The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle
The problem of mind cannot be
solved on the level of the mind. Once you have understood the basic
dysfunction, there isn’t really much else that need to learn or understand.
Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good psychologist but
doing so won’t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’t
enough to create sanity.
Page 39
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 ego, of course, loves that. It is always seeking for something to
attach itself to in order uphold and strengthen its illusory sense of self and
it will readily attach itself to your problems.
Page 39
The mind itself is not
dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your
‘self’ in it and mistakes it for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind
and takes over your whole life.
Page 40
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 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. Slipping away from the present
moment even for a second may mean death. Unfortunately, they come to depend on
a particular activity to be in that state. But you don’t need to climb the
north face of the Eiger. You can enter that state now.
Page 42
In the Now, in the absence of
time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in
the Now.
Page 43
You will not have any doubt that
psychological time is a mental disease if you look at its collective
manifestations. They occur, for example, in the form of ideologies such as
communism, national socialism or any nationalism, or rigid religious belief
systems, which operate under the implicit assumption that the highest good lies
in the future and that therefore the end justifies the means. The end is an
idea, a point in the mind-projected future, when salvation in whatever form –
happiness, fulfillment, equality, liberation and so on – will be attained. Not
infrequently the means of getting there are the enslavement, torture and murder
of people in the present.
Page 48
Different Levels of Unconsciousness
As you probably
know in sleep you constantly move between the phases of dreamless sleep and the
dream state. Similarly in wakefulness most people shift between ordinary
unconsciousness and deep unconsciousness. What I call ordinary unconsciousness
means being identified with you thought processes and emotions, your reactions,
desires and aversions. It is most people’s normal state. In that state, you are
run by the egoic mind, and you are unaware of Being. It is a state of not acute
pain or unhappiness but of an almost continuous low level of unease,
discontent, boredom or nervousness – a kind of background static. You may not
realize this because it is so much a part of ‘normal’ living, just as you are
not aware of a continuous low background noise, such as the hum of an air
conditioner, until stops. When it
suddenly does stop, there is a sense of relief. Many people use alcohol, drugs,
sex, food, work, television or even shopping as anesthetics in an unconscious
attempt to remove the basic unease. When this happens, an activity that might
be very enjoyable if used in moderation becomes imbued with a compulsive or
addictive quality, and all that is ever achieved through it is extremely
short-lived symptom relief.
The unease of
ordinary unconsciousness turns into the pain of deep unconsciousness – a state
of more acute and more obvious suffering or unhappiness – when things ‘go
wrong’, when the ego is threatened or there is a major challenge, threat, or
loss, real or imagined in your life situation or conflict in a relationship. It
is an intensified version of ordinary unconsciousness, different from it not in
kind but in degree.
In ordinary
unconsciousness, habitual resistance to or denial of what is creates the unease
and discontent that most people accept as normal living. When this resistance
becomes intensified through some challenge or threat to the ego, it brings up
intense negativity such as anger, acute fear, aggression, depression, and so
on. Deep unconsciousness often means that the pain body been triggered and that
you have become identified with it. Physical violence would be impossible
without deep unconsciousness. It can also occur easily whenever and wherever a
crowd of people or even an entire nation generates a negative collective energy
field.
The best
indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life’s challenges
when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends
to become deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious.
You can choose a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even
deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconscious then turns into a nightmare.
If you cannot be
present even in normal circumstance, such as when you are sitting alone in a
room, walking in the woods, or listening to someone, then you certainly won’t
be able to stay conscious when something ‘goes wrong’ or you are faced with
difficult people or situations, with loss or the threat of loss. You will be
taken over by a reaction, which ultimately is always some form of fear, and
pulled into deep unconsciousness. Those challenges are your test. Only the way
in which you deal with them will shoe you and others where you are at as far as
your state of unconsciousness is concerned, not how long you can sit with your
eyes closed or what visions you see.
So it is essential
to bring more consciousness into your life in ordinary situations when
everything is going relatively smoothly. In this way, you grow in presence
power. It generates an energy field in you and around you of a high vibrational
frequency. No unconsciousness, no negativity, no discord or violence can enter
that field and survive, just as darkness cannot survive in the presence of
light.
When you learn
to be the witness of your thoughts and emotions, which is an essential part of
being present you may be surprised when you first become aware of the
background ‘static’ of ordinary unconsciousness and realize how rarely, if
ever, you are at ease within yourself. On the level of your thinking, you will
find a great deal of resistance in the form of judgment, discontent and mental
projection away from the Now. On the emotional level, there will be an
undercurrent of unease, tension, boredom or nervousness. Both are aspects of
the mind in the habitual resistance mode.
