The Power of Now

A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

 

The Power of Now… the study of this book is being turned into a short essay and a reference for further research.  Notes & Quotes have been started and are in a constant process.  This Essay Section will be continuously updated with new concepts and takeaways.  Please check back or sign up for our Newsletter for updates.

As with most things in life, nothing should be believed until it is proven by practice…

After reading (and listening to) The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle several times, I have a deeper understanding of Being in this World… 

Scroll Down to a deep dive into the book… bullet points to get a feel for the book; come back and review for better retention. 

View our Eckhart Tolle page.

 

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The Power of Now:  Summary

 

The Power of Now is one of those books that takes some reflection to get the most out of it.   Check back, or join the newsletter for updates.

Check out the book “The Power of Now” on Amazon to see all of the formats and take a look inside the book! (click here)

 

The Power of Now

Research & Brainstorming Below

NOTES – QUOTES

The Power of Now: Questions, Notes & Quotes 

…below are my initial notes while reading the book.  To be totally honest, I have read the book many times and went through again taking notes.  Most books on this site, hopefully, will contain my first reading notes in this section.  I use and will use these bullets as triggers for the rest of my life…  I have put Eckhart Tolle’s words into my own for a deeper understanding for myself.

The Power of Now

A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Forward

Introduction

    • “I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.”
    • “I” can’t live with “myself” … two entities?
    • Two real, or one real and one not
    • “You have it already. You just can’t feel it because your mind is making too much noise.”
  • The Truth that is Within You

    • …the seed(s) within you…
    • learn what is false in you to discover truth
    • speaking to the knower behind the thinker
    • words are only stepping stones
    • spiritual teachings are in many forms, but there is only one true
    • transformative powers are within

Check out the book “The Power of Now” on Amazon to see all of the formats and take a look inside the book! (click here)

 

You Are Not Your Mind 

The Greatest Obstacle to Enlightenment

  • The Stranger and the Beggar sitting on a box (unaware its full of gold) … look inside
  • ET is that stranger telling you to look inside… find your true wealth
  • What is inside is worth more than anything outside
  • Enlightenment is inner connection with Being
  • Buddha’s take on enlightenment is “the end of suffering” … tells what it is not, not what it is
  • Being is the essence, within everything including yourself
  • To find essence, be still… Now… feel it, don’t think… “feeling-realization”
  • Experience Being, the space of “I Am” prior to I am what? (fill in blank)
  • Stop thinking to feel essence; reduce mental noise; don’t be a slave to the mind
  • Find true relationship with everything; avoid the separation through thinking screen
  • Use your mind, don’t let it use you
  • Observe the thinker; you are not the thinker but the observer of your thoughts; awaken 

Freeing Yourself from Your Mind

  • I hear a voice in my head… observing the thinker
  • you have the power to stop the unintentional thinking; start intentional thinking; intention
  • reviving the past or rehearsing the future; interpretations from past conditioning
  • liberate yourself; be aware of thoughts; look for patterns that repeat; be present; don’t judge
  • identification with your mind energizes it; find energy in stillness/connectedness; become alert, present; increased energy (vibratory freq.)
  • create gaps through observing the thinker; gaps through focusing in the Now; no-mind; presence

Enlightenment: Rising Above Thought

  • Consider your mind as a tool used to accomplish something; when complete, put it aside
  • Overusing the mind wastes vital energy; considered and addiction; can’t choose to stop; addiction through identification; this is the egoic self, the false self not the true self
  • Create through thought and no-thought periods; the mind gives form to insight

Emotion: The Body’s Reaction to Your Mind

  • Emotions are the body’s reactions to your mind; reflection of the mind in the body
  • Identify thought patterns through awareness of their effects (emotions); thoughts cause emotions (that cause actions)
  • in analysis, if there is a conflict, the emotion is the truth and the thinking is a lie
  • subconscious conflicts with the mind causing emotion can be touched upon in a way that is felt; like observing a thought causing an emotion; observe the feeling to know what is cause; thought-mind vs emotion-body; stay present, don’t let energy overwhelm you… observe don’t judge
  • thoughts feed emotion with energy (and vice versa)
  • “Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being…”; not emotions (disturbances); there are no opposites; emotions are under the law of opposites; pain/pleasure cycles; pleasure-outside; joy-within
  • Don’t seek enlightenment, become present; be “the awakened one”
  • the slightest irritation is a form of pain; all pleasure contains pain; two sides of coin (pain/pleasure) are one
  • stop current pain and dissolve past pain

