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From:Eckhart Tolle , Penguin ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#51 |
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23 of 29 customers found the following review helpful:
The ego is like a child...., 2005-11-29
I really liked the message this book offers. He writes simply what all the other messengers are trying to say. BE PRESENT with yourself. It doesn't make the pain stop, or the ego cease its function, but merely puts one into awareness of it without allowing your thoughts to carry you away into a non-existance "what if" mode.
I think of the ego like a child. This kid is kicking and screaming to have what they want any way they can get it. We don't usually allow that child to have his way, especially when you know it's not good for the child or others, so you don't take it too seriously. It will pass in a few moments. The mature adult dealing with this child may be seen as cold, uncaring, or even aloof. In reality and choice, they simply aren't going to get involved in that child's manner of behavior or expression, while still being quite aware of what's going on.
So why would we judge the immature ego in ourselves and others as anything different? Adults do the same thing as children, they just find more "acceptable" ways of dealing with what they want and don't want in life. Either way you slice it, it's all ego. And Tolle is pointing out how we unconsciously allow our immature egos to take over and perpetuate through knee-jerk reactions, or contemplated 'what if' thoughts of what could or should be. Just be present, aware, attentive to your own self. (Self awareness) It keeps everything inside you in check, smooth-going, less complicated, clearer. Why would you bother, you ask? Because eventually we get sick of it and want the pain to stop. We start to grow up.
Tolle is gently explaining to us how to grow up. The "doing" is up to us.
Furthermore, I didn't use to understand Tolle's "pain-body" euphemism. After reading this book I began to get a clue. I have noticed that when I am around negative people that they tend to make negative things happen around them, orchestrate negative reactions, or simple leave a "bleh" feeling behind or with them. From what Tolle says, and it makes sense, that this is part of or IS the pain body spreading itself. You can even notice it in yourself at times; looking to start trouble because we're miserable for a moment. Again, if we are aware, we can choose not to feed it. You'll find the misery pointless and a time waster.
I figure it this way, we have at least 3 choices with almost everything we encounter in life. We can get totally involved while submersing ourselves to satisfy some idea/belief that we want or need an experience, or we can be present without taking it personally, or simply walk away. But how can we know those choices unless we become conscious and present with ourselves and see it as it is inside and out?
And for you those who think Tolle is a "MAN", and all this is stemming from his male ego, try Byron Katie. She says the same thing AND walks you through simple steps of "how". A message is a message, and a story is simply a story; Just a matter of HOW one is willing to accept it.
82 of 96 customers found the following review helpful:
 A New Earth is Born, 2005-11-26
If you got the concepts in the Power of Now, and love the simple, easy-to-understand message of that book, you will find a "going deeper" happening with this one.
I've always been one to disagree with spiritual teachers about the ego - that it's basically all bad. If it's bad, why did God create it? My feeling is if it is here on Earth, it belongs, even though we may not understand why.
That said, Eckhart clearly defines, with excellent examples, how our identification with the ego (and not the ego itself, mind you) keeps us from simply being in the present and instead tied to thoughts, concepts, mind-stuff, endless identification with people, places, and things. He shows us the many forms and faces that the ego takes up, and shows us the fallacy of identifying with forms in the first place.
To identify so completely with form is to identify with that which is doomed to extinction, causing us loss and sadness. Wouldn't it be better if we simply observed things from an aware state, and not get so caught up in them? This is Eckhart's goal, to get us to a place where we can see the benefits of raising our awareness, and actually wanting to do so.
Ah, easier said than done, I hear you say. Within the pages of A New Earth, Eckhart gives us precisely the tools we need to recognize and become aware of own folly. From that higher state of awareness, the flowers of enlightenment can bloom. And voila, a New Earth is born.
I find this book a great comfort.
14 of 51 customers found the following review helpful:
Would an editor help?, 2005-11-26
There are many excellent reviews elsewhere. This is a suggestion. Perhaps Mr. Tolle would benefit from an editor. A competent editor could smooth out Eckhart's writing and eliminate some of those "which is to say", "in other words", "that is to say", "as it were", "strictly speaking", "one goes so far to say", "which means", "we could even say", etc. A good editor could make some of the writing less amateurish. Perhaps Mr. Tolle is not ready to have someone alter the words of the "Master". Has he become enamored with his own musings?
15 of 18 customers found the following review helpful:
Connection to your innermost, 2005-11-24
The value of a spiritual book is measured by how its message translates and impacts the reader. Just as it happen with a poem or a work of art. As such Mr. Tolle's books are great.
Yes, the core message is perhaps 5,000 years old, but the same can be said of most things, including painting, which is some 10,000 years old. The fact is the Mr. Tolle is quite original in the method in which he presents this age-old truth. It can also be said that other people wrote with a higher philosophical depth and analytical clarity. Mr. Tolle, though, exceeds in clarity, in easiness to put the subject to practice, in practical examples, in variety of methods (three distinct methods of meditation), in being free of judgment and of negatives, in not belonging to any school (he is just looking for the truth), in pleasantness, and if you hear him on tape, on the calmness inherent in his voice, which reflects a level of internal peace that is felt and becomes a key part of the message. In short, it is grand.