Pages
60-62
When you have been practicing acceptance
for a while, as you have, there comes a point when you need to go on to the
next stage, where these negative emotions are not created anymore. If you
don’t, your ‘acceptance’ just becomes a mental label that allows your ego to
continue to indulge in unhappiness and so strengthen its sense of separation
from other people, your surroundings, you’re here and now. As you know,
separation is the basis for the ego’s sense of identity. True acceptance would
transmute those feelings at once. And if you really knew deeply that everything
is ‘okay’ as you put it, and which of course is true, then would you have those
negative feelings in the first place? Ithout judgment, without resistance to
what is, they would not arise. You have an idea in your mind that ‘everything
is okay’ but deep down you don’t really believe it, and so the old
mental-emotional patterns of resistance are still in place. That’s what makes
you feel bad.
That’s okay too.
Are you defending your right to
be unconscious, your right to suffer? Don’t worry; nobody is going to take that
away from you. Once you realize that a certain kind of food makes you sick,
would you carry on eating that food and kept asserting that it is okay to be
sick.
Pages 67-68
Give attention to the present:
give attention to your behaviour, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions,
fears and desires as they occur in the present. There’s the past in you. If you
can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically
but nonjudgmentally then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it
through the power of your presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the
past. You find yourself by coming into the present.
Page 75
In a sense, the state of presence
could be compared to waiting… It is not a waiting in which your attention is
focused on some point in the future and the present is perceived as an
undesirable obstacle that prevents you from having what you want. There is a
qualitative different kind of waiting, one that requires your total alertness.
Something could happen at any moment, and if you are not absolutely awake,
absolutely still, you will miss it… In that state, all your attention is in the
Now. There is none left for daydreaming, thinking, remembering, anticipating.
There is no tension in it, no fear, just alert presence.
Page 78
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 field 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 exists in what is virtually a
different order of reality. It doesn’t enter your field of consciousness
anymore, or if it does you don’t need to offer any resistance to it because it
passes right through you.
Page 103
You see time as the means to
salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation. You think
you can’t get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are
not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only
point where you can get there… So there is no ‘only’ way to salvation: Any
condition can be used, but no particular condition is needed. However, there is
only one point of access: the Now. There can be no salvation away from this
moment. You are lonely and without a partner? Enter the Now from there. You are
in a relationship? Enter the Now from there.
Page 122
Remember that the ego needs
problems, conflicts and enemies to strengthen the sense of separateness on
which its identity depends.
Page 134
It is not true that the up cycle
is good and down cycle bad, except in the mind’s judgment. Growth is usually
considered positive, but nothing can grow forever. If growth, of whatever kind,
were to go on and on, it would eventually become monstrous and destructive.
Dissolution is needed for new growth to happen. One cannot exist without the
other.
The down cycle is absolutely
essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level
or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension.
Or perhaps your very success become empty and meaningless and so turned out to
be failure. Failure lies concealed in every success and success in every
failure.
Page 152
Many illnesses are created through fighting
against the cycles of low energy, which are vital for regeneration. The
compulsion to do, and the tendency to derive your sense of self-worth and
identify from external factors such as achievement, is an inevitable illusion
as long as you are identified with the mind. This makes it hard or impossible
for you to accept the low cycles and allow them to be. Thus, the intelligence
of the organism may take over as a self-creative measure and create an illness
in order to force you to stop, so that the necessary regeneration can take
place.
Page 153
In the state of surrender, you
see very clearly what needs to be done, and you take action, doing one thing at
a time and focusing on one thing at a time. Learn from nature. See how
everything gets accomplished and how the miracle of life unfolds without
dissatisfaction or unhappiness. That’s why Jesus said: “Look at the lilies, how
they grow; they neither toil or spin.”
Page 174
Illness is not the problem. You
are the problem – as long as the egoic mind is in control. When you are ill or disabled
do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame
life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is
resistance. If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything
‘bad’ that happens in your life – use it for enlightenment. Withdraw time from
the illness. Do not give it any past or future. Let it force you into intense
present-moment awareness – and see what happens.
Become an alchemist. Transmute
base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into
enlightenment.
Page 181
Enlightenment through suffering – the way of
the cross – means to be forced into the kingdom of heaven, kicking and
screaming. You finally surrender because you can’t stand the pain anymore, but
the pain could go on for a long time until this happens. Enlightenment
consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and
to make the Now the main focus of your life. It means choosing to dwell in the
state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is. You then
don’t need pain anymore. How much more time do you think you will need before
you are able to say “I will create no more pain, no more suffering.” How much
pain do you need before you can make that choice?
Page 188
Name of the Book: The Power of Now
Author: Eckhart Tolle
Edition: First Edition, Thirtieth Reprint 2012
Publisher: Yogi Impressions
