Rating: Summary: Read It Review: Eckhart's methods stitch together the lessons of the sages into a tangible experience. Read this book!
Rating: Summary: Superb! Review: If there was only one book i could read for the rest of my life, this would be it! Tolle speaks to the "knower" behind the knowing. Read it and experience it for yourself....
Rating: Summary: Not for people who want to make and keep life complex. Review: Cuts to the bottom line in where humanity is evolving to. Most people will have resistance to its message for it offers such a profound but simple gameplan that the mind will struggle with it because there is nothing for the mind to do! The books gameplan is to go beyond mind to "all that is" which instanly puts a human being in connection to their 'Being'which is beyond the understanding of the human mind. This is done simply by eliminating time - by Being in the now.
Rating: Summary: Truly transformational. Review: This book is very easy to read. The approach is simple and direct approach, yet conveys a great depth of meaning. This is the kind of book that is best read slowly to savour all that has come before.
Rating: Summary: A clear and practical explanation of the spiritual journey. Review: This book is much more than words. I actually experienced the energy behind words as I read. It is quite an extrordinary book, and all the people I know who have read it were profoundly moved. This is especially interesting as the book promises neither fame nor fortune. It only points the way to freedom, a state beyond the madness of the mind.
Rating: Summary: Absolute truth, answers and awakening for humanity Review: The Power of NOW is a deeply profound book, one the few that has greatly impacted my life. Eckhart Tolle brings us the depth of wisdom from his own spiritual awakening, and serves to provide us all with the tools to move beyond pain and suffering, into personal freedom. I HIGHLY recommend this book as one of the few out there that will genuinely help you to transform your life. This book clearly helped me do just that. It is an astonishing read, and will surely bring you much in the way of enlightenment and understanding.
Rating: Summary: Don't Climb the Signpost Review: Tolle's book is an important one... a much needed reminder that is too easy to forget. All too often people can pass entire lifetimes 'missing the moment.' One can, like the worst type of junkie, become so comfortable with-and so used to-anxiety, worry, and procrastination that to simply experience tranquility in the present becomes an impossibility. For such people, the simple and inspirational teachings that The Power of Now details can incite a revolution in one's experience of being alive. That being said, though, this book possesses flaws and confusions that must be sifted through using a keen sense of criticism (yes, this too, is an important faculty of the healthy human being).First of all, becoming present is a practice-not a realization. I'm not sure Tolle makes this clear. Like any 'new thing' the appreciation of the present moment can seem novel and exciting but if one doesn't make it a practice and use discipline to habitualize the practice, then one will have merely another gimmick, a spiritual toy to play with for a while and then put aside. The reason why all the schools of enlightenment require masters and students and instills its practitioners with discipline and a set of methods is because nothing in life comes all at once but must be cultivated with care over a period of time. Because of this truth, I genuinely doubt Tolle's claim that after his midnight awakening he was-all-at-once-transformed, never to require further training or practice. The experience he describes at the beginning of the book might just as well be labeled a psychotic break as a religious experience. Either way, the genuine appreciation of the moment can neither be totally 'on' nor totally 'off.' It is a variable experience that can be developed but will always remain part of the organic experience of being alive. Be wary of those who seem to show no anger, no sadness, no flaw... such people are usually very good actors and nothing more. Spend time with such people, in different types of contexts, to reveal the true human being. No unidimensional personality can exist in reality. We are always part of our context and environment and no matter our training or character can be expected to occasionally fall short of others' expectations. A guide to enlightenment, then, should teach us that enlightenment is neither a great distance away nor too near. It is thoughtful experience revealed through action and word. I have seen car mechanics who are enlightened beings when they work on cars but atrocious when with their families. I have met novelists who convey all the wisdom in the world through a pen but seem haughty and fractured in normal human conversation. And I have met spiritual 'masters' who secretly creep away to have sex for the sixth time in a day or to check their stocks on the internet. Enlightenment is a myth, and some people treat it like a commodity to purchase or sell. To live well requires the experience of the present-often-but not all the time and in all situations. Joseph Campbell once expressed the opinion that the type of enlightenment we have become familiar with is unique to a conception of self that was once fairly common in Asia. The type of self most moderns live by, especially we very 'special' Westerners with our love for 'Individuality' and 'Self-Expression,' excludes the possibility of such an experience. Perhaps it is time, then, we drop this idea and redefine what enlightenment should mean now-and to people like us. Use this book as a pointer and compass, not as a map. The Buddha said it best, Be Lamps Unto Yourselves. I would add-and don't hide from the dark when it comes.
