The Power of Now

by Eckhart Tolle

A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

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The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle Audio Book CD

Brand New (still shrink wrapped):  7.5 hours   7 CDs UNABRIDGED

The Power of Now has been widely recognized as one of the most influential spiritual books of our time. A #1 New York Times bestseller, it has been translated into over 30 languages. The book has helped countless people around the globe awaken to the spiritual dimension in their lives, find inner peace, increased joy and more harmonious relationships

To make the journey into The Power of Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the beginning of the first chapter we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where one breathes a lighter air, the air of the spiritual. Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle offers simple language and a question and answer format to guide us. The words themselves are the signposts.

For many of us there are new discoveries to be made along the way: we are not our mind; we can find our way out of psychological pain; authentic human power is found by surrendering to the Now. We also find out that the body is actually one of the keys to entry into a state of inner peace, as are the silence and space all around us. Indeed, access is everywhere available. These access points, or portals, can all be used to bring us into the Now, the present moment, where problems do not exist. It is here we find our joy and are able to embrace our true selves. It is here we discover that we are already complete and perfect.

Many of us will find that our biggest obstacle to this realization is our relationships, especially our intimate relationships. But again, we are in new territory and all is not what it had seemed before. We come to see that our relationships are yet another doorway into spiritual enlightenment if we use them wisely, meaning if we use them to become more conscious and therefore more loving human beings. The result? Real communion between self and others.

If we are able to be fully present and take each step in the Now; if we are able to feel the reality of such things as the inner-body, surrender, forgiveness, and the Unmanifested, we will be opening ourselves to the transforming experience of The Power of Now.

Extract from The Power of Now:

Start listening to the voice in your head. Pay particular into the body, the stronger your immune system becomes. attention to any repetitive thought patterns. Don't judge It's as if every cell awakens. It is also a potent form of self-what you hear. Don't take your thoughts too seriously. healing. When you are unoccupied for a few minutes and When you listen, you are aware not only of the thought, but especially last thing at night and first thing in the morning, of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of "flood" your body with consciousness. Lie flat on your back. consciousness has come in. The thought then loses its power Close your eyes. Choose different parts of your body to focus over you and quickly subsides. When the thought subsides, your attention on briefly at first: hands, feet, arms, legs, abdomen, chest, head ... Feel the life energy inside those parts as intensely as you can. Stay with each part for about 15 seconds. Then let your attention run through the body a like a wave a few times, from feet to head and back again.

About the Author Eckhart Tolle:

Eckhart Tolle is emerging as one of the most original and inspiring spiritual teachers of our time. He travels and teaches throughout the world.

Eckhart is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition, but excludes none. His profound yet simple and practical teachings have helped thousands of people find inner peace and greater fulfillment in their lives. At the core of his teachings lies the transformation of individual and collective human consciousness - a global spiritual awakening.

Life was not always so settled – or salubrious – for this man born Ulrich Tolle in Dortmund, Germany, in 1948 (He changed his name to Eckhart in honour of the 14th century German spiritual leader, Meister Eckhart.) At the age of 13, he moved with his father to Spain, but refused all formal education because of what he claimed was the "hostile environment". He still managed as an adult student to graduate from the University of London and then complete research at Cambridge University in the field of literature, language and philosophy. That was in 1977, the same year he went from a suicidal depression to a profound awakening, one that would transform not just his own life, but the lives of millions of others. Eckhart Tolle has explained how anxiety had taken hold of him throughout much of his early life. "If it wasn't one thing, it was another," he says now. "Financial difficulties, difficulties with relations, unhappiness, sometimes loneliness ... there were always different reasons. Great fear about the future, about not making it in this world."So all these things seemed to be the cause of the depression, but I later realised that the depression was something to do with not so much what was happening outside in my life, but the structure of my mind."My mind was continuously creating thoughts that generated unhappiness. Thoughts about me. I was the centre of my life, as is the case for most people, and I was very much obsessed with myself, this mental image of who I am or who I should become. "It's the voice that most people have in their heads that they may not even be aware of because they're so identified with it. It's the continuous thought processes and in the centre of these thought processes is this imagined I with my possessions, my achievements, my successes, my failures, my ambitions, my fears, my problems, my past, my future.

"It is all mind activity that gives you asense of who you are, but it's always an uneasy sense of who one is. That is how the ego works. So one is never quite at ease with oneself, or if one is ... it's only for short periods and then the unease comes back. The unease can also easily become fear ... many kinds of negative emotions can arise [and] you live from this really artificially generated sense of self." All of Eckhart's egoic consciousness or false sense of self collapsed one night in England, not long after his 29th birthday. In his darkest moment, he had said to himself, "I cannot live with myself any longer" and it was then that he'd become aware of what a peculiar thought this actually was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the `self that ' cannot live with." As he explains at the beginning of The Power of Now, he was so stunned by these thoughts, his mind stopped and he felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. Gripped by fear, his body started shaking uncontrollably. He heard the words "resist nothing" and then he has no idea what happened next, only that he awoke to the sound of chirping birds."I felt deeply at peace," he tells me now in his even, tranquil tones, "although externally nothing had changed in my life. Everything was alive, fresh, beautiful. I actually realised later that I was fully living for the first time. I was fully in the present moment."
In 1995, at the age of 47, Eckhart was "called" from his hermit-like existence to the West Coast of America. "One day, I woke up and I suddenly realised 'I have to move'. There was a very strong pull, but I couldn't explain what I had to do there or why I had to go." He bided his time between Vancouver and California, where he knew barely a soul, and began to write The Power of Now. By 1999, barely two years after it was published, it had become one of the best-selling spiritual books of the modern age. Its authority lay in the simplicity of its language and the depth of its inquiry into the human condition."I often talk about the importance of finding some stillness inside yourself," he tells me. "Because what we call stillness is consciousness itself. The essence of who you are is not your past, it is not your thoughts, it is not your emotions, but a space in which all these things arise. A space in which a thought comes and goes, a sense perception comes and goes, an emotion comes and goes." Eckhart's words resonate deeply with Buddhist and Hindu scriptures, as well as the ancient mystical traditions of Judaism (Cabbalism), Christianity (Gnosticism) and Islam (Sufism). All of them speak in various ways of a timeless, formless inner space, a transcendental reality existing under the surface of things, out of which all life unfolds."This is the essence of spirituality," Eckhart says. "It is formless, or what Buddhism refers to as emptiness. Our essence is formless. Everything else is form. The world arises when consciousness takes on shapes and forms, thought forms and material forms." And how do you access this formless state, this stillness underneath the noise? I ask him. "There are various methods you can use as entry points into that state of consciousness," he replies
"Sometimes, people have that when they're out in nature. It's so beautiful that, for a moment, there's a stillness inside. Some people have it when they're engaged in a strenuous activity, like some sportsmen and women. Suddenly, there's a moment of intense aliveness and inner stillness. They have an expression for that in sport, which is 'in the zone', where something else takes over. An energy takes over. You're not thinking. You are just there as consciousness."

Eckhart Tolle is the author of The Power of Now, a #1 New York Times best-seller which has been widely recognized as one of the most influential spiritual books of our time. It has been translated into over 30 languages.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle Audio Book CD