The Power of Now
1997 • 229 pages
Ratings47
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings47
Average rating3.6
Eckhart Tolle has emerged as one of today's most inspiring teachers. In The Power of Now, already a worldwide bestseller, the author describes his transition from despair to self-realization soon after his 29th birthday. Tolle took another ten years to understand this transformation, during which time he evolved a philosophy that has parallels in Buddhism, relaxation techniques, and meditation theory but is also eminently practical. In The Power of Now he shows readers how to recognize themselves as the creators of their own pain, and how to have a pain-free existence by living fully in the present. Accessing the deepest self, the true self, can be learned, he says, by freeing ourselves from the conflicting, unreasonable demands of the mind and living "present, fully, and intensely, in the Now."
Reviews with the most likes.
I listened to this as an audio book, as recommended to me by a friend. Tolle's voice is monotone, which is calming, but also can get dry and difficult to pay attention to (the irony!). But there were great points for me to digest, enough so that I think I'll buy the print book so I can annotate and move back and forth more organically. Would recommend the same for others.
EDIT - I read the print book and can absolutely confirm it is much easier to absorb. Isn't it a great irony that something that should be so simple (the present) can be so complex? Great quotes in here but, speaking for myself, I had to be in the right mood/setting to appreciate it.
Disturbed by the amount of confident incorrectness in his statements. “Animals don't know negativity”, “Menstrual flows are the collective pain of all women in past history”, “all love is the love of God”, etc. He has no proof whatsoever, his arguments are based on overgeneralisations. Yet, he's extremely confident that what he's saying is the truth.
Making opinions sound objective by false dialogue is not the way to convince me to believe you.
While I've enjoyed the emphasis of Now theory, Eckhart's overconfident argumentations and scornful way of providing them gives me a know-it-all-guru and cult-like vibe. That doesn't sit well with me, because I've learned no truth can be 100% sure.
2,5/5, wouldn't recommend, but there are valuable insights about suffering and presence.
Honestly, I wanted to like it.
I got to know why it is what it is and managed to have some insights here and there, but man... does it annoy me how his writing is so condescending at times.
There's obviously a lot wrong with this book and its condescending tone. But, if you can focus on the parts about attention and ignore the spiritual gibberish (energy fields, inner light, vibration frequencies, quantum jumps, resonance, captured life energy etc), there's some solid advice in here - especially in the first half. Afterwards it all kind of derails.
