Eckhart Tolle - The Practise of Present Moment Awareness
Eckhart Tolle is probably best known as the author of the best selling The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.
The core theme of this site is how to think and how to not think.
The foundational practise upon which this theme is based, is the practise of mindfulness also known as present moment awareness.
As far I am concerned, it was Eckhart Tolle's early work with "The Power of Now" and subsequent videos of Eckhart's talks that opened my eyes and awareness to the dimension of mindfulness.
I had read "The Miracle Of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh some years ago, before discovering Eckhart Tolle, and it made a distinct impression on me, but this whole business of mindfulness remained just an interesting idea.
Eckhart Tolle - My Early Experiences With "The Power Of Now"
At that point in my life I was on a quest to discover and appropriate as much information as I could about "life the universe and everything" and mindfulness was another interesting "tick in a box".
My quest was largely about gathering, assimilating and processing vast amounts of information that integrated into my ever expanding "inner map of reality".
So quite naturally, after my first reading of "The Power of Now" I thought "OK done that, got it, what's next?"
But after a while I sensed that maybe I hadn't got it. So I read it again but this time very slowly, at a pace of maybe several pages a day. As I reflected and contemplated the teaching I could sense an awareness arising with me that resonated very deeply with Eckhart's insights and teaching.
This second much slowing reading more or less coincided with the growing realisation that there was much more going on in this whole business of "life the universe and everything", than my thinking mind can comprehend.
I found that that rather than just processing the words as information I was increasingly absorbing the energy behind the words.
Metaphorically speaking, it was as though a greater intelligence or awareness, something more than "me", was recognising and connecting with something it already knew.
After a few more slow reflective readings of "The Power of Now" and several of Eckhart Tolles's other books it became clear to me that whilst his transformation into deep awareness and a full awakening was an overnight experience that wasn't going to happen to me.
Applying "The Power Of Now"
I realised that I was a "work in progress" and that I needed to apply Eckhart's insights and slowly and systematically put his insights and teaching into practise in my everyday life.
In order to be able to do this I then realised that I needed to develop some personal tools that I could use each day to discipline and train myself so that the practise of mindfulness would become a more or less automatic aspect of my behaviour and thought processes. So I extracted six core practises suggested and wrote them on a sheet of paper and worked on two at a time.
My recommended reading list of Eckhart Tolle's books
In my own personal experience, of all the many, many books I have read on the subject of personal development and spiritual growth I have found that Eckhart Tolle articulates very clearly what is involved in the process of personal transformation.
I commend the following books to you and I suggest that you read them in the order in which they are listed.
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How To Achieve Your Biggest Objectives.
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How To Be Lived By The Tao. The Tao Te Ching is one of those books that many people read, few understand, and even fewer put into practice. The only way to know the Tao is to experience it, and it is…
Chaos, Disorder And Decay Is The Natural Order Of Things. Nobody has the perfect life. We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health…
How To Tell The Difference Between Intuition and Anxiety. How do you know whether the voice of your intuition is real or just the product of your inner anxiety? Several months ago I was having a drink…
How the truth and nothing but the truth is often not the whole truth. My great aunty Flo broke her arm and died. It is true that she broke her arm in 1923. It is also true that she died in 1949. But t…
Duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuses on the limitations of time, foreground and background, duality and "stuckness". The first aspect of duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuse…
Being aware is the first stage of being prepared. The conscious mind is limited in so many ways. There are some who would argue that there is no such thing as conscious thought and that it is represen…
The big picture of how your inner map of reality creates your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Your inner map of reality is based on the filters of your own ethnic, national, social, family and rel…
Why we need to wear our beliefs lightly and develop negative capability. Throughout history people have campaigned to fight beliefs, ideologies, and injustices that they perceived to be oppressive, di…
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