In case you're not into spiritual stuff, I advice you to not read this review, you'll probably just think it's too weird. You've been warned!

Do you sometimes just read a book and it strikes you so strangely 'This was like written for me!' - that kind of feeling!
Of course, I knew I began my Journey a while ago, but I always felt like I needed someone's 'approval'. Because, I honestly felt like I am going nuts. The walls, the curtain, a book, light itself. Sometimes I SEE stuff like it's the first time I am seeing them.
Honestly, I always say, Yes, I am fine with myself! But, I don't think I am just yet. Firstly, I need to learn how to beat the thoughts! To stop them, so to say. The machine. It can't win!
I am you, you are me, we're one!
Journey still goes on..
Thank You E. T. I really enjoyed this book, thank You!

Es gibt ja schon lange viele Ratgeber für ein besseres Lebensgefühl. Gerade das bewusste Erleben des Moments wird oft erwähnt, das bewusste Wahrnehmen des Augenblicks, der inmitten des stressigen Alltags viel zu flüchtig dahingeht und uns die Zeit sozusagen davonläuft, ohne dass wir etwas davon tatsächlich spüren.

Das weiß man. Aber wie so oft wenn man weiß, dass etwas anderes besser wäre, hapert es an der Umsetzung.

Dieses Buch wurde mir einer lieben Freundin empfohlen. Nur deshalb hab ich es mir geholt, weil ich in dem überschwemmten Markt von "esoterischen Ratgebern" sehr kritisch gegenüberstehe.
Und ich kann nur sagen: das Lesen in diesem Buch war ein Akt der Befreiung.

Wie Eckhart Tolle beschreibt, was uns alle so sehr an unsere Probleme klammern lässt, ist nicht leicht zu verdauen. Man sollte Veränderungen gegenüber offen sein, aber wenn man viele Probleme mit sich herumträgt, sollte man auch Chancen nutzen die zeigen, wie man diese hinter sich lässt.
Viele Menschen leiden an dem ständigen Gedankenkarussell, was einfach nicht zur Ruhe kommt. Das Grübeln über die Vergangenheit, die Sorgen über die Zukunft, das alles beschäftigt die meisten - dabei sind diese Gedanken völlig bedeutungslos.
Ja, ich musste da auch erstmal schlucken. Aber was ist unsere Vergangenheit? Es sind Erinnerungen, nicht mehr. Sie haben uns geprägt, natürlich, aber wir können sie nicht ändern.
Und die Zukunft: eine Illusion. Denn egal welche Gedanken wir uns darüber machen, welche Luftschlösser wir bauen oder welche Schreckensszenarien wir uns vorstellen, wir werden nicht wissen, was morgen ist, oder in einem Jahr oder in 20.
Es ist tatsächlich sinnlos, darüber nachzudenken, weil alles, was wir tatsächlich bewusst erleben, ist die Gegenwart. Das Jetzt. Eine endlose Schleife des Augenblicks.

Eckhart Tolle hat sehr schön beschrieben, wie man sich von dem Verstand lösen kann, dieser Denkmaschine die uns ständig mit Problemen konfrontiert, die noch gar nicht da sind. Was natürlich nicht heißt, dass man nicht zur Tat schreiten sollte. Man kann Situationen entgehen, sie verändern - oder sie akzeptieren. Sie so nehmen wie sie sind, aber eben positiv.
Das heißt, wenn ich jetzt arbeiten muss, gehe ich nicht dorthin mit dem Gefühl, dass es mich nervt, sondern mit einer positiven Einstellung, das ich das, was ich mache, mit Freude tue. Ob das jetzt Arbeiten ist, putzen, im Stau stehen ... wenn ich es nicht ändern kann, ziehe ich etwas positives heraus. Dieses Gefühl ist eine große Erleichterung, zumindest für mich.

Dazu kommt das Besinnen bzw. das Bewusstwerden des inneren Lichts, das wir alle in uns tragen. Ja das hört sich auch wieder sehr esoterisch an. Aber für mich ist schon lange klar, dass wir alle dieselbe Energie ins uns tragen. Die Lebensenergie, das Licht, manche nennen es Gott - wie auch immer, an Worten sollte man sich nicht festhalten. Wir alle sind aus Sternenstaub und wir alle sind miteinander verbunden.
Und wenn man das wiederfindet, sich dessen bewusst wird, kann man zwar traurig sein, wütend, freudig, aber man weiß, dass alles in Veränderung begriffen ist. Während man in sich diesen Ruhepol hat. Diesen inneren Frieden, der immer da ist, auch wenn von außen schwierige Situationen oder Menschen auf einen treffen, die man aber annimmt und viel besser damit umgehen kann. Weil man auf diesen Ruhepol in sich zurückgreifen kann.

