The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Let's see, where do I begin?

Let me start with the first time I heard of Eckhart Tolle.  It might have been the same place you heard of him.  From the Oprah Show.  I saw the world wide study they were going to have and I hope you were not like me but I thought Oprah had jumped off the deep end.  I couldn't believe she was having this guy on her show who obviously wasn't getting his information from the Bible.  I wouldn't even consider hearing what he had to say and even for a very short time I stopped watching Oprah.

Lots of things happened between that time and January of this year.  In January, I decided I wanted to read The Power of Now.  As I have mentioned in other posts, I had the terrible vice of prejudging people before knowing the whole story and also taking other's opinions as gospel without finding out for myself what I thought. 

I started reading it and I couldn't put it done.  It is the best spiritual book I have read in a long time.  I do want to mention one other book that I think is excellent and holds a very close second to Tolle.  It is The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.

In my spiritually journey, when I was an adult I heard a man speak on dying to the flesh.  I had always wanted to know what this scripture meant - unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it produces much fruit. (paraphrased) I never really understood that until I heard about dying to the flesh.  The flesh nature being I, me, mine get all you can and can all you can get.  That made sense to me the flesh nature is the opposite of the nature of God.  So I started to apply the principles I learned from him and for the first time in my life I noticed my life was changing.  In my heart what would have normally been my response to a person or situation started to change.  Really miraculous.

In The Power of Now, Tolle talks about the ego which is the same thing as the flesh nature and he simply states that unless the ego is put down there is no advancement spiritually. I totally agree with him because that has been my own experience.  He makes it very easy to understand how we are manipulated by our egos and that our egos are not who we really are.  Stop and think about what you think about during the day.  We all think about the past or the future we do not live in the present moment. Peace comes from living in the present moment and not worrying about what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow.  It is a fight to keep your mind in the present moment because your ego wants you to live in the past or the future.  Just become aware of what I'm saying about your thoughts and you will see it.

It's a life changing book and he hits the nail on the head.