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

The Power of Now - Book Summary & Review

The Power of Now

A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Eckhart Tolle

‘The Power of Now’ is a fascinating book with the power to radically change the lives of the readers for the better. To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question and answer format to guide us. 

By focusing only on the present – and ignoring the past or future – you can greatly improve your life.

Everyone wants to find inner peace and improve their lives. But we don’t know how. We tend to live either in the past or in the future, while neglecting the present.

Present is important because nothing ever happens in the past or future. Whatever we feel is experienced in the present, because our senses only give us information about a specific moment.

If we manage to live in the present, there will be no major problems, just small ones that can be easily dealt with.

A part of your needs pain to survive, and it creates most of the pain you experience.

Pain is a self-created inner resistance to externalities that we cannot change. We live in the present, but think a lot much about the past and the future. We have no means to change things we’re unhappy about; so, we develop a resistance against them– which we experience as pain.

Another aspect of self-created pain is the “pain-body,” a part of the self that needs pain to survive. Since the pain-body is composed of painful experiences, it grows and strengthens us whenever we feel pain. Thus, it tries to make us miserable and sad.

This cycle can continue till the pain finally becomes an essential part of us, and we’re afraid to let it go because doing so would put our identity at risk.

The “ego” is a part of your mind that stops you from being happy.

Nobody wants to be miserable, but why so many people are unhappy? The culprit is the ego – a part of our mind that controls our thoughts and behaviour without us noticing. Since it cannot be observed easily, most people don’t know the extent to which the ego controls their life.

Ego depends on our misery for its existence, so it tries to obstruct our happiness at every turn. The ego leads us into situations of conflict, and makes us unhappy with our current situation so that it can gain control over our behaviour.

If you want a richer and almost painless life, separate yourself from your mind and focus on your body.

Our ego is one of the many reasons why it’s important to separate ourselves from your mind and pay more attention to our body. The mind produces pain by continually bringing up memories of the past, or by planning for the future. In doing so, it prevents us from living in the present.

We need to find a way to reduce the mind’s power and some of its control on us. We can do it by shifting our focus from the mind to the body. Your body knows what’s best for you. Our body can give us a very clear sense of what is important in our life. Nobody has ever found enlightenment while concentrating only on the mind and ignoring the body.

Observing the mind without judgment is the best way to separate from it, and thus free yourself from pain.

To separate yourself from your mind, you must become fully conscious of the power it has over you, otherwise you’ll never understand the small and subtle ways it influences you.

Other method is to observe your mind without judging. Judging is itself an act of the mind, so if you judge something you are back to using your mind again. Don’t judge that voice in your head as good or bad, just smile at it, and accept that it exists.

Try to exist in a state of permanent alertness.

To separate ourselves from our mind, we can try another technique: active waiting. This is a special kind of waiting state, in which we’re aware that something important could happen at any moment. In such a state, all of our attention is focused on the now.

When we get into a state of active waiting, there’s no time for the daydreaming, planning or remembering that usually distracts us from the present. In this state, we only pay attention to our body because it has to stay ready for anything which may happen.  

Living in the present can be hard for your partner, but it can also improve your relationship.

It’s extremely difficult for a “normal” person to share their life with someone who lives fully in the present. A non-present person’s ego feeds on problems, while the present person is seen as a threat. It can cause many problems and disrupt peace.

But living in the present can also greatly improve relationships: you’ll be able to stop judging, criticizing or trying to change your partner, and instead see him or her as an independent person.

If you live in the present, then living with you can be very difficult for your partner. In the long run, however, it can offer a great opportunity for positive change.

Not all pain is avoidable: surrendering to the present does not mean ignoring sad or hurtful feelings.

Even if you live fully in the present, some feelings of sadness and pain are unavoidable. While it’s true that most pain is self-created, that doesn’t mean we create all of it. Some pains are clearly unavoidable, like the one caused by the death of a beloved.

When you experience something traumatic, which causes you real pain, just accept it for what it is. If you accept pain as something that simply is and cannot be changed, then you’ll avoid needless suffering.

Living in the present does not mean ignoring or suppressing pain. Instead, it provides you with the inner strength to accept painful facts of life.

Surrendering to the present does not mean living a passive life.

Living in the present is an inner process of feeling and insight, and doesn’t cause you to develop a passive external behaviour. Living in the present can provide us with new resources, and new ways to solve problems. It brings us new forms of strength and determination, because we don’t waste our inner resources creating problems. Instead, we’re able to see what’s actually wrong at any given moment, and can change those things for the better.

Ruchika Verma

You can purchase this engrossing book from Amazon