Sunday, June 4, 2017

The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

I read this book about 10 years ago or more and I made copious notes while reading it. I treasured these notes and found them the other day. This place seems a better place to keep them. Some powerful stuff. Easily in my top 10 non-fiction books that impacted me.

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Past. Future. Reality is borrowed from Now.

Identification with the mind gives it energy. Observation withdraws energy. Mind then becomes sharper, focused.

Practical time. Psychological time.

Negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – future. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, non forgiveness – past.

Time is the cause of suffering. Life vs life situation. Forget about life situation and pay attention to life. Life is now, real. Life sits In the time

Create no more problem – no more pain.

You are one with the totality of consciousness. Cooperate. As you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolves, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act of present moment awareness, whatever you do becomes touched with a sense of quality, care, love – even the most simple actions.

In Now your sense of self comes from being not past.

Nothing real can be threatened. State of unease, ordinary unconsciousness. Being identified with your thought process, emotions, reactions, desires and aversions caused by resistance to what is.

Indicator of consciousness – how do you deal with life’s challenges

Unconsciousness dissolves when consciousness look inside. Always. feel at ease.

Unhappiness. Energy of the present moment. Drop the negativity like a piece of coal. Don’t suffer.

Focus on the feeling. Accept the pain boy. Don’t think about it. Don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge, analyse. Don’t identify. This is the power of now.

Ego is incomplete. Lack of wholeness. It needs to be defended and fed constantly. Ego identity has to do with possession. Death s 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.

Mind by itself is a wonderful tool. Problem is when you think you are the mind.

Remove time from the mind and it stops.

Life is all NOW. No is, your only point o access into the timeless and formless realm of being.

Mind works at fighting and removing emotional pain.

Harder it tries, greater the pain.

Real love does not make you suffer. Because you are free from the mind. Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind – as long as you are unconscious. Emotional pain is also the cause of physical pain and disease. Resentment, hatred, self pity, guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, irritation are all forms of pain.

Two pains s- one that you create now and one from impact.

Intensity of pain depends on the degree of resistance and this depends on your identification with the mind.

Mind resists the Now because I cannot function and remain in control without time. Time and mind are inseparable.

Mind controls by covering up the Now with past and future. If you want to stop creating pain, don’t create any more time.

Accept the present moment.

Pain is non acceptance – resistance to what is.

Every emotional pain leaves a residue and merges with past pain and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This accumulated pain is negative energy field.

Any sign of unhappiness within you may be the awakening of the pain body. Stop identifying with it and it dies. Pain – anger, hatred, grief, violence even illness. Once pain body takes over you want more pain – a victim or a perpetrator.

Pain body consists of trapped life energy that split off from your total energy field. And has become autonomous through mind identification.



Being can be felt. It can never be understood mentally.

Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being at one and therefore at peace.

Enlightenment is the end of suffering.

Watch the thinker and activate a higher realm of consciousness.

Things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. Free yourself from the mind. Listen to the voice as often as you can. Do not judge. Listen impartially.

Free yourself from your mind. Listen to the voice as often as you can. Do not judge. Listen impartially.

You energize your mind by identifying with it.

When thought subsides, you experience ‘no mind’.

‘No mind’ is the state of oneness with the being.

Direct the focus of your attention into the ‘now’, a gap of ‘no mind’ in which you are highly alert and aware, but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

80-90% of thinking is so repetitive and useless. Harmful. Leaks vital energy.

You think because you derive your sense of self from the content and activity of your mind.

Ego is false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind. To the ego, the now does not exist. Only past and future. Creation comes from inner stillness.

Emotions arise where mind and body meet – the body’s reaction to your mind. A reflection of your mind in the body.

Acknowledge fear and watch it. It cuts the link between fear and thinking. Dont let fear rise up into your mind.

If you take any action, drop negativity. If you can’t –surrender.

Enjoy – fully, totally.

Die to the past every moment.

Are you a waiter? Next time someone says ‘sorry to keep you waiting’ say ‘I wasn’t waiting. I was standing here and enjoying myself.’

If you realize your inner purpose the outer does not matter. Outer purposes are guided by the law of impermanence. Only the present can free you of the past.

You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.

Be rooted within yourself. Body awareness keeps you present. Satori – a moment of no mind and total presence.

Everything is alive – sun, earth – expressions of consciousness. The teacher and the taught create the teaching. Silence is a carrier of presence. Be aware of silence. The gaps between words. Listening to the silence is an easy and direct way of becoming present. Listening to silence creates stillness within you. Only stillness can perceive the silence outside.

The body can be the point of access to the Being.

Collective insanity. You are part of it. Don’t condemn it. Observe.

To become conscious you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. It will free vast amounts of consciousness that had been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking.

More consciousness you divert into the inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes.

Non forgiveness causes unease. Before you enter – forgive.

Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life.

Alternatives are pain and suffering – restricted flow of energy and in many cases physical disease.

The moment you truly forgive, you have reclaimed your power form the mind. Inhabit the inner body, outer will slow down.

