The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

the power of now book
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment is a book by Eckhart Tolle. The book is intended to be a guide for day-to-day living and stresses the importance of living in the present moment and transcending thoughts of the past or future.

Identification with your mind which causes start to become compulsive not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. Page 14.

In this incessant mental noise prevents you from finding the realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from being. It also creates a false mind made self the casts a shadow of fear and suffering. We will look at all that in more detail later. Page 15

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. If used wrongly however, it becomes very destructive. To put in more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly you actually usually don’t use it at all. He uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over. page 16

If you think you have control over your mind ask yourself this question? Have you found the off button yet?

The moment you start watching the thinker, higher level of consciousness becomes activated. Page 17

Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand it will interpret it in terms of the past. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns. Page 18

So the single most final step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to say to disidentify from the mind. Page 21

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need that. Page 23

You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. page 40

An emotion is the body’s reaction to your mind. Page 44

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. The power is within, and it is available to you now. Anyone who is identify with your mind will have fear as your constant companion. Virtually everyone you meet or no lives in a state of fear. Only the intensity of it varies. Most people become conscious of it only when it takes on one of its more of acute forms. Page 45

You have already understood the basic mechanics of the unconscious state: identification with the mind. Which creates a false sense, the ego, as a substitute for your true self rooted in Bean. You become as a branch cut off from the vine. Page 47

The moment you realize you’re not present, if you are present. page 55

Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing? If there isn’t, then time is covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as a burden or a struggle. Page 67

Make it a habit to monitor your mental emotional state through self observation. Am I at ease at this moment? Is a good question to ask yourself frequently or you can ask: what’s going on inside me at this moment? What kind of thoughts is your mind producing? What do you feel? Direct your attention into the body. Is there any tension? Page 77

Many patterns in ordinary unconsciousness, on the other hand, can simply be dropped once you know that you don’t want them and don’t need them anymore, once you realize that you have a choice that you are not just a bundle of conditioned reflexes. Page 79

Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future to the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Observed as mind. Smile edit. Page 84

Are you worried? Do you have many “what if” thoughts? You are identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear. There is no way that you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a mental phantom. You can stop this health- and life-corroding insanity simply by acknowledging the present moment. Become aware of your breathing. Feel the air flowing in and out of your body. Feel your inner energy field. All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life as opposed to imaginary mind projections – is this moment. Ask yourself what “problem’ you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment? You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future nor do you have to. The answer, the strength, the right action or the resource will be there when you need it, not before, not after. Page 85

“One day I’ll make it.” Is your goal taking up so much of your attention that you reduce the present moment to a means to an end? Is it taking the joy out of your doing? Are you waiting to start living? If you develop such a mind pattern, no matter what you achieve or get, the present will never be good enough; the future will always seem better. A perfect recipe for permanent dissatisfaction and nonfulfillment, don’t you agree? Page 85

Are you a habitual “waiter”? How much of your life do you spend waiting? What I call “small-scale waiting” is waiting in line at the post office, in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive, to finish work, and so on. “Large-scale waiting” is waiting for the next vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly meaningful relationship, for success, to make money, to be important, to become enlightened. It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living. Page 86

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