The Power of Now

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is the sort of book that continues to swirl about in your consciousness weeks after you’ve read it. 

The basic principle of the book is quite simple: NOTHING EXISTS OUTSIDE THIS PRESENT MOMENT.  Many people think of a lifetime as a line segment from birth to death with the present moment being a single point on that line moving slowly forward.  After reading The Power of Now, I finally understood that this way of thinking was extremely disempowering.

This book taught me that there is no line segment and the point is all there is.  The past and the future are illusions.  They only exist to the degree we focus our attention on them right now.  We create the past and the future by imagining them in the present.  And we don’t even exist outside the Now.

If you can grasp the idea that nothing exists outside this present moment, you can turn your overall life strategy upside down because if you want to experience anything in life, you must create it in this moment.  It must exist in some form right now, or it doesn’t exist at all. 

For example, the idea of creating a new way of life or freedom and wealth in the future, by constraining yourself in the present, is nothing but wasted energy.  That future will never arrive as long as you are creating lack thereof in the here and now!