Check out the book “The Power of Now” on Amazon to see all of the formats and take a look inside the book! (click here)

 

Consciousness:

The Way Out of Pain

Create No More Pain in The Present

  • Stop letting your “Unobserved” mind control everything
  • Resistance to what is, that is what causes pain in the now; judgement is resistance (thinking); negativity (emotional); severity depends upon the level of identification with the mind
  • The mind needs time to function; the Now is timeless; ego doesn’t like the Now; limit time (past/future); do not see Now as a means to a future moment (that is only in the mind);
  • “the present moment is all you ever have”
  • Accept the Now and act; use as little time as necessary, the return to timelessness; work with not against;

Past Pain: Dissolving the Pain-Body

  • Past pain lives on in you now as a residue; this past pain occurred while not in the Now; this pain builds up in your mind and physical body; negative energy field; this field is your pain-body;
  • Pain-bodies are either active or dormant; 10% active / 90% dormant… or any number of possibilities;
  • PBs live through you; it attracts matching energies; pain feeds on pain; PB is a shadow and does not like the light of positive emotion, presence, the now, …
  • “Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light becomes light.” -St. Paul
  • Don’t try to overcome your PB. Instead, observe it; be conscious of it; accept it in the Now; don’t identify with it; transmute its energy into consciousness… life energy, the light

Ego Identification with the Pain Body

  • Transformational tool – process above; observer of thoughts/emotions; experience it to grow
  • observe; your resistance; your attachments; your pleasure from pain; your noisy mind; make it all conscious and it will dissolve… transmute into positive light
  • burning log will cause another to burn brighter; be the first log for others

The Origin of Fear

  • psychological condition of fear; future things that might happen, not in the Now; if the mind is in the future… there is a gap between physical now and mental future; anxiety
  • fear of death is predominant in most “fears”; the ego can’t handle it; being wrong is death to ego;
  • express what you think/feel without being aggressive or defensive; from an inner self that is true; avoid identification with mind; go beyond mind
  • Trying to be right is a weakness; power is weakness; true power lies deep within you
  • Fear will always be with those that identify with their mind

The Ego’s Search for Wholeness

  • being incomplete or not whole is an emotion of the ego; conscious (unworthy) or unconscious (needy); ego-gratification follows to fill the inner void, causing identification with things, status, partnerships; this void can never be filled with these; ego mind is never satisfied for long
  • Most will discover, as they are approaching death, that none of the “things” really matter…
  • “The secret of life is to “die before you die” and find that there is no death.”

Check out the book “The Power of Now” on Amazon to see all of the formats and take a look inside the book! (click here)

 

3.  Moving Deeply into the Now

Don’t Seek Your Self in the Mind

  • “The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind.”
  • Unconsciousness; mind identification; ego or false self; taking the place of your true self
  • The mind is a tool, don’t identify with it or its functions

End the Delusion of Time

  • Removing time from your mind causes it to stop; time is a delusion; mind identification causes you to be trapped in time; “the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.”
  • past (identity) and future (promise); use time… knowing that it is an illusion; Now is out of time
  • Now is precious; eternally, the space where life unfolds; Now releases you from the mind, access to timeless/formless realm of Being

Nothing Exists Outside the Now

  • Nothing has or will ever occur in the past or future… it always happens in the Now; a memory happens in the Now; imagined events happen in the Now;
  • As the moon only reflects light from the sun, the past/future are reflections from the Now

The Key to the Spiritual Dimension

  • Shifts from time to Now occur from time to time; in times of emergency, actions come from Now; no thinking about time past/future
  • Some indulge in hobbies that force the Now; dangerous activities that become free of time
  • “What, at this moment, is lacking?” -Zen master Rinzai “If not now, when?”
  • “Past and future veil God from our sight; burn up both of them with fire.”
  • “Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time.”

