The Power of Now

Today, I would like to share some of the concepts and thoughts that are presented in a book that I currently read, as I find them very inspiring and useful. The book's title is The Power of Now and it is written by Eckhart Tolle. The main message of the book is to encourage people to live in the present moment.

Most of the time, we focus on the future or keep returning to the past and we forget to live in the present. Why is it so important to concentrate on the present moment? Above all, because it is the only real one - nor the past nor the future actually exist. It is of course important to plan things in order to achieve our goals and learn from our past experiences, but it should not prevent us from living in the present moment...

• If you accept the situation as it is - you accept the present moment without wanting to escape it - it will begin to help you instead of doing you harm.

• When you are not satisfied with what you are doing, change the way how you do it. The way how we do things is many times more important then what we actually do.

• Don't focus on a result. Concentrate on the activity and the desired result will come automatically.

• Don't judge. By continuous judging, you only cause yourself harm, discomfort and suffering.

• If you complain about something, you refuse the present moment. You create a victim of yourself. Therefore, either change the situation, accept it or leave. Everything else would be a madness.

• If you don't like a situation, be responsible for your life - you have three meaningful options what to do: change the undesirable situation, accept it or leave. And you need to choose NOW. Face up the consequences of your decision, don't look for excuses. Keep your inner space clean.

• If your mind is carrying a burden of the past, your life will not change. The future will only be a replication of the past. There can be some light changes but a true transformation is very rare as it comes only if you manage to concentrate on the present moment intensively enough to get rid of the burden of the past.

• How can you get rid of the burden you are wearing? By realizing that you don't want to carry it anymore and just throwing it away.

• Observe your negative emotions and ask "what is happening in me right now?" By doing so, you separate the emotions from yourself and realize that they exist "outside" you, they are not part of you.

• If you decide to do something, do it without negative emotions. Action based on an understanding of the situation is more effective than action that comes out from negative emotions.

• It is not important whether your emotions are justified or not. The fact is that you are fighting what is. You create an enemy from the present moment.

• You need to free yourself from your never ending flow of thoughts. How? Observe them. Your ego (the false "you" that you create by identifying yourself unconsiously with your mind) is dependent on your thoughts and it cannot exist if you stop this flow of thoughts. Once you realize that you are smiling when observing your thoughts, it means that you finally don't take them too seriously, because you now understand that your identity doesn't depend on them, it doesn't consist of them.

• Your identity rises from a much deeper level of your heart, not your mind.

• As soon as you are able to free yourself from your mind/thoughts, you won't care whether you are right or not, because you will know that beeing wrong doesn't affect your identity/your internal integrity and you won't fear loosing it. You will be able to clearly express your opinion without feeling a need to be aggressive. Acting so, you will prevent conflicts that harm relations between people.

• Power over another person is just a weekness pretending to be a strenght.

• "Time is what prevents us from seeing the light. There is no bigger obstacle on our way to the Truth then time." Eckart (13th century). In this case, time is understood as psychological time - if you keep thinking about your mistakes from the past, you are identifying yourself with them and you are creating your false self. On the contrary, if you made a mistake in the past that you are trying to correct now, you are using chronological time, which is desirable.

• All your problems are illusions of your mind.
  

• You are whole already now. As soon as you understand this, you will not be motivated by fear, anger, frustration or a need to become important anymore. You will not be affraid of beeing unsuccessful (which your ego considers loosing your identity). You will free yourself from the need to become someone. Your satisfaction and identity of your self will not depend on the results of your actions, so you free yourself from fear.

• Nothing real can be harmed. Therefore, you don't need to fear to loose it.

• Wherever you are, be there completely.

• Waiting is a state of mind. It means that you want future and refuse the present. This deteriorates the quality of your life because you are missing the present moment. If you catch yorself waiting for something, concentrate on the present moment and enjoy it.

• When you are at a very beautiful place, ovewhelmed by its beauty, you experience a very deep and pleasant feeling. At this moment, you don't think anything, you don't focus on the future nor the past, you are fully in the present moment. This is an example of a state of enlightenment.

• You get to know the Truth when you feel that death is comming. The death frees you from everything you are not. The secret of life is to die before you die - to realize that death doesn't exist.

Namaste.

Petra