Midway Through the Power of Now

I’m currently reading Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now. I’m finding it both fascinating and enlightening, the latter of which is most specifically Tolle’s goal in publishing this work.

To summarize thus far, Tolle posits that our minds are wonderful tools, but tools nonetheless. Much like a hammer is quite useful for certain tasks, so is the mind. But when we are no longer engaged in tasks that require a hammer, we place the hammer back down on the workbench. Tolle suggests that when we are not “using” our minds – for problem solving, remembering, etc. – that our minds are essentially hijacking our attention, and focusing our attention largely on fear and pain avoidance. He argues that our minds work incessantly, reliving past events, many painful, and also worrying about future events, in an effort to avoid pain (embarrassment, missed opportunity, etc.).

Tolle rightly suggests that the only time we can truly live our lives is in the NOW, in the moment. You can’t relive the past, nor can one live the future before it arrives. Life is in the moment, this moment, the current moment. And yet our minds, Tolle argues, do not allow us to be present in this moment, but rather compel us to relive past events or worry about future possibilities. Thus robbing us of the living of our lives in the moment.

It’s an interesting supposition.

A student suggests to Tolle that he/she cannot stop THINKING, “except maybe for a moment or two.”

Tolle responds, as taken directly from pages 16 and 17:

Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don’t even know that you are its slave. It’s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.

More to follow when I finish reading this work.