Accessing the Power of the Now

  • perceptions without the screen of mind… knowing through essence in things; timeless dimension; sacred reverence; the mind does not know these things
  • create a permanent shift; practice no past or future thoughts when not necessary; observer provides presence;
  • increase awareness of reactions to their causes; does past / future play roles; just observe, no judgement; feel the energy from observing
  • patterns in your reactions are your mind’s survival instinct
  • don’t identify with the mind; causes an increase in time and its energy
  • observe the mind; transmutes its energy (into presence) and moves you out of time into the Now; continuously choose to move out of mind/time

Letting Go of Psychological Time

  • time used necessarily is “clock” time; time used unnecessarily is “psychological” time (compulsive past present)
  • clock time includes; planning, learning, predicting; must balance the Now in these
  • use clock time and be free of psych time; time is still outside of self
  • pursue goals using clock time, but cherish each step (now)
  • Caution, clock time can turn into psych time
  • “There is never a time when your life is not this moment.”

The Insanity of Psychological Time

  • “a future heaven creates a present hell.”
  • psych time clouds the potential of creation; dulls life; scripts in the mind; distorts reality
  • this causes the need to escape into a better future…

Negativity and Suffering Have Their Roots in Time

  • future thinking happens Now; negativity from past results in the same Now; without presence, the past repeats itself
  • Presence results in improved consciousness Now; dissolves negativity, transforms future Now
  • Denying the Now combined with psych time causes negativity and suffering
  • Too much past and not enough Now, results in non-forgiveness; too much future, results in fear
  • “Ultimately, there is only one problem: the time-bound mind itself.”
  • “Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now.”

Finding the Life Underneath Your Life Situation

  • Unhappiness cannot be present in the Now
  • Your Life (Now) and Your Life Situation (psych time)
  • “Allow the “isness” of all things.”
  • “Awaken out of the dream of time into the present.”

All Problems are Illusions of the Mind

  • No problems, only situations to be dealt with in the Now (or put aside for Now)
  • Problems give your mind identity; life situation over life; problem = pain
  • Stop creating pain (problems);
  • Life or death emergencies… no problems (no time), present in Now, another power

I have no time for problems.

  • problems are illusions… takes away some’s identity

A Quantum Leap in the Evolution of Consciousness

  • “the awakening… from the dream of matter, form, and separation. The ending of Time.”
  • Mind Patterns need altering… evolving from past to Now;

The Joy of Being

  • Are you in the Now? Stop, do you sense joy in what you are doing right Now? The answer should almost always be yes. If not, you should realize that time, mind, pain are invading your Now; change how you are doing, not what you are doing
  • Accept what is.
  • Don’t focus on the outcome, look at each step Now. “consecrated action”
  • Let joy and beauty flow into whatever you are doing; be complete/whole right Now

Check out the book “The Power of Now” on Amazon to see all of the formats and take a look inside the book! (click here)

 

4.  Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now

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      5.  The State of Presence

      It’s Not What You Think It Is

      • To understand presence, you must be present
      • Focus, ask yourself “What will my next thought be…”
      • No thought; when a thought comes in, you are no longer present
      • be deeply rooted; don’t be moved by the mind (like a river);
      • always anchor a portion of attention to inner self; body awareness

      The Esoteric Meaning of “Waiting”

      • the state of presence… waiting; alertness; stillness; in the Now
      • “Be like the servant waiting for the return of the aster” -Jesus
      • No past or future mind;
      • Five Careless Women parable; careless (unconscious), enough oil (consciousness), lamps burning (stay present), bridegroom (the Now), wedding feast (enlightenment); parables about transcendence of egoic mind and living in new state of consciousness

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      6. The Inner Body

      BEING IS YOUR DEEPEST SELF

      “Being can be felt as the ever-present I am that is beyond name and form. To feel and thus to know that you are and to abide in that deeply rooted state is enlightenment, is the truth that Jesus says will make you free.”

       

      LOOK BEYOND THE WORDS

      “Dont get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It’s an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself.”

      FINDING YOUR INVISIBLE AND INDESTRUCTABLE REALITY

      “…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.”

      “…take the focus of your attention away from thinking and direct it into the body, where Being can be felt in the first instance as the invisible energy field that gives life to what you perceive as the physical body.”