Ich kann das natürlich nicht so gut beschreiben und ich weiß, das viele damit nichts anfangen können. Aber es beinhaltet eine tiefe Gelassenheit, die hilft, mit allen Widrigkeiten auf eine Art umzugehen, die mich nicht jedes Mal in ein bodenloses Loch fallen lässt, sondern mir hilft, es anzunehmen und daran zu arbeiten. An mir und meiner Einstellung.
Unser "Glück" oder unsere Zufriedenheit von äußeren Umständen abhängig zu machen ist nie ein guter Weg. Da werden wir immer scheitern oder nur kurzweilig Glück verspüren. Wir selbst haben die Kraft, das Gute in uns zu spüren, das zufriedene Gefühl, das positive, die Energie - und wenn wir uns dessen bewusst sind, kann uns "von außen" nichts mehr so erschüttern.

Für mich jedenfalls war es eine Erinnerung an vieles, was ich schon wusste, aber im Alltag wieder vergraben hatte und auch eine Entdeckung von neuen Möglichkeiten, mit mir selbst und meinem Leben friedvoller umzugehen.

يكي از كتابهاي روانشناسي و پر فروش بوده كه با معرفي يكي از دوستان شروع به خواندنش كردم،كمي طولاني ست و مطالب به نظر مي آيد تكرار مي شوند،كتاب بصورت پرسش و پاسخ است و خلاصه همانطور كه از اسم كتاب بر مي آيد فكر كردن به لحظه حال و خروج از گذشته و آينده است،نويسنده بنا بر استدلالهايي كه در طول كتاب مي كند سعي دارد بفهماند كه زندگي در زمان حال را در پيش بگيريد ،تمام مشكلات و ناراحتي هاي دروني به علت حسرت گذشته را خوردن و ترس از اينده است.كتاب خوب و مفيدي ست اگر حوصله خواندنش را داشته باشيد.البته ترجمه نسبتا خوب مسيحا برزگر هم انگيزه خوبي است،
كتاب ديگري هم با عنوان تمرين نيروي حال از همين نويسنده در ادامه همين كتاب منتشر شده است كه يكسري تمرينات عملي براي استفاده بيشتر از نيروي حال است.

Kitaptan notlar:

Mutsuzluğun birincil sebebi içinde bulunulan durum değil, sizin bu durum hakkındaki düşüncelerinizdir

Sürekli hayat şartlarınızı iyileştirmeye çalışarak huzuru bulamazsınız

Hiçbir şey şimdinin dışında var olmaz

Her nerede bulunuyorsanız, tamamen orada olun.

Soluk alıp verişinizin farkında olun. Havanın bedeninize girip çıkışını hissedin.

Geçmiş, şimdiki zaman üzerinde en ufak bir güç sahibi değildir.
- Sıradan kişisel gelişim kitaplarında değil, iç açıcı gerçekleri su yüzüne çıkaran bir kitaptır. Şimdiyi hatırlamak isteyenler için okunması gerekilen bir eser.
- Kitap dolu akşamlar :)

This is an awful, awful book. Sorry, there's no other way of putting it. And I can hear people saying already "but it makes me feel better".
Whatever makes you feel in control, I guess. But sometimes things which make us feel better aren’t necessarily true or even good for us. Tolle and others like him are squarely in the camp of woo (as the great Randi would say!). They promote a watered down and ultimately meaningless new-age theology. (And of course Oprah loves him.) I expected more, but he sits right in there with Deepak Chopra as a prime examples of other equally useless anti-science hokum. I don’t usually torture myself with such media excretions.

Tolle is kind of cultish. Worse, he uses scare tactics stating we’re all in some kind of race to obliterate the human ego and the “pain-body” before they destroy the earth. The ‘ticking clock’ once again…horse manure. We are our egos. We hold memories of pain for a good reason–to avoid repeating mistakes. That's how we evolved from our ape ancestors. And all his arguments fall down in exactly the same way as every other new-age guru I've ever read with the classic '3 card trick' as a means of argument:

1. "The Higher Level Card" (i.e. sorry, it's just over your head). Sorry, but you're just not clever enough to realise Eckhart is cleverer than you, because you're on a lower (less divine/lower psychic vibration) level.
2. "The Projection Card" (i.e., I know you are, but what am I?). By criticising Eckhart, you are really just criticising yourself, because any problem you see in Eckhart/the world at large is just a projection of a problem in yourself.
3. "The Skillful Means Card" (i.e., it's all your own fault, idiot!). The most potent card of all. It's not abuse; it's not pathetic or ridiculous or wrong; it's a crazy to wise teaching method. So when Eckhart calls you an idiot, it's not because he's an pompous idiot, it's because you have a idiot-complex that you need to evolve past, and he's here to help you see that!