I experienced some "now" moments early on (a car accident, recite poems to a large audience, penetrating the depth of the eyes of the girl I love) and they all had the same elements in common: time stopped; space melted; deep feeling of peace and joy; my personal intellectual mind rested while I somehow connected to another intelligence that felt in harmony with my innermost being, that was inhering or an integral part of it (versus the intelligence of my mind, which is external, different and separate from my consciousness), and of higher capacity (as the complexities of my body, such as my DNA or my brain; in the car accident I manage to maneuver calmly, just naturally, saving people); a feeling of oneness, as if the borders somehow partially melt allowing me to feel the innermost of people's essence.
Some of the things that Mr. Tolle mentions I had already felt from my own angle (and he helped me understand them better), for example, I felt that the infinite (or God if you prefer) was not love, but somehow higher than love. In prolong moments of satori (or "now") I felt the infinite as: "peace" (you can never minimize the huge and immense sense of tranquility or serenity in stillness), as "joy" (absolute bliss; which, is not a sense of immense pleasure or anything subject to cycles, but rather a serene, soft and permanent or imperturbable inherent joy) and as "one-ness" (something akin to the relationship of a wave of the sea -us- to the sea, or gnana). I call these three perceptions together as the state of "perfect harmony".
Although I did not come to the conclusion through my own experience, but by reading, I latter realized that perhaps peace and joy are one and are called "absolute bliss" (also called ananda) and that the sages add two other attributes two Brahman (the totality): "absolute existence" (perhaps equivalent to YHWH's "I Am That I Am"; to being, instead of existing, or being out of time; also called sat) and "absolute consciousness" (the source of all consciousness, the sea of our "I am"; also called chit). Love is the thirst in us to return and merge into the absolute and/or being, either directly (mysticism) or thorough a loved one (all love is love to the infinite). To the extent that love implies an emptiness that we hunger to fill, it seems incorrect to apply it to the infinite, which is in perfect harmony. On the other hand, to the extent that the infinite is all (as the word imply) and we incorporate pantheism, perfect harmony (the summary of the attributes) is by definition a kind of self-love, thus love is what is felt towards itself by a being in perfect harmony and since we are all part of the absolute, this is how It feels toward (loves) us.
Having felt the transcendent, so to say, I felt that there is no space for "sin", since that would imply that He or It is offended by our actions, thus that It does not have ananda and perfect harmony. I also realized that there is no devil, since that would imply that the spiritual realm could be evil, not infinite (not all), in conflict with itself, in time, and out of balance, instead of in perfect harmony, as I felt It was. Reading Mr. Tolle I realized that any effort to conceptualize the infinite is an ego or mind approach. Reading Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (I Am That) I realized that as long as we conceptualize ourselves as a person (ego or mind), we tend to conceptualize God as an individual, egotist mind (even anthropomorphic); to the extent that we realize that we are (one with) all, we will also see It as the infinite, or all. In other words, we (as a person, or as a culture or religion) perceive God/It/the-infinite according to our level of spirituality.
Reading Mr. Tolle I realized that that this feeling of bliss, union, and calm, or epiphany, or enlightenment, or satori, can be experienced (at least at a lower level of intensity), to the extent that we move into the "now," pretty much all the time. After reading Mr. Tolle, I now find myself experiencing my being through my senses (instead of only through my mind), perceiving new sounds, images, and scent from the environment and feeling a sense of delight, communication, and tranquility. In the road, for example, if you detach from the mind, you can get a feeling of objects moving towards you and passing, just the movement, and you as part of it, with no analysis, no judgment, just being, and being at peace and joy. I have used the concept of the "now" to kill anxiety (not always successfully), to sleep sound before a tough day (something I could not do before), to connect with my innermost, and to feel the innermost of loved ones more easily. Most of the time, though, I am not there. Not yet.
My main difference with most sages is that they tend to be ascetics and thus are inclined to identify erotic love as not too spiritual. I respectfully disagree. While sex, even good sex can be mostly pleasure (union of matter and form: body beauty); romantic love can be erotic and can go from a sense of union with your couple (romantic, or union of the souls) all the way to spiritual (union with All) and at that level can transform into absolute harmony for a prolong period of time, if we can call it time when it is stopped or not there.
11 of 12 customers found the following review helpful:
Just read it and experience the light of knowledge within, 2005-11-24
I am very selective reader. I only read those books that can help me to get out of the experience of "I"(I am body). I only read books of those people who have direct experience of Truth, the real SELF. When I read this author's book " The Power of Now", I was able to remain aware in my dream some time, that much strong awareness current carries his words. I haven't seen Mr. Eckhart Tolle but still strongly believe that he have died before death that's true. That mean he is the person who have experience of death of mind before natural body death. What call Nirvikalp Samadhi in Indian scripture, the breathless, pulse less, thoughtless state of Absolute Consciousness, the 100% absence of mind.
I am enjoying each and every word of his book The New Earth. Its simply great truth, I love to give you guarantee for this book, it will definitely help you to shift your consciousness from your personal "I" to "SELF". It will make you more conscious and aware about our unconscious mechanism of mind. If you are really truth seeker want to understand who we are or who I am? You will love it. It's presenting universal Truth with the present days example, its modern holy scripture in layman language with full analysis of human ego and how its function. Once we become aware about that our ego loses the unconscious control.
Just read and experience the light of knowledge within. Best of luck, thanks you for reading this.
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