Practising the Power of Now: Meditations, Exercises and Core Teachings from The Power of Now

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The single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: Learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. Moreover, as long as you are identified with your mind, the ego runs your life. Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident. Now remember that an emotion is the body's reaction to your mind. What message is the body receiving continuously from the ego, the false, mind-made self? Danger, I am under threat. And what is the emotion generated by this continuous message? Fear, of course. Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind — or you might say a reflection of your mind in the body.

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 the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind. This is the end of all arguments and power games, which are so corrosive to relationships. Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: The more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering — and free of the egoic mind. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: Listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. Practicing the Power of Now is an effective read with a few handy meditation exercises in the mix. This book is focused on the key techniques to stay calm and to always be present at the moment regardless of the situation. “All problems are illusions of the mind.” Often we let our thoughts wander in time other than the present. We sometimes live in the past causing sufferings to our mind and body or we get obsessed with what may or may not be, meaning we fear the future. Tolle with great emphasis teaches us to live in the now and to not let our egoistic and unconscious mind take the driver's seat. “WATCH ANY PLANT OR ANIMAL AND LET IT TEACH YOU acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. Let it teach you Being.” However, this book is repetitive throughout like a mantra and reminders on how to slowly but effectively improve your life. The book demands to be read slowly.Many of the readers who wrote to me expressed a wish to have the practical aspects of the teachings contained in The Power of Now presented in a more readily accessible format, to be used in their daily practice. That request became the impetus for this book. IF YOU HAVE DIFFICULTY FEELING YOUR EMOTIONS, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with your emotions. 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.

If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don't create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating time?I read this book because a friend recommended it and then bought it for me. Sadly this is the worst sort of New Age claptrap – and I write that as someone who has read many, very good self-help and spiritually-minded books. This book however is filled with discursive platitudes and unoriginal concepts. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.

THE POWER TO CHOOSE Choice implies consciousness — a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. 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. This means that you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind. Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life. Similarly, if you are one of the many people who have an issue with their parents, if you still harbor resentment about something they did or did not do, then you still believe that they had a choice — that they could have acted differently. It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? None. You are not even there. The mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional. It is a form of insanity. Almost everyone is suffering from this illness in varying degrees. The moment you realize this, there can be no more resentment. How can you resent someone's illness? The only appropriate response is compassion. If you are run by your mind, although you have no choice you will still suffer the consequences of your unconsciousness, and you will create further suffering. You will bear the burden of fear, conflict, problems, and pain. The suffering thus created will eventually force you out of your unconscious state.”

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For those readers who felt daunted or overwhelmed by The Power of Now, this book can also serve as an introduction. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.