It's just not healthy to read books like this. This dualistic zen-style thinking just doesn't hold water in the real world. Then there's the Eckhart Tolle “walk of death.” Allegedly after listening to Tolle’s Power of Now tapes repeatedly, Brianna Wilkins walked miles without warm clothing (thinking only of the present moment, I’m sure) in the middle of winter and…”Now,” she’s dead.

Humans are not broken, they're mostly just confused. We may not know ourselves so well, but we’re operating exactly as nature intended. We’re greedy, competitive, with a short attention span, seeking instant gratification. But we’re also kind, long-suffering, generous, wise, and empathetic–with the two camps always in conflict within each of us. Solutions to human problems will come from realist introspection, critical thinking, rationality and acknowledging of the darkness, e.g. more rationality and less mysticism. We can start that process right here, right now–with our egos and pain-memories intact–not in some future idealised fantasy world. Change won’t come overnight but occurs through an evolutionary process. That’s what else ticks me off about the Tolle: he dresses it up in the conceit of spirituality, but actually panders to the very ordinary materialistic drive towards the “quick fix,” the effortless “new you.” Well, you don’t get something for nothing. Or much for £10! :)

Apologies if this is ranty - but this was a terrible, self-absorbed, arrogant, pompous book. Avoid.

'The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you'.

Very split mix of reviews for this book on here. Personally I found it one of the best wellbeing books from the self-help genre I've read so far. I'd recommend to anyone no matter what your situation is.

As always with these type of books it's important to keep an open mind and to take what you need from it. Ironically in this instance, by not overthinking it.

It got quite repetitive come the end, and I skim-read some sections to do with religious aspects (or at least susbistuted God/Jesus for nature and/or more spiritual related stuff).

Some insightful theories presented by Tolle which can be applied to everyday life. And help massively in reducing overthinking, worry, irritability etc.

Standouts:

- The now is all we have, and all we ever will have. The past and future do not exist.

- Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.

- We derive our sense of self from the content and activity of our minds. And we form those identities based on personal and cultural conditioning, usually once we enter the 'systems' of education, increased sociability and exposure to external influences as we age. This is malleable. We can change it all. It's not fixed.

- Being present is a highly enlightening and powerful state. It is to sit within oneself, and provides pure and natural joy. Pleasure will not arrive from external sources such as objects, alcohol, drugs, consumerism etc.

Pure Being makes for bad writing.

In terms of content: Tolle has useful reminders about living within the present and within the body. Seriously, as snarky as I may be, I'll be using these tactics on a daily basis. But to move from there to the irrefutable and universal Truth for All is embarrassing.

When Tolle escapes from his realm of competence, we suddenly enter a world where death isn't real (a convenient conclusion for a mortal), and alterity can be ignored since we're all One. He begins a promising discussion of the importance of the body, condemning the body-deniers, but his "inner body" bullshit is just a more fundamental denial of the body. His ideas are thick with gender essentialism and a lack of respect for people with different experiences and ways of being in the world (AKA, one white man tells everyone in the world what their REAL problem is, and sells a book that will fix it).

I know, I know, I'm just not enlightened yet.

All I can say is that this is a life-changing book! Truly awesome!

Highly recommended to those who would like to improve the quality of their lives by realizing their “Being” through dwelling in “Now”. The past is past and the future is not here, and may not ever come.

This one is a timeless masterpiece that has become a spiritual classic.

“You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.”

“The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.”

“Emotions arise in the place where your mind and body meet.”

In this book, the author offers a clear and concise guide to achieving spiritual enlightenment by living in the present moment.

The book's central theme revolves around the idea that the present moment is all we have and that it is essential to living in the present to find true happiness and fulfilment. Tolle's writing style is simple, yet profound, and his insights are both practical and inspiring. He uses a combination of personal anecdotes, quotes from spiritual texts, and simple exercises to guide readers towards a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

One of the things that make "The Power of Now" such a valuable resource is that it is a book that can be read and re-read many times. Each time you read it, you will gain a new insight or perspective that you may have missed before. This is a testament to Tolle's mastery of the subject matter and his ability to convey complex spiritual concepts in a way that is accessible to all readers.

