Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.
The Power of Now takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journ
ey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light.
What’s enlightenment?
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super-human accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immesurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you.
It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.
[bluebox]Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as ‘the end of suffering.'[/bluebox]
Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death
Don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.
What is the greatest obstacle to experience Being?
Indentification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incesant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
Freeing yourself from your mind: Watching the thinker
You can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years.
When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises beyond the mind.
Enlightenment: Rising above thought
Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down.
This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction: You believe that you would cease to be if you stopped thinking.
Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant.
All true artists create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness
The mind is essentially a survial machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information–this is what is good at, but it is not at all creative.
All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight.
Complement The Power of Now with Eckhart Tolle on Stillness, where creativity and solutions to problems are found.