Let breath take you into your body.

When you need an answer –be still,

Creative idea – stop thinking and focus attention on your inner energy field- be aware of stillness. Creativity will arise.

Listen with your whole body. Feel the energy of the inner body.

Merge with the energy field. Observer merges with the observed.

Keep in touch with the inner body. Feel the stillness. Keep the portal open. This is the state of connectedness with the source we call enlightenment.

The ‘now’ is the main portal. Another portal is created through cessation of thinking. Surrender is another portal.

Love is what comes through the portal.

Silence.

Pay attention to silence than sounds. It creates inner silence.



Spaces are stillness. Time. Presence.

You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.

Death is the end of illusion. Painful as long as you cling to the illusion.

Salvation is here and now. Is a state of freedom. Addiction to another person.

On the positive side you are ‘in love’ a deeply satisfying state. Intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you and makes you feel special and you do the same. When you are together you feel whole.

But there is a neediness. A clinging quality to this intensity. You are addicted. High, when available. Jealous, possessive, attempts at manipulation, blaming and accusing – fear of loss if the other leaves you. This can give rise to the most intense hostility or grief and despair. Where is love now?

Was it love or just an addiction?

Physical and psychological in competition.

Addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your pain. It merely covers your pain. Like booze and drugs.

Change an addictive relationship into a true one by being present and taking your attention into the now.

If in your relationships you experience both love and its opposite you are confusing love with ego attachment and addictive clinging.

When those painful feelings reappear you feel that your partner is the cause for those feelings and attract.

You awaken the partners own pain bringing on a counter, hoping to change their behaviors.

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to move through your own pain. It starts and ends with pain. You use the substance you are addicted to cover up your pain. Intimate relationships bring out the pain in you.

You cannot transform yourself or your partner, you can only create a space for transformation to enter.

When your relationship brings out the madness – be glad. If there is anger, jealousy, emotional pain know the reality and the relationship becomes your spiritual practice.

The energy from that lies behind hostility finds the presence of love intolerable.

Accept that relationships will be a spiritual practice. You can express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which unexpressed emotion or grievance can fester and grow. Give expression without blaming. Listen to your partner in an open, non defensive way. Give space to express. Giving space to others and to yourself is vital.

Two factors destruct

1) pain body that identifies with the mind

2) and when your partner does the same

The ego needs problems – conflict.

Unenlightened partners mind will be frustrated. Need for argument, drama and conflict are not met.

For the male thinking mind and the female thinking mind pain body are obstacles.

Women have more pain body because of personal and collective aspects.

So called bad things in people’s lives happen through unconsciousness – self created, ego created drama.

Ego is the unobserved mind that ruins your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness – the watcher.

When you feel sorry, guilty, anxious – its drama.

When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama.

Physical energy is subject to cycles. Illnesses are caused by fighting cycles of low energy. Compulsion to do – tendency to derive sense of self worth and identify from external factors.

All that arises passes away.

All negativity is resistance.

Whenever you are unhappy there is the unconscious belief that unhappiness ‘buys’ you what you want.

It’s a common phenomenon that once you identify with some form of negativity, you will ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life.

Negativity is totally unnatural – is a psychic pollutant.

Anything that you accept fully will get you there. This is the miracle of surrender.

In comparison the seemingly opposite feeling is of sadness and joy merge and become deep inner peace.

Surrender is to yield rather than oppose the flow of life.

The only place to experience flow of life is the now. So to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation.

Non surrender hardens your psychological and physical form.

It is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines what kind of future you will experience, so to surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change. Any action is secondary.

In a state of surrender you see clearly what needs to be done and you take action, doing one thing at a time, focusing on one thing at a time.

If your overall situation is unsatisfactory, separate out this instant and surrender to what is.

Your relationships change profoundly by surrendering. If you cannot accept what is y implication you will not be able to accept anybody the way they are.

Ego is cunning so you have to be very alert, very present and totally honest to free yourself from your mind. If you suddenly feel very light, very clear and deeply at peace, you have surrendered.

Don’t resist the opponents force. Yield to overcome.

Ego believes that resistance is your strength whereas in truth, resistance cuts you from the being, the true power. Resistance is weakness and fear masquerading as strength.

First surrender each moment to the reality of the moment

Second if you cannot accept the outside, accept the inside

Work, drink, drugs, anger, projection, repression are pseudo escapes that don’t free you from pain. Suffering does not diminish unless you make it unconscious. When you deny emotional pain every thing you do or think as well as your relationships become contaminated with it.

Don’t turn away from pain. Feel it. Don’t think about it. Express it but don’t create a script. Don’t feel sorry.

Full attention is full acceptance. Is surrender.

Time and pain are inseparable.

With the power of now you break through your conditional past and then you have a choice.

Nobody chooses pain. It happens because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past. You have not woken up yet. So the conditioned mind runs your life.


Only through the power of now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. It renders the past powerless and you realise that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even the slightest essence of who you are.

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