The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

by Eckhart Tolle

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.

So anyone who is identified with their mind and, therefore, disconnected from their true power, their deeper self rooted in Being, will have fear as their constant companion.

people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within.

So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete.

As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled.

The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.

I feel that there is still a great deal I need to learn about the workings of my mind before I can get anywhere near full consciousness or spiritual enlightenment.

No, you don’t. The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. Once you have understood the basic dysfunction, there isn’t really much else that you need to learn or understand.

You have already understood the basic mechanics of the unconscious state: identification with the mind, which creates a false self, the ego, as a substitute for your

true self rooted in Being.

The ego’s needs are endless. It feels vulnerable and threatened and so lives in a state of fear and want. Once you know how the basic dysfunction operates, there is no need to explore all its countless manifestations, no need to make it into a complex personal problem. The

This is why, for so many people, a large part of their sense of self is intimately connected with their problems. Once this has happened, the last thing they want is to become free of them; that would mean loss of self.

The mind in itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind

and takes over your whole life.

It seems almost impossible to disidentify from the mind. We are all immersed in it. How do you teach a fish to fly?

Here is the key: End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops — unless you choose to use it.

But without a sense of time, how would we function in this world? There would be no goals to strive toward anymore. I wouldn’t even know who I am, because my past makes me who I am today. I think time is something very precious, and we need to learn to use it wisely rather than waste it.

Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now.

The more you are focused on time — past and future — the more you miss the Now, the mos...

Why is it the most precious thing? Firstly, because it ...

Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.

Aren’t past and future just as real, sometimes even more real, than the present?

You haven’t yet grasped the essence of what I am saying because you are trying to understand it mentally. The mind cannot understand this. Only you can.

Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not? Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace — and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now.

Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is “borrowed” from the Now.

Learn to use time in the practical aspects of your life — we may call this “clock time” — but immediately return to present-moment awareness when those practical matters have been dealt with.

The enlightened person’s main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still peripherally aware of time.

If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time.

You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment.

As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease.

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

You no longer depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction — you don’t look to it for salvation. Therefore, you are not attached to the results.

Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation.

In the world, on the level of your life situation, you may indeed become wealthy, knowledgeable, successful, free of this or that, but in the deeper dimension of Being you are complete and whole now.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is.

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.

If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.

If you take any action — leaving or changing your situation — drop the negativity f...

Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action a...

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy...

If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s...

If you remain stuck, you lea...

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mi...

If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now...

The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself c...

This is called su...

Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered per...

Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now.

Alternatively, completely accept