All in all, "The Power of Now" is a book that deserves to be read by anyone seeking to find greater meaning and purpose in their life. It is a spiritual book full of sage advice that can help you to live a more fulfilling and authentic life. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to deepen their spiritual practice or gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

n  You might like to check out more similar books here.n

It is not by accident how this book went to become one of the most influential writings on spirituality, where it holds a high and important position among its shelves.
What is most strange and interesting is the way that the writer became "enlightened" or how he realized the core of the philosophy of "The Power of Now", an odd way and lousy circumstances, when someone is so desperate from life that you no longer care...
The whole secret and the main idea is how to concentrate and enjoy and live the moment, this exact moment, and from this moment be able to feel our being or the "Unmanifest", from the Now which is kind of infinite or boundless everyone can get the idea, or technically speaking by the language of the book; the way to "no ideas" and no "thinking" and fly out of the control of the mind....
Even if one does not understand or believe in the main theme, how to harness the Now, there are many other stories and things to do, or not do, that are by themselves amazing ideas, and there are many answers that the writer answers that are incredibly unique and flow to the same main philosophy, a lot of them are totally unconventional and prove that solutions to many problems of life are as easy as just turning around from them or closing your eyes.

There is a point in our lives when we say enough is enough. This is what this book is about. In one of his greatest works Eckhart Tolle teaches us the real meaning of spirituality. He teaches us the importance of the present moment. Through the recognition of the ego he makes us aware of how it destroys our lives. I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for the real meaning of their lives and to anyone who is sick and tired of the usual thing.

The first time I encountered this book was when Oprah was introducing her book club selection, a new earth. I heard her mention this and while I was searching in the online catalog of our school library here in the Philippines I found it available for borrowing. So I immediately read it in the course of five days. After reading it the first time I understood its message intellectually. This was the reason why I didn't apply it in my life. But a few days ago I started having panic attacks and I was on the verge of suicide. I was so frustrated because I made a wrong decision in shifting my courses here in my school. I was so depressed because I didn't really know what I wanted with my life. It seems that the world is so full of shit. When this became worse I consulted our school counselor. However it seems that it is not enough. So without any real reason at all I started watching Oprah's videos about A New Earth and I remembered this book. I borrowed it again yesterday and just awhile ago I finished reading it. Then I began to understand it not on the level of the mind but at the level of the spirit. And without incident I became enlightened. I am still starting to feel its benefits at this moment. I started accepting what is rather than identifying myself with the ego. I can't say that I'm happy after reading this book like some "self-help" books would like you to be. But I can say that I am at peace because I aware of the workings of the ego and not identified with it.
So if you've had enough of the madness of this world I definitely recommend this book. But don't just understand it, apply it.

“I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.”

Let me start this off by saying that I don’t think this book is for everyone, not in the sense that it’s difficult to comprehend if you’re new to spirituality. Just that not everyone is meant to or willing to delve deep into their inner psyche either because of religious reasons or simply because they’re not ready yet. The way I reviewed this was by adding an excerpt of the book and then my own beliefs of how I view the guidance of Tolle and spirituality in general.

“I love the Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as the end of suffering.”

I don’t believe we came on this earth to fully cease any and all suffering. You can be in a state of enlightened awareness and still feel things instead of detaching from them. Though, I do agree that with higher consciousness comes some form of detachment from trauma and loss. Just not necessarily unadulterated numbness. On a personal level, I have experienced complete detachment following the last significant negative event in my life and while there is peace, I couldn’t shake the sentiment off that it is entirely wrong to not feel any emotions. How I dealt with situations before recently was feeling my emotions as they came and then letting them go. The way I can describe detachment is by seeing everything happening around you like you’re outside of a fishball and everything else is inside. You observe, you offer comfort, you become a rock but don’t feel, don’t cry, don’t suffer. It is essentially what he later depicts as alchemy i.e. transmuting past-pain by not being taken over by it, or in this case current-pain.

In my opinion, ceasing to suffer is not the point or a necessity to be enlightened. It’s dealing with the pain, the trauma, everything that comes with each person’s existence in all their lifetimes and overcoming it and moving forward. Existing in the now, as he later explains, instead of bringing the past or future into the present moment.

“You are not your mind”

I agree with Tolle that the statement of Descartes “I think, therefore I am”, is not accurate as the higher self is beyond any thought process and ego.

