THE POWER OF NOW he Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment is a book by Eckhart Tolle. The book is intended to be a self-help guide for day-to-day living and stresses the importance of living in the present moment and avoiding thoughts of the past or future. Published in the late 1990s,[1] the book was recommended by Oprah Winfrey[2] and has been translated into 33 languages.[3] As of 2009, it was estimated that three million copies had been sold in North America.[4] Selected chapters The chapters of the book are: Introduction, You Are Not Your Mind, Consciousness: The Way Out of Pain, Moving Deeply into the Now, Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now, The State of Presence, The Inner Body, Portals into the Unmanifested, Enlightened Relationships, Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There Is Peace and The Meaning of Surrender.[10] Various chapters emphasize a philosophy of destroying the destructive dominance of the mind and ego in an effort to overcome the pain body.[7] According to the author, his philosophy is directed towards people and their search for personal happiness and also has the potential to give insight into historical disasters like the justification of an evil political system such as Communism.[7] Introduction In the books introduction the author relates his past experiences of continuous anxiety with periods of suicidal depression. Later, when he was 29 years old, he had a personal epiphany and writes: I heard the words resist nothing as if spoken inside my chest. He relates that he felt as if he were falling into a void and afterwards there was no more fear.[11] Chapter two: Consciousness: The Way Out of Pain In chapter two, Tolle tells the reader that they must recognize their personal ego without the ego creating an antagonistic response to its own denial or destruction and explains the purposelessness of the mental pain and anguish that people hold on to.[12] According to the book: The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification.[8] In this chapter the author writes: pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.[8] The author goes on to write that many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness.[5] Chapter three: Moving Deeply Into the Now In chapter three, the author writes: In the normal, mind-identified or unenlightened state of consciousness, the power and creative potential that lie concealed in the Now are completely obscured by psychological time. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.[8] Chapter four: Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now In chapter four, Tolle says that tomorrows bills are not the problem and can be a core delusion that changes a mere situation, event or emotion into a reason for suffering and unhappiness.[13] The book also calls waiting a state of mind that we should snap ourselves out of.[13]
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 13:41:18 +0000
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