THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle such a great read! The concepts are so important and I learned so very much from it. Below are my favorite excerpts from the book!

The origin of this book: until my 30th year I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else’s life. I woke up in the early hours feeling  absolute dread. I could feel that a deep longing for non-existence becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live. Suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “ Am I one or two?” if I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the “I”  and the “ self”  that “I”  cannot live with. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is real. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “Resist Nothing”.  Suddenly, there was no more fear. I have no recollection of what happened after that.

 Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. I knew that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn’t understand it at all. It wasn’t until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual  teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. The intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my Consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This false, suffering self immediately collapsed. What was left then was my true nature as the ever present I am. 

 

 For a while I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost 2 years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy. The undercurrent of peace has never left me since then.

People would occasionally come up to me and say: “I want what you have. Can you give it to me, or show me how to get it?”  and I would say: “ You have it already. You just can’t feel it because your mind is making too much noise.” That answer later grew into the book that you are holding in your hands.

 

 On one level, I draw your attention to what is false in you. On another level, I speak of a profound transformation of human consciousness that is available now, no matter who or where you are. You are shown how to free yourself from enslavement to the mind, to enter into this enlightened state of consciousness. 

 

Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant Joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within.

 

The Voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mindset you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past.

 

 All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight.

 

Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas Joy arises from within.

 

 The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment. The Mind always seeks to deny the now and to escape from it. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.

 

The ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat.

 

 Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

 

Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “ die before you die”- and find that there is no death.

 

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. 

 

The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now- that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality. 

 

The present moment is all you ever have.

 

You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the now. What you refer to as “ life”  should more accurately be called your “ life situation.”

 

You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. 

 

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?”  Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.

 

Deep unconsciousness, or other deep pain, such as the loss of a loved one, usually needs to be transmuted through acceptance combined with the light of your presence- your sustained attention. 

 

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness. 

You are identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear. 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. All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life- as opposed to imaginary mind projections- is this moment.

 

Next time somebody says, “ Sorry to have kept you waiting,”  you can reply, “ that’s all right, I wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself- in joy in my self.” 

 

(When discussing Christ) He was a man who lived 2000 years ago and realized Divine presence, his true nature. And so he said: “ before Abraham was, I am.”  He did not say: “ I already existed before Abraham was born.” 

The “ second coming”  of Christ is a transformation of human consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to peer consciousness, not the arrival of some man or woman.  If “Christ”  were to return tomorrow in some externalized form, what could he or she possibly say to you other than this: “ I am the truth. I am Divine Presence. I am eternal life. I am within you. I am here. I am now.”

 

If you are drawn to an enlightened teacher, it is because there’s already enough presence in you to recognize presence in another. Egos are drawn to bigger egos. Darkness cannot recognize light, only light can recognize light.

 

 Any kind of exclusivity is identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no matter how well disguised.

 

The body that you can see and touch cannot take you into being. But that visible and tangible body is only an outer shell, or rather a limited and distorted perception of a deeper reality. In your natural state of connectedness with being, this deeper reality can be felt every moment as the invisible inner body, the animating presence within you. So to “ inhabit the body” is to feel the body from within, to feel the life inside the body and thereby come to know that you are beyond the outer form.

 

Underneath your outer form, you are connected with something so vast, so immeasurable and sacred, that it cannot be conceived or spoken of.  You are cut off from being as long as you’re mind takes up all your attention. The mind absorbs all your Consciousness and transforms it into mind stuff. You cannot stop thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease. The one thing that truly matters is then missing from your life:  awareness of your deeper self.

 

Transformation is through the body, not away from it.

 

 All spiritual teachings originate from the same source. In that sense, there is and always has been only one master, who manifests in many different forms. I am that master, and so are you, once you are able to access the source within. And the way to do it is through the inner body. 

