is not laying down a normative imperative. I read it rather, as an olive branch offering of a different existence,yet he does make a statement that this is the only way to 'save humanity' and that may surely be more controversial.

The split caused by self-reflective consciousness is healed, its curse removed.

Omggg the number of times I have prided myself on being super self reflective, emotionally intelligent and aware. Yet that pride was equally a source of such PAIN. I couldn't stop myself. That identification was/ is still SO strong in me. And I know it does not do me good and IF anything that this is the most pretentious thing.

Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture?

I love the humbling here.

The whole advertising industry and consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things. The more you seek happiness in this way, the more it will elude you. Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disillusionments before you realize that truth.

Yes capitalism is a reflection of our collective unconsciousness? The ever evolving and improving restlessness.

Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree?

This is funny.

Forgive yourself for not being at peace.

I NEEDED to hear that.