Rating: Summary: Good Concepts Review: This book really drove the point home about living in the Now. I listened to the book on tape, and some of the things that the author said were difficult for me to understand, because I don't think I've heard them before. I wasn't familiar with alot of the terms he used. But the parts I did understand, I found very interesting.
I think if you are new to these concepts you might have a hard time. But there is still plenty in the book that the beginner can understand and use.
Rating: Summary: . . .Not A Keeper For Me Review: My late husband and I bought this book after hearing so much about it through spiritual channels. He liked it, as he was always open and receptive to anything that talked of Truth. I was disappointed in it. Although I can certainly relate to the 'Now' as being the only power, because God is the only 'Power' and God is certainly in the 'Now', I found it somewhat repetitive. Once I grasped what he was saying, the rest became boring as I realized I already knew what he was talking about so why go further?
I did not find it 'spiritual' but rather psychological in its deliverance of, what seemed to me, overcoming one power with another. Also, Tolle writes a lot about pain, which seems like the mind wants to stay on that word and have it etched rather than on the opposite one of 'health' or 'well-being' or God. Now I know a lot of people have pain in their lives and this is a very real word to eliminate or 'overcome' with the power of 'now', but I think he emphasized the word 'pain' too much. For those who use affirmations as a way of overcoming negatives, this book would not have done it for me, and it may not for you either. I really don't know how the book got to be so popular. Tolle must have had a good advertising campaign to get it off the ground and into people's homes through promotion.
It may be a good book for those starting on a spiritual journey or for those who are not quite there yet, or as a complement to other spiritual books in one's library, but it didn't appeal to me as a book worthy of holding on to.
Gail Gupton, Author, 'The 31-Day Diet of Spiritual Enlightenment'
Rating: Summary: Very good, but... Review: Are "you here now"? So lets go!
First I have to say that the message itself is good, very good. After all, in a world like the one we are now, any message that can bring people some contentment has certainly some value, no matter the name attached to its label. Mr Tolle seems to have had a spiritual experience that has transformed his being, therefore his life, and like many have said before me, it sounds like a true and sincere experience. The first thing to ask is: Does that "happen" to everybody? And although his view is that "enlightment" is happening now, in this present moment, many have also noticed that although the promisse is inspiring, the facts are not so. And is not because "my mind is in the way", it is simply because enlightment does not have a rule, or a "manual", so to speak. That is what makes it so miraculous, so unique, so searched for. If it could be learned in a book, any book, the world would certainly be different. This is not an advice to not read the book, quite the opposite, I really enjoyed, was inspired by many passages, and even the fact that it is very repetitive did not seen to diminish the value of "pointing" to a different reality.
For some (more intelectual people) there are inquestionable falacies in the book (or in any spiritual message, for that matter), which to me again just mean that we have to be careful when saying that any book "tells the truth". For myself the "System" that I have chosen and has being quite miraculous and transformative, because has that emotional energy (like Mr Tolle) and some intelectual ground as well, is the Fourth Way teaching, based on Mr Gurdjieff and Mr Ouspensky methods. But as you can verify, that does not mean that I have to read "only books" writen by or in the line of thought of that particular way of "aproaching" the miraculous. Anything that can help give me a little "push" towards a more integrated life experience, with or withouth the "mind" will certainly have a space in my bookshelf. Mr Tolle works certainly will be there.
Others books that have had the same influence on my journey:
Fragments of an unknown teaching - In search of the miracuolous - By P.D. Ouspensky
Self Remenbering - By Robert Earl Burton
I AM THAT - by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Creating a Soul - By Girard Haven
The Theory of Celestial Influence - By Rodney Collin Smith
The Prize is Eternity - By Girard Haven
They are very different in the aproach, but they all point to the same perennial state. I wish it helps others like they have helped me.
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