 

What you perceive as a dense physical structure called the body, which is subject to disease, old age and death, is not ultimately real-  is not you.  It is a misperception of your essential reality that is beyond birth and death, and is due to the limitations of your mind, which having lost touch with Being, creates the body as evidence of its illusory belief in separation and to justify its state of fear. 

 

You are your body. The body that you can see and touch is only a thin illusory veil. Underneath it lies the invisible inner body, the doorway into Being, into Life Unmanifested. Through the inner body, you are inseparably connected to this unmanifested One Life- birthless, deathless, eternally present. Through the inner body, you are forever one with God. 

 

The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body-  to feel it at all times. This will rapidly deepen and transform your life. The more Consciousness you direct into the inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes, much like a light that grows brighter as you turn up the dimmer switch and so increase the flow of electricity. At this higher energy level, negativity cannot affect you anymore, and you tend to attract new circumstances that reflect this higher frequency.

 

Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires, may still be there to some extent, but they won’t take you over. 

 

Unless you stay present- and inhabiting your body is always an essential aspect of it- you will continue to be run by your mind. This script in your head that you learned a long time ago, the conditioning of your mind, will dictate your thinking in your behavior. You may be free of it for brief intervals, but rarely for long. This is especially true when something “ goes wrong”  or there is some loss or upset. Your conditioned reaction will then be involuntary, automatic, and predictable, fueled by the one basic emotion that underlies the mind-identified state of consciousness: fear. 

 

Just as the sun is infinitely brighter than a candle flame, there is infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind. 

 

The emotion will prevent you from gaining access to the inner body, which lies at a deeper level underneath it. Attention does not mean that you start thinking about it. It means to just observe the emotion, to feel it fully, and so to acknowledge and accept it as it is. Some emotions are easily identified: anger, fear, grief, and so on. Others may be much harder to label. They may just be vague feelings of unease, heaviness, or constriction; halfway between an emotion and a physical sensation. 

 

When you are not in your body, however, an emotion can survive inside you for days or weeks, or join with other emotions of a similar frequency that have merged and become the pain-body, a parasite that can live inside you for years, feed on your energy, lead to physical illness, and make your life miserable. 

 

So if you inhabit the inner body, the outer body will grow old at a much slower rate, and even when it does, your timeless essence will shine through the outer form, and you will not give the appearance of an old person. 

 

The more Consciousness you bring into the body, the stronger the immune system becomes. The body loves your attention. It is also a potent form of self-healing. Most illnesses creep in when you are not present in the body. If the master is not present in the house, all kinds of shady characters will take up residence there. When you inhabit your body, it will be hard for unwanted guests to enter. It is not only your physical immune system that becomes strengthened; your psychic immune system is greatly enhanced as well. The latter protects you from the negative mental-emotional force fields of others, which are highly contagious. Inhabiting the body protects you not by putting up a shield, but by raising the frequency vibration of your total energy field, so that anything that vibrates at a lower frequency, such as fear, anger, depression, and so on, now exist in what is virtually a different order of reality. 

 

There’s a simple but powerful self-healing meditation that you can do whenever you feel the need to boost your immune system. It is particularly effective if used when you feel the first symptoms of an illness, but it also works with illnesses that are already entrenched in you if you use it at frequent intervals and with an intense focus. It will also counteract any disruption of your energy field by some form of negativity. However it is not a substitute for the moment to moment practice of being in the body; otherwise, it’s effect will only be temporary, here it is. When you are occupied for a few minutes, and especially last thing at night before falling asleep and first thing in the morning before getting up, “ flood”  your body with consciousness. Close your eyes. Lie flat on your back. Choose different parts of your body to focus your attention on briefly at first: hands, feet, arms, legs, abdomen, chest, head, and so on. Feel the Life Energy inside those parts as intensely as you can. Stay with each part for 15 seconds or so. Then let your attention run through the body like a wave a few times, from head to feet and back again. This only take a minute or so. After that, feel the inner body and it’s totality, as a single field of energy. Hold that feeling for a few minutes. Be intensely present during that time, present in every cell of your body. 