“It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.”

“You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don’t even know that you are its slave. It’s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity the thinker.”

“The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, “become you”, and live through you... The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken... Watching it is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.”

To add to these excerpts, you need to be cautious of what is and isn’t yours. What you should accept and what to reject as foreign. We are bombarded on a daily basis with external stimuli, therefore, you need to know yourself immensely, in order for you to recognise when something doesn’t coincide with your real self.

Two years ago I wouldn’t be able to even begin to comprehend the pain-body and before this book I really believed ignorance was bliss, to the despair and hopelessness of experiencing it.

I wanted to touch on acceptance and how it is believed in the spiritual community that you need to surrender to whatever you go through in each lifetime. Before I read this, I personally believed in the inevitability of everything and in our inability to do anything about it but not in simply taking shots and initially accepting them like it’s nothing. To clarify I’m talking about the initial phase of things happening because eventually I did believe in acceptance and moving forward. One could argue that anything and everything we go through here is inconsequential to the bigger picture, to our higher self and ascension to it. And I was in agreement, but didn’t think that meant accepting what the path entails without any resistance as the preferable course of action. But then this happened and it just clicked:

“Accept then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy.”

The ironic part is that I did surrender unconsciously the past year but it was out of bitterness, not true acceptance.

Some excerpts that I connected with the most:

“How is always more important than what. See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it. Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents... When you act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love even the most simple action.”

“Are you a habitual waiter? How much of your life do you spend waiting?... Large-scale waiting is waiting for the next vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly meaningful relationship, for success, to make money, to be important, to become enlightened. It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”

“Your task is not to search for love but to find a portal through which love can enter.”

The way i see this, is through stillness of mind, finding self (not ego-self) love, which is the gateway for every other form of love.

“Every portal is a portal of death, the death of the false self. When you go through it, you cease to derive your identity from your psychological mind-made form. You then realize that death is an illusion, just as your identification with form was an illusion. The end of illusion that’s all that death is. It is painful only as long as you cling to illusion.”

The death of the ego and realignment with the true self. Everything in this 3D world is an illusion including death itself as it is not the end of existence of the higher self. Death is simply a transition.

“The light is too painful for someone who wants to remain in darkness.”

“You are that ocean and, of course, you are also a ripple, but a ripple that has realized its true identity as the ocean...”

“The Buddha taught that even your happiness is dukkha a Pali word meaning suffering or unsatisfactoriness. It is inseparable from its opposite. This means that your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one. Only the illusion of time separates them.”

“At the level of Being, all suffering is recognized as an illusion. Suffering is due to identification with form.”

I do agree that suffering is an illusion, just like everything attached in this 3D world is, however, as long as we’re in a loop here, I believe it is part of the human experience. It’s the transmutation of suffering that reconnects each person to their higher self.

“In Taoism, there is a term called wu wei, which is usually translated as actionless activity or sitting quietly doing nothing... The real doing nothing implies inner nonresistance and intense alertness.”

“It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? None. You are not even there.”

This is like Tolle later explained not to be confused with not taking responsibility of your actions or facing the consequences. Instead to recognise and take control over the pain-body.

To sum up, I could have added more of my own experiences with spirituality but expressed what I felt was necessary to expand what has already being said. There is so much misinformation out there that I found this book a breath of fresh air and incredibly healing as well. It singlehandedly made me view my past as mere facts rather than with avoidance because of deep-rooted pain. I related to a lot of things, ones that are too long and continuous for me to put here in detail but I will briefly name them; the gap of “no-mind”, the ego-based venture of not living in the now and projecting either your past or future in the present moment, observing the pain-body. But it was full of realisations too, like how time is an illusion (never fully grasped this before) and how if most of your doing is just a means to an end you are confined by time leading to the ego being obsessed with the future as an escape from the unsatisfactory present. The non-attachment to the fruit of your action — “consecrated action”.

The best way to describe this book is that of a reawakening or a complete awakening of things I had learned in the past and things I discovered and experienced on my own while taking a long break from the spiritual community. It’s funny how you shed so many layers of ignorance when you’re not actively trying to find the truth. But like Tolle said, “if you are trapped in a nightmare you will probably be more strongly motivated to awaken than someone who is just caught in the ups and downs of an ordinary dream”. I’m going to finish this review with a quote: “The world, too, continues to exist for you, but it will not bind you anymore. Hence, the ultimate purpose of the world lies not within the world but in transcendence of the world... You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.”