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Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
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THE POWER OF NOW - by Eckhart Tolle
Posted by Raja Ramchandra on 23 Sep 2007While browsing through a bookstore one day, a certain book practically jumped off the shelf at me: Eckhart Tolle’sThe Power of Now. I had such a strong intuitive sense about the book that I just bought it right away.
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The Power of Now is the sort of book that continues to swirl about in your consciousness weeks after you’ve read it. It left me permanently changed.
The basic principle of the book is quite simple — nothing exists outside this present moment. But that’s a very different way of thinking than I was used to. I used to think of my lifetime as a line segment from birth to death. The present moment was a single point on that line moving slowly forward. The past was the part of the line behind that point, and the future was the part ahead of it. After reading The Power of Now, I stopped thinking of my life in this way. I finally understood that this model was extremely disempowering.
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The Power of Now taught me that there is no line segment. The point is all there is. The past and the future are illusions. They only exist to the degree we focus our attention on them right now. We create the past and the future by imagining them in the present. But we don’t even exist outside the Now.
This might seem like just a semantic difference, perhaps even an erroneous one, but it was a radical new way of thinking for me, and I was eager to test it. As I grasped the idea that nothing exists outside this present moment, I turned my overall life strategy upside down.Â
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I understood that if I am to experience anything in life, I must create it in this moment. It must exist in some form right now, or it doesn’t exist at all. So the idea of creating freedom and wealth in the future by constraining myself in the present was nothing but a fool’s errand. That future would never arrive as long as I was creating confinement and scarcity in the here and now.
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The future is certainly a convenient mental construct, but I found that projecting too much of what I wanted into my future was hurting the enjoyment of my present. What’s the point of working to create a future of joy and freedom if my present reality is just the opposite? If I wanted freedom and wealth in the future, I had to seed its creation right here, right now. The only power I have to create anything is here in the present. I adopted the mindset, “If it doesn’t exist in some form right now, it never will exist.â€
This shift in thinking produced a significant shift in my priorities.Â
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I began focusing more of my energy on improving the quality of my present reality instead of projecting all those improvements into the realm of someday. I started asking questions like, “How can I experience more joy in this very moment?â€I started taking more time off. I began doing more things I enjoyed, such as exercising, reading, meditating, and spending time with my wife. I became less stingy with my cash and began spending it more liberally when the situation warranted.
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I was initially concerned that focusing too much on the present moment would make me shortsighted. But my experience has been just the opposite. I’m still able to make plans for the future and work on long-term goals. In the past I would set goals because I believed that achieving those goals would increase my happiness. But now the flow goes in reverse. Today I set goals to increase my expression of the happiness I’m already enjoying.
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The big irony is that my future is in much better shape even though I focus most of my attention on the present. By making my present reality as enjoyable as possible, my motivation has just been soaring. I’m working from a state of joy instead of a feeling of obligation. I write because I enjoy writing, not because I feel I must keep writing in order to make money. If I don’t feel like writing, I don’t write. Whenever I feel like taking several days off, I do that.
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I’ve noticed that the happier I feel, the less attached I am to outcomes. Instead of trying to acquire money, possessions, or other externalities, my focus has shifted to self-expression. I have a burning desire to create. Instead of having a craving to eat, it’s like I have a craving to cook. But of course by focusing on expressing instead of acquiring, I end up doing the very things that enable me to easily acquire whatever I want. Really I’m just doing what I love most.
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How do you feel about your life right this moment? Are you gushingly positive and overflowing with passion?
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Or do you find yourself stuck in the same situation I was in several years ago, sacrificing your present happiness for the hope of a better tomorrow? How is that strategy working for you? Are you becoming significantly happier and more fulfilled with each passing year? Or are you just running on a treadmill while trying to convince yourself that someday things will be better?
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There is no someday, you know. There is only right now. If your current life path isn’t a joyful one, turn around and take a different path. Other people will probably whine about your decision — no one on the treadmill of unhappiness likes being reminded that it’s possible to get off at any time. But I’ll tell you that a few years later, those same people will be asking you for help to make the same choice, especially when they see how disgustingly happy you are.
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