What is the Power of Now?
It is 28 years since Eckhart Tolle published The Power of Now; a book that has sold over 16 million copies over that time.
This book is a bestseller for a reason. It points to a very simple and liberating truth: that all our experience happens in the Now. While our problems are created by concepts and thoughts about the past and future. By learning to stay in the Now we can find peace from stressful thoughts and states.
This insight, and Tolle’s book, was one of the sources for the boom in mindfulness since the late 1990s. For mindful attention leads directly to present moment awareness, and thereby to tranquillity. That alone would be worth having, even if you took nothing else from The Power of Now.
However, there is a lot more to The Power of Now than present moment awareness, as this article shows. In fact careful reading of the book opens up to a new philosophy of mind with far-reaching implications for therapy.
The deeper secrets to The Power of Now are:
- Switching to an Awareness that lies beyond the mind (and in fact contains it) creates a profound shift in our relationship to thoughts and feelings.
- At this level of Awareness concepts about the past and future dissolve, leading not only to present moment awareness but also freedom from worry.
- Staying in this Awareness we learn acceptance for what is, including stressful thoughts and feelings. This frees us from resistance to troublesome thoughts.
- Acceptance of present moment experience leads to defusion from unhelpful thought patterns.
- The persistent practice of Awareness leads eventually to increasing freedom from the ego and, indeed the whole idea of a separate self
- As we cease to take the ego-mind at face value, we open up to the the Universal Mind that works through conscious Awareness
Secret 1 to The Power of Now: Shifting Awareness
It could be argued that The Power of Now is really about shifting to a higher level of awareness rather than accessing present moment awareness. This is partly borne out by Eckhart Tolle’s description of how he stumbled on the technique. On page 1 of the book he relates how he was undergoing an acute anxiety episode and in his misery developed the thought:
“I cannot live with myself any longer.”
At that point he had a moment of realisation: that something in him was observing the thought. Which meant, in turn, there were two Eckhart’s: the one having the thought, and the other experiencing Eckhart Tolle. In other words, the Self was not what he thought it was; his true self lay beyond the thinking self.
Judging from his descriptions in the book Eckhart seems to have had an enlightenment experience. Not only had his sense of self disappeared but he was filled with a state of utter peace with a deep connection to the world around him. Judging by his later books, and his talks on YouTube, this state seems never to have left him.
In this state of higher awareness (sometimes confused with mindfulness) there is a connection to a transcendent level of consciousness that is given a variety of other names: Zen Mind, Buddha Mind, The Divine Ground of Being, Universal Mind, etc. All these descriptions point to the spiritual realm, although you don’t have to be particularly spiritual to understand it.
The interesting thing about staying in Awareness is that the traffic of thoughts from the thinking mind becomes insignificant. In fact it becomes hard to access them at all. One reason for this is that the state of Awareness is a non-conceptual space in which thoughts become irrelevant. Our relationship to anxious thoughts, and the uncomfortable feelings that rise with them, changes so that we become an impartial witness rather than a slave to them.
Secret 2 to The Power of Now: Dissolving Thoughts
In The Power of Now, as experienced through Awareness, time vanishes and the past and future with it. What is realised is that ‘past’ and ‘future’ are actually concepts applied to memories, fantasies, thoughts and feelings arising in the Now. Another way of putting this is that our experience of past and future only arises in present moment awareness and are thus constructed rather than recalled. The idea of recalling or imagining something is also entwined with the stories the mind tells us about who we were, or what we might become.
But here is the real point: all our mental suffering arises from our thoughts about the past and the future. This suffering cannot arise in the Now simply because we are experiencing what is rather than (what we think) has been, or will be the case. When we see this we are automatically freed from shame and horror, worry and dread in the moment.
Secret 3 to The Power of Now: Building Acceptance
This secret is tied to what was said before about the change in our relationship to thoughts that takes place in Awareness. When you contemplate a thought or a feeling in a peaceful, empty space it either loses its power or else it dissolves. Thoughts don’t seem like they belong to you any more, rather like ghosts in the mist.
This is where it gets interesting. Since they no longer belong to you they are seen as activities of the organism – the mind-body. Like the microbes you can see down a microscope thoughts produced by the mind-body appear as curious exhibits. From this detached position you learn to see thoughts for what they: random productions that come up from the brain and present themselves to you for inspection.
That way you learn to accept your thoughts (painful or otherwise) for what they are – background noise, rather like the voices of passengers on a bus. Leaving you free to attend to them if you are interested in the messages they convey, or else to leave them as they are.
The more you practice this the more acceptance you build for anxious or depressing thoughts. Seeing them as the productions of the mind having a bad day rather than as things in which you should take an urgent interest. This can be wonderfully liberating.
Secret 4 to the Power of Now: Thought Defusion
Accepting thought productions, while declining to get involved with them, automatically leads to thought defusion. In which painful thoughts are drained of their power, leaving you free to place your attention on any productive thoughts the mind-body may make available to you.
Thought defusion is a key element in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. An effective solution for many mental heath disorders. Including both anxiety and depression.
Secret 5 to The Power of Now: Detachment from the Ego
Recall that Awareness only occurs in the Now. While the Self is constructed from our thoughts, pictures and feelings from the past, woven together as a story about ‘you’. One way to think of the Ego is that it is a fictional self which seems to dictate to you the kind of person you ought to be, based on the painful experiences that have taken place over the course of your lifetime. And what you need to do to put things right based on the ‘decision’ it has made about you. I.e. that you are stupid, lazy, weak, worthless, unlovable or mad, etc.
In present moment Awareness those thoughts and stories defuse or dissolve. When that happens the hold the Ego story has over you disappears while you are in Awareness. With repeated practice the power of your inner dictator gradually weakens as the thoughts associated with it are no longer taken seriously. In Eckhart Tolle’s case his former identity as an angst-ridden young man disappeared entirely.
Secret 6 to The Power of Now: Accessing Higher Intelligence
Access to states of Awareness is associated in many traditions with higher wisdom. The teaching known as the Three Principles is a good example of a non-spiritual understanding on this. Eckhart Tolle expands on these implications in his sequel to The Power of Now: A New Earth.
Repeated practice in deep Awareness quietens the chattering mind and opens you up to the wisdom of your inner guide. From which you can receive deeper answers to your problems in life, or the steps that are right for you to take when making a decision.
You may experience the messages you get from this inner guide as intuitions concerning the right way to go; feelings that point you towards hidden insights; or as images that present to you as messages from a wiser self. Sometimes, too, answers come as thoughts, but of the helpful kind rather than the reverse.
One interesting thing I have discovered in working with clients in this way is that answers to big problems are often deceptively simple. For example, one client engaged in constant, often vicious, arguments with her teenage daughter received the thought ‘Try a different room‘ along with a replay video of her going into her daughter’s bedroom. At once she saw the point: confronting her daughter with problems in her own room immediately put her on guard and ready for a fight. A few weeks later she reported that taking her daughter out for a coffee to talk over things had changed things around and they were now able to talk calmly about the issues instead of getting into hostilities.
For more information on using Awareness for problem solving please see my article on Listening to Your Inner Guide.
A short guide in how to enter the State of Awareness – ‘Awakening to Awareness‘ is on the podcast page here.