The Power of Now Summary: Finding Peace in the Present Moment

One of the finest and highly recommended books on spirituality, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle presents the importance of being in the present moment i.e “NOW”. This book also presents actionable strategies to enjoy our present fully, without stressing about the past or worrying about the future.

What is the “Power of Now”?

It’s none other than the power of your conscious presence, your consciousness liberated from thought forms. It means giving attention to the present, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but non-judgmentally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence.

Life lessons I learned from Eckhart Tolle through this book:

1. You are not your mind

This mind is a powerful tool, with a constant stream of thoughts. Your mind works as a superb instrument if used correctly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. In other words, it’s not that you use your mind wrongly, you usually don’t use it at all. The fact is it uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. And that’s how this instrument has taken you over. You cannot find the present moment as long as you are in your mind.

Life isn’t as serious as our mind thinks it to be. Boredom, anger, sadness, fear, or worries are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind that come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you. On the other hand, the things that truly matter like love, creativity, joy, inner peace, etc. arise from beyond the mind.

Learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness, your inner light grows stronger.

2. Create no more pain in the present.

Nobody’s life is entirely free of pain or sorrow. The harder your mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain becomes. You will not be free from pain until you cease to derive your sense of self from your mind. So, learn to live with them rather than trying to avoid them.

If you want to free yourself from pain, all you have to do is constantly observe your mind and stop judging your thoughts. Observe your emotions along with your thoughts. Make it a habit to ask yourself: What’s going on inside me at this moment? This is the question that points you in the right direction. But you don’t need to analyze your emotions. Just focus your attention within and feel the energy of your emotions.

3. Accept your now

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend. As the author says, the present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or awful. At that time, the mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it.

Rather, you should accept your now fully. The more you can honor and accept the now, the more you are free of pain and suffering. When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life. Nobody can argue with you, regardless of how hard he or she tries.

4. The present moment is all you ever have.

Make now the only primary focus of your life, as it is the only moment that you have or can have. Always say yes to the present moment. If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, you don’t need to create any more time of past or future. Say yes to your life in whatever form it comes to you and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.

Why now is the most precious thing?

Firstly, bcoz it’s the only thing. It’s there is. It’s the only space within which your whole life unfolds, the only constant factor. Your whole life is now.

Secondly, the now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited boundaries of your mind. It is your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of being.

5. Nothing exists outside the Now.

Our past determines who we are, and how we perceive and behave in the present. Our future goals determine what actions we have to take in the present. Then why should we not give importance to them?

Because what you think of the past is just your memory trace, stored in your mind as a former now. When you remember the past, you reactivate that memory trace and you do so now. In the same way, the future is your imagined now, a projection of mind. Even if you think about the future, you are thinking about it now only.

Nothing ever happened in the past, it happened in the now.

Nothing will ever happen in the future, it will happen in the Now.

Just as the moon has no light on its own, but can only reflect the sun’s light, so are past and future. They are only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is borrowed from the now.

The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.

Eckhart Tolle

6. The concept of love

Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Love is a state of being. You don’t need to find love outside as it’s deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. True love has no opposite. If your ‘love’ has an opposite, then it’s not love but a strong ego that is needed for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets.

7. Bring more consciousness into your life by being in the present

You think that you can’t get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there. You ‘get’ there by realizing that you are there already. When there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence, everything feels alive radiating divine energy.

Conclusion

Most humans are never fully present in the now because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.

Only through practicing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true fulfillment, salvation, love, forgiveness, and most importantly awakening and enlightenment. So, what are you waiting for?