       

      CONNECTING WITH THE INNER BODY

      TRANSFORMATION THROUGH THE BODY

      SERMON ON THE BODY

      HAVE DEEP ROOTS WITHIN

      BEFORE YOU ENTER THE BODY, FORGIVE

      YOUR LINK WITH THE UNMANIFESTED

      SLOWING DOWN THE AGING PROCESS

      STRENGTHENING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

      LET THE BREATH TAKE YOU INTO THE BODY

      CREATIVE USE OF MIND

      “If you need to use your mind for a specific purpose, use it in conjunction with your inner body. Only if you are able to be conscious without thought can you use your mind creatively, and the easiest way to enter that state is through your body. Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. Become aware of the stillness. When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative. In any thought activity, make it a habit to go back and forth every few minutes or so between thinking and an inner kind of listening, an inner stillness. We could say. don’t just think with your head, think with your whole body.”

      THE ART OF LISTENING

      Portals Into the Unmanifested

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      8.  Enlightened Relationships

      ENTER THE NOW FROM WHEREVER YOU ARE

      “Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. It is here and now.”

      “True salvation is a state of freedom from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and dinging.”

      “You “get’ there by realizing that you are there already.”

      “There is nothing you can ever do or attain that will get you closer to salvation than it is at this moment.”

      LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIPS

      ADDICTION AND THE SEARCH FOR WHOLENESS

      FROM ADDICTIVE TO ENLIGHTENED RELATIONSHIPS

      RELATIONSHIPS AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

      WHY WOMEN ARE CLOSER TO ENLIGHTENMENT

      DISSOLVING THE COLLECTIVE FEMALE PAIN-BODY

      9. Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There is Peace

      THE HIGHER GOOD BEYOND GOOD AND BAD

      “Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”

      “Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative.”

      “…dissolve discord, heal pain, dispel unconsciousness without doing anything simply by being and holding that frequency of intense presence.”

       

      THE END OF YOUR LIFE DRAMA

      IMPERMANENCE AND THE CYCLES OF LIFE

      IMPERMANENCE AND THE CYCLES OF LIFE

      USING AND RELINQUISHING NEGATIVITY

      THE NATURE OF COMPASSION

      TOWARD A DIFFERENT ORDER OF REALITY

      10.  The Meaning of Surrender

      ACCEPTANCE OF THE NOW

      “Surrender is perfectly compatible with taking action, initiating change or achieving goals. But in the surrendered state a totally different energy, a different quality, flows into your doing. Surrender reconnects you with the source-energy of Being, and if your doing is infused with Being, it becomes a joyful celebration of life energy that takes you more deeply into the Now.”

      FROM MIND ENERGY TO SPIRITUAL ENERGY

      “Negativity, unhappiness, or suffering in whatever form means that there is resistance, and resistance is always unconscious.”

      “Unlike mind energy, it does not pollute the earth, and it is not subject to the law of polarities, which dictates that nothing can exist without its opposite, that there can be no good without bad.”

       

       

      SURRENDER IN PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

      “When you say “no” to a person or a situation, let it come not from reaction but from insight, from a clear realization of what is right or not right for you at that moment. Let it be a nonreactive “no,” a high-quality “no,” a “no” that is free of all negativity and so creates no further suffering.”

      “Then one day, in the middle of an argument, you will suddenly realize that you have a choice, and you may decide to drop your own reaction just to see what happens. You surrender.”

      “Then observe what happens to the other person’s mental position as you no longer energize it through resistance. When identification with mental positions is out of the way, true communication begins.”

      “…only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.”

       

      TRANSFORMING ILLNESS INTO ENLIGHTENMENT

      “…underneath the various conditions that make up your life situation, which exists in time, there is something deeper, more essential: your Life, your very Being in the timeless Now.”

      “…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.”

      WHEN DISASTER STRIKES

      “…forced into surrender. In this way, they were able to enter the state of grace with which comes redemption: complete release from the past.”

      “…just one step away from something incredible: a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender.”

       

      TRANSFORMING SUFFERING INTO PEACE

      “Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.”

      “Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender. By giving full attention, you use the power of the Now, which is the power of your presence. No hidden pocket of resistance can survive in it. Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no negativity, can survive.”

      “…Then die to the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound self you thought of as “you.””

       

      THE WAY OF THE CROSS

      The way of the cross is a process in finding “God” through pain (your cross you bear).

      “Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment of resistance surrender is the end of the mind as your master, the impostor pretending to be “you,” the false god.”

      “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.”

       

      THE POWER TO CHOOSE

      “Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present. Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking.”

      “Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.”

      “When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.”