The Power of Now is in the Public Domain

I'm happy to report that Eckhart Tolle has seen fit to allow his seminal book, The Power of Now, to slip into the pubic domain, which means it's now free. I've posted it in its entirety to my Pages section (right). Let me know if you find this format helpful.

Please take a few moments to take a look at it. Click once or twice on each page to enlarge the print to your liking. A page or two each day while seated at your desk between tasks or clients is guaranteed to change your life.

A Cure for Anxiety - Part 1

Inner peace is a purely physical phenomenon. Your soul is deep and unaffected by the tempests your ego tosses, but your body is not.

Without doubt, anxiety has its roots in attitudes that you hold, but lots of people have those same attitudes without also engaging in anxiety. So it's wise to focus first on the physical dimension.

Once you learn this simple technique to ratchet down the negative energy you're constantly spewing into your physical being, you will then be free to evaluate the spiritual and emotional bases for this behavior as you desire and at you leisure.

The Road to Emotional Maturity

On the road to emotional maturity, the real breakthrough comes when you begin to be more concerned with the fact that you are upset--depressed, angry, bitter, fill in the blank with any form of negativity--than with what you are upset about.

This new approach would mean that you've finally seen the illogic of all forms of negativity. You've finally come to realize that an inner state fraught with negativity will never have a positive impact on your environment. At that point, in other words, you have begun to focus your attention on your inner state as the key to shaping your reality.

Dealing With the Past on the Level of the Present the Key to Beating Depression

Here is a key passage from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment:

[D]eal with the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give to the past the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a "self" out of it. Don't misunderstand: Attention is essential, but not to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your behavior, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There's the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but nonjudgmentally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.

Depression results when we give up contact with reality, which can only be realized in the present moment, for the mental construct called the past. The past is a present moment that doesn't exist anymore, but people often continue to live in it for long stretches at a time as if it did continue to exist.

A Cure for Anxiety - Part 3

If anxiety is a purely physical phenomenon (see Part 1), so is joy. Joy displaces anxiety.

Your soul already knows joy. Your soul is joy because your soul is one with the unmanifested. It's one with God. To experience that oneness in our physical bodies is joy.

So how do we do that?

By taking our awareness more deeply into our physical bodies and thereby sensing our inner bodies, which is the "life that animates" us.

A Cure for Anxiety - Part 2

Remember, anxiety is the hook but enlightenment is the goal. If we deal with the symptoms of anxiety by simply practicing certain techniques or by taking a pill, we're dealing with the problem on a purely physical level.

If we go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, we begin to include the mind in the solution.

But there's also a third level. That's the level of the spirit or soul. If we don't tap into this aspect of our being, we lack the leverage necessary to make lasting change. It's like trying to lift something that you're standing on.

Let me try to show you what I mean with a little experiment. At the end of this paragraph, stop reading and listen to the voice in your head. Almost everyone has an internal monologue going in their head all the time. Take a moment and listen to it.