Book Review: Practicing The Power Of Now

1. Eckhart Tolle’s text, Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises, is a slender 142-page volume filled with practices which can lead the reader into Enlightenment. In this book review, I give some of the highlights: See: Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings ... - Amazon.com.

 2. In the first chapter, “Being and Enlightenment,” Tolle elucidates what Enlightenment is: For one’s awareness to be centered in the body, not the brain. The first step is to listen to the voices in your head. These are the product of the Ego and will keep you in darkness.

3. A key practice is given on page 25: “If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing your attention on the inner field of the body. Feel the body from within.” By connecting with the body, the mind stuff starts to loosen.

4. Chapter two, “The Origin of Fear,” shows that fear is largely a mind-created phantom. By disengaging from the story, one is free to be present. The idea here is we can shift into being at peace by focusing on the breath and by letting the thoughts float by.

5. To pick a bone with Tolle: There is no such that as “now.” Note for there to be a now implies a linear time in which there is a past and a future.  Packed into these terms are a host of unstated claims such as the past determines the present; time travel is not possible; mind projections into the “past” and to the “future” prove these projection exist. In any case, the term “now” is a slippery one and probably best avoided. Instead of saying the “Power of Now,” I prefer “The Power of connecting your awareness to God by being in touch with the body.” This is what Tolle means by “now” in his text: merging one’s presence or awareness with the body’s animating energy.

6. Since the body is animating energy which is being sourced by God, one can access God or Being by centering one’s awareness in the body. This is the key insight the Immortal will want to get from this text. When I meditate I feel my body vibrating at a higher frequency and hear sounds in the brain. By merging my awareness with the body and the sounds, then, I am activating a higher frequency level in the body.

7. In his third chapter, “Entering The Now,” Tolle offers practices on how to focus one’s attention on the body: “Observe the rhythm of your breathing; feel the air flowing in and out, feel the life energy inside your body. Allow everything to be, within and without. Allow the ‘isness’ of all things. Move deeply in the now” (page 40).

8. The reader needs to understand that these practices require hard work. The goal is to meditate for 1 hour per day. Start with 10 minutes by focusing on the breath and work from there.

9. As one awakens there will be “gaps” in which the “timeless state of consciousness” emerges and the nonsense of the endless chatter of ego brain ceases; when this occurs one will have left the ego brain for a few seconds and then returned to the brain’s awareness to report on the “gap.”  Tolle writes:
“When every cell of your body is so present that is feels vibrant with life, and when you can feel that life every moment as the joy of Being, then it can be said you are free from time. It represents the most profound transformation of consciousness that you can image” (page 45).

10. In chapter 5, “Beauty arises in the stillness of your presence,” Tolle gives two practices which will help wake up the body.

Practice 1: Connect with the Inner Body: “Can you feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body and gives vibrant life to every organ and cell? Can you feel it simultaneously in all parts of the body as a single field of energy?” (Page 60.)

Practice 2: Going Deeply Into the Body, pages 61-64. This practice will show the reader how he can shift his awareness with an awakened body. As Tolle writes: “The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body—to feel it at all times. This will rapidly deepen and transform your life. The more consciousness you direct to your inner body, the higher its vibrational frequency becomes, much like a light that grows brighter as you turn up the dimmer switch and so increase the flow of electricity. At this high energy level, negativity cannot affect you anymore, and you tend to attract new circumstances that reflect this higher frequency” (pages 64-65).

Note: These two practices are fundamental for the Immortal and thus I recommend any reader interested in being an Immortal to obtain this text.

 
11. In an insightful suggestion on inducing creativity, Tolle recommends that as one brainstorms an idea, that one shifts one’s attention to the body for a few minutes and then return to mind with some fresh energy. I have used this idea and it is quite useful (see page 68.)

12. “Dissolving the Pain-body” is the topic of chapter 6 in which the reader is given insights on how to deal with traumas which have lodged in the body. Note that nearly everyone who has had the misfortunate of attending a public school in the USA has been repeatedly traumatized and verbally assaulted for 12 years. Why females are forced to attend these zoo-like institutions is unfathomable. In any case, Tolle writes: “This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth. It’s the emotional pain-body.”

13. Illumination=Transformation. This equation summarizes Tolle’s insight into dissolving the traumas in the body: By merging one's awareness with the pain, one will transform it! This is quite an amazing insight as the natural tendency is to run away from pain. Yet, only by allowing your presence to unite with the pain can transformations occur. Tolle writes: “The pain-body is an energy field, almost like an entity, that has temporarily lodged in your inner space. It is life energy that has been trapped, energy that is no longer flowing” (page 84).

14. Theological aside: Jesus is the light and the animating energy in all things as Jesus noted, “Spilt a piece of wood—I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me” (Saying 77, The Gospel According to Thomas). In the same saying Jesus says, “I am the light  that is over all. I am the all. The all came forth out of me.” So we would be on solid grounds to refer to the animating energy in the body as being Jesus. Note that the practices recommended on the Thomas Immortality Project are designed to allow the body to vibrate at the Immortal Frequency. While the actual activation of this higher frequency occurs during meditation, the fuel for the fire is Jesus.

Summary: Practicing the Power of Now is workbook-like text filled with dozens of practices to guide the reader into Enlightenment. I view the practices as being very helpful and thus I would strongly recommend the seeker of Immortality to obtain this text.