The Power of Now – Simple Lessons

“When you read a good book through the second time, you don’t see something in it you didn’t see before, you see something in yourself that wasn’t there before.”

- quote by Henry Drummond

There are some quotes that really strike you to the core, and of course for each person, it is something different. When I happened across the one above, three years ago, it stuck in my mind like no other quote. That’s why you won’t generally hear me say that a book is terrible. In my mind, there is almost always one truly golden nugget in every book. But it may be that you are unable to appreciate that precious stone when you see it the first time. Such was the case for me when I happened across Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now five years ago.

I tried to pick it up once, from the library and I got about thirty pages in before giving up on it. I wasn’t ready to challenge all my hopes and dreams, to abandon all my worldly possessions, and I felt at the time that this was the message the author was trying to push forward. Of course that message was just me reading myself into the book, based on my circumstances at the time. I was trying to build a budding career, I was about to get married and I was buying up homes around my city in the hopes of living the lap of luxury as I aged. I felt the book challenged me in ways that I did not want to be challenged at the time and so I put the book down.

Then sometime last year the Eckhart Tolle phenomenon picked up tremendous momentum thanks to his most famous American fan, Oprah Winfrey. It got so that you were nearly assaulted at the entrance of every bookstore with Tolle’s books. And so I resisted again, as a great part of me likes to ride against popular flow and despite the many good things that Oprah does for her community, I’m not really a fan.

Now that I am in 2009 and entering a more introspective part of my life, where I am, rather publicly on this blog, investigating every area of my life to decide what’s truly important for me, I find myself gravitating toward his most famous book again. Earlier in the year I saw him gracing the cover of Science of Mind magazine, with an interview inside. After reading it, my intent is to put The Power of Now into my reading queue. I am currently reading an Alexander Megre book, Who Are We? (The Ringing Cedars, Book 5), and wanted to get to a Twyla Tharp book next, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, but hopefully soon, I will get to the Tolle book.

I found the Science of Mind article interesting. It illustrates Tolle’s defining moment, when at age 29, in a fit of despair as a post-graduate student at Cambridge, he found his moment of clarity when a voice in his head said, “resist nothing.” This was after a particularly tormented night in which he pondered suicide over and over again.

From this point of awakening he lost all interest in worldly possession and dropped out of school. He spent the next two years basically sitting on a park bench and acting as a spiritual advisor to anyone who sought him.

Even as I wrote that paragraph, I felt that twinge again as if I was being challenged for my ready-participation in consumerism. This is the constant battle inside of me where I yearn for a peaceful, Zen existence, but to date, have failed to consistently apply the steps to bring me to that point. The article actually lost me there when I read it three weeks ago. But I picked it up again last night, and I am very pleased I did as the next few points have caused me to reconsider my feelings on Tolle’s philosophy.

This is extremely empowering to me. Being “fit” is now. Being “organized” is now. Being “financially savvy” is now. And so, this helps drive my goals. For me, I decide now to go do my 5-10 minutes of Lumberjack Yoga. In fact, I just took a break from writing this to do that. For me, I will choose folowing my Butterfly Effect task list and get it done now. It is a conscious attempt to embrace this moment, and if that is all I ever get out of Eckhart Tolle, then I think that I have unearthed a very precious, very personal, golden nugget.

Namaste,

- Charley