Our 46th prompt comes from Ms. M.K. She asks:
What is your take on “The Power of Now”? In addition to the above, you can speak on meditation, consciousness, presence and mindfulness. Thanks!
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Ms. M.K,
What a delightful question. I reread the book just to answer your question, and was taken back to how I felt after reading it. Now, though, that I’ve been practicing mindfulness and meditation (when I read it all this was new to me) my insights have matured. The sentiment of the book seems like such a foregone conclusion, and it feels like elementary reading.
The Power of Now is a book by Eckhart Tolle (his first book) that speaks to the benefits of being present and living in the moment as opposed to constantly dwelling on the past and worrying about the future. It speaks to the benefits of being, as opposed to letting the mind take over your existence. As opposed to waiting for happiness in the future, or running a highlight reel of the past over and over in your mind, you should live and rejoice in the now.
The book teaches us that we are not our minds, and tells us just how much of our identity is attached to our pain-body, which is brought into existence because of our identification with our past selves and their pain. It asks us to dissociate from ego, which both Jesus Christ and the Buddha said is an originator of suffering. The ego brings about our problems, and the solution is a loss of self, which both Christ and the Buddha spoke extensively about. I love how he mentions that all religious teachings at their heart bring us back to this point, and how he ties his learnings into those of Christ, seeing as most people in Kenya are Christian.
I love how he speaks about love as the result of tapping into the Unmanifested, and being at one with the source of life and being. Now that I’ve been practicing mindfulness and meditation for a while, these things seem basic, but I can remember the power they held when I first read the book. I think we get so caught up in the past and the future that we forget the beauty of our lives on a day to day basis. The fortune we have just to witness the world on a day to day basis. The plants and animals, our fellow human beings, and the interactions we get to have. The fact that just as we create suffering, we have the power to end it as well. By being conscious about how we occupy space. This is what mindfulness and meditation have brought into my life – awareness.
We all have incredible power, and we can tap into it to create joy for both ourselves and those around us. I hope more of us do.
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This post is part of a daily writing experiment that I’m running for a year. I’d love it if you took part! ?