 

Conscious breathing, which is a powerful meditation in its own right, will gradually put you in touch with the body. 

 

You take a journey into the unmanifested every night when you enter the phase of deep dreamless sleep. You merge with the Source. You draw from it the vital energy that sustains you for a while when you return to the manifested, the world of separate forms.

 

It makes no difference, as far as the inner body is concerned, whether your outer physical body is old or young, frail or strong. The inner body is timeless. 

 

Another portal into the Unmanifested is created through the cessation of thinking. This is what meditation is all about. 

 

Love isn’t a portal; it’s what comes through the portal into this world.

 

Pay it more attention to the silence and to the sounds. Paying attention to Outer silence creates inner silence: the Mind becomes still. A portal is opening up.

 

The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought after experience is that it seems to offer Liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state. There is a physical as well as a psychological Dimension to the state.

 

There comes a point where your partner behaves in ways that fail to meet your needs, or rather those of your ego. The feelings of fear, pain, and lack that are an intrinsic part of egoic consciousness but have been covered up by the “ love relationship” now resurface.  

 

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. 

 

In fact, the moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace. First you stop judging yourself; then you stop judging your partner. The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way. That immediately takes you beyond ego. This is also the end of all codependency, of being drawn into somebody else’s unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue. You will then either separate- in love- or move ever more deeply into the Now together- into Being. Can it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple. 

 

Love is a state of being. your love is not outside; it is deep within you. you can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.

 

 So whenever your relationship is not working, whenever it brings out the “madness” in you and in your partner, be glad. What was unconscious is now being brought up to the light. It is an opportunity for salvation.

 

Relationships are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of Salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will  offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher Consciousness that wants to be born into this world. 

 

It is not easy to live with an enlightened person, or rather it is so easy that the ego finds it extremely threatening. Remember that the ego needs problems, conflict, and “ enemies”  to strengthen the sense of separateness on which its identity depends. 

 

If you are consistently or at least predominantly present in your relationship, this will be the greatest challenge for your partner. They will not be able to tolerate your presence for very long and stay unconscious. If they are ready, they will walk through the door that you open for them and join you in that state. If they are not, you will separate like oil and water. The light is too painful for someone who wants to remain in darkness. 

 

Generally speaking, it is easier for a woman to feel and be in her body, so she is naturally closer to Being and potentially closer to Enlightenment than a man. This is why many ancient cultures instinctively choose female figures or analogies to represent or describe the formless and transcendental reality. 

 

Your main task as a woman now is to transmute the pain-body so that it no longer comes between you and your true self, the essence of who you are. As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. 

 

Acute unhappiness can be a great awakener.

 

Let go of false self images. Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it. 

 

Negativity is totally unnatural. It is a psychic pollutant, and there is a deep link between the poisoning and destruction of Nature and the vast negativity that is accumulated in the collective human psyche. No other life form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it. Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed Oak tree? Have you come across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the human mind and it’s insanity. 

 

Even ducks have taught me important spiritual lessons. how peacefully they float along, at ease with themselves, totally present in the now. Occasionally however two ducks will get into a fight- sometimes for no apparent reason or because one has strayed into another’s private space. The fight usually lasts only for a few seconds, and then the ducks separate, swim off in opposite directions, and vigorously flap their wings a few times. Then they continue to swim on peacefully as if the fight had never happened. I realized that by flapping their wings they were releasing surplus energy, thus preventing it from becoming trapped in their body and turning into negativity. This is natural wisdom, and it is easy for them because they do not have a mind that keeps the past alive unnecessarily and then builds an identity around it. 

 

Attention. Here and now. wake up. 

 

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions. 

 

Everybody you come in contact with will be touched by your presence and affected by the peace that you emanate, whether they are conscious of it or not. Animals, trees, and flowers will feel your peace and respond to it.

 

To get this book and read it, click HERE!

 

 

 

 

 

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