A New Earth - Book Summary & Review

A New Earth

Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Eckhart Tolle

Another compelling book from Eckhart Tolle that helps the readers walk on the path of spirituality and inner peace. The author says that people are always in a rush in the modern world and have no time to appreciate the simple joys of life. This book shows readers how to break the moulds of society and personal ego and urges them to stop competing and comparing themselves with everyone around them. The book has the potential to bring peace, joy, transformation and contentment to those who read it.

There are lots of conflicts and man-made catastrophes plaguing this world. Even if there’s plenty in society that is improving, there just seems to be something wrong with humanity in general. So what is the underlying cause of all this conflict and misery? The answer is in our minds. By being too caught up in either the past or the future or by worrying too much, our egos often dominate and turn us away from the happiness which life has to offer.

Society’s madness is evident in the violence people inflict upon each other and on the planet.
We live in a crazy, overwhelming time. Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi, once said that the “mind is maya.” The word maya describes a form of collective mental illness.

Buddhism articulates this idea differently, describing the mind’s natural state as dukkha, which means suffering and misery. In Christianity, the concept of sin means to miss the point of human existence.

Despite humanity’s achievements in various fields, we still seem to be tainted by sufferings, madness or sins. The people of the twentieth century have created and witnessed some of the most horrific and systematized methods of destruction, be it bombs or poisonous gas or machine guns. Such violence, greed and hate continue even today. And we are not only causing destruction among ourselves, but we are also destructing other species and the Earth. We destroy forests, pollute the air and water and slaughter animals.
 

Religion tried but it isn’t the medicine to cure our inner madness solution. People have attempted to improve society, through ideas such as communism. But communism as an organizing principle failed, because of the founding peoples’ inability to change themselves and lack of consciousness.

Though we still have the wisdom of ancient religious teachers, many of these teachings have been misunderstood or distorted by both the teachers’ contemporaries and following generations.

An original message of kindness, humility and unity can easily be twisted into a religion of hate and division – becoming part of the very insanity it was trying to cure in the first place. Progress in science and technology has only increased our capacity to destroy, and has magnified the problems of our egos more.

To combat our inner destructive forces, we must understand that it is the ego that fuels these forces. We identify with our ego and it’s now time to stop it and instead start releasing it. The problem with the ego is that it tricks us into thinking that knowing ourselves is the same as knowing about ourselves.
Today’s world feeds on ego.

Letting go of the ego, isn’t only giving up our attachment to material goods. It also requires the recognition that what we normally refer to as the self – the “I,” is not who we are. This self – the ego – is nothing but a mentally constructed story we tell to identify ourselves. But this story isn’t who we actually are.

Ego is the source of all our discontent, insecurities and feelings of anxiety and is not at all easy to release. To release our ego, it is important to become aware and detach ourselves from our own thoughts in order to analyze them.

The consequences of ego-driven over-thinking are often alienation and suffering. We often end up collecting situations, resentments, hurts and other negative emotions instead of releasing them. It would be far better to let go of an incident. It is in the present moment that we find peace, not in the past.

You must tune into your life’s two different goals: the outer purpose and the inner purpose.

Having a true life purpose is the only thing that will bring you contentment. But how do we find it?

We all share the same inner purpose: To attain enlightenment, which may also be described as a state in which we are conscious but without thought. Being aware of the inner purpose is important. Outer purposes, like making money or building a career, are not in our hands. The things that feed our outer purposes will, at some point, will ultimately let us down. To attain peace, we shouldn’t be dependent on anything else but ourselves.

It’s not the goals or actions themselves but rather the state of mind from which they come that determine whether something is motivated by ego or not.

The two main elements of living an enlightened life are acceptance and enjoyment.

Acceptance is the willingness to do whatever you need to do in the moment, in a peaceful, open way. The aim is to reach a state of mind where you can accept the task and be at peace with it.

If we cannot bring ourselves to enjoy what we’re doing, we should stop that activity. There’s only one thing we have true control of in our life – our state of mind. Only we can control the way we deal with the situations in life.

When we attain a state of enlightenment, our motivation to act will branch out from enjoyment rather than feelings of desire or wanting.
When we are able to focus on the present moment, enjoyment happens naturally.

In short, if we overcome our egos, we can create a better world. 

Ruchika Verma

You can purchase this wonderful book from Amazon