The Power of Now

"I cannot tell you any spiritual truth
that deep within you don't know already.

All I can do is remind you
of what you have forgotten"
- Page 6

"The mind is a superb instrument
if used rightly.
Used wrongly, however,
it becomes very destructive.

To put it more accurately,
it is not so much that you use
your mind wrongly—
you usually don't use it at all.

It uses you.
"
- Page 13

"all the things
that truly matter —
beauty,
love,
creativity,
joy,
inner peace —
arise from beyond
the mind"
- Page 14

"All true artists,
whether they know it or not,
create from a place of no-mind,
from inner stillness"
- Page 19

"Emotion arises at the place
where mind and body meet.

It is the body's reaction to your mind —
or you might say,
a reflection of your mind in the body"
- Page 20

"It wasn't through the mind,
through thinking,
that the miracle that is life
on earth or your body were
created and are being sustained"
- Page 20

"You may not yet be able to bring
your unconscious mind activity into
awareness as thoughts,
but it will always be reflected
in the body as an emotion,
and of this you can become aware.
"
- Page 22

"Love,
joy,
and peace
cannot flourish
until you have
freed yourself
from mind dominance" - Page 24

"Pleasure is always derived
from something outside you,
whereas joy arises from within"
- Page 24

"Pain is inevitable
as long as you are
identified with your mind"
- Page 25

"Nobody’s life is entirely free
of pain and sorrow.

Isn’t it a question of learning
to live with them rather than
trying to avoid them?

The greater part of human pain
is unnecessary.

It is self-created
as long as the unobserved
mind runs your life.


The pain that you create now
is always some form of nonacceptance,
some form of unconscious resistance to what is.

On the level of thought, the resistance is some
form of judgment.
On the emotional level,
it is some form of negativity.

The intensity of the pain
depends on the degree of resistance
to the present moment,
and this in turn depends on how
strongly you are identified
with your mind.
"
- Page 27

"Where there is anger,
there is always pain underneath"
- Page 32

"The psychological condition of fear
is divorced from any concrete and true
immediate danger.
It comes in many forms:
unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension,
dread, phobia, and so on.
This kind of psychological
fear is always of something that might happen,
not of something that is happening now.
"
- Page 35

"an emotion
is the body's reaction
to your mind"
- Page 36

"Power over others is weakness
disguised as strength.

True power if within,
and it is available
to you now"
- Page 36

"The most common ego identifications
have to do with possessions, the work you do,
social status and recognition, knowledge and education,
physical appearance, special abilities, relationships,
person and family history, belief systems, and often
also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other
collective identifications. None of these is you.
"
- Page 37

"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you.

The secret of life is to "die before you die" —
and find that there is no death"
- Page 38

"When you are present,
you can allow the mind to be
as it is without getting entangled in it.

The mind in itself is a wonderful tool.

Dysfunction sets in when you seek
your self in it and mistake it
for who you are"
- Page 40


"To be identified with your mind
is to be trapped in time:
the compulsion to live
almost exclusively
through memory
and anticipation"
- Page 40

"Life is now.

There was never
a time when your life
was not now,
nor will there ever be"
- Page 41

"Nothing ever happened
in the past;
it happened in the Now.

Nothing will ever happen
in the future;
it will happen
in the Now"
- Page 41

"The quality of your consciousness
at this moment is what shapes the future —
which, of course, can only be experienced
as the Now"
- Page 50

"Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry —
all forms of fear — are cause by too much future,
and not enough presence.
Guilt, regret, resentment,
grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms
of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past,
and not enough presence"
- Page 50

"To be free of time
is to be free of the psychological
need of past for your identity and future
for your fulfillment"
- Page 59

"Be at least as interested
in what goes on inside you
as what happens outside.

If you get the inside right,
the outside will fall into place"
- Page 64

"Wherever you are,
be there totally.

If you find your here
and now intolerable
and it makes you unhappy,
you have three options:
remove yourself from the situation,
change it, or accept it totally"
- Page 68

"You cannot find yourself
by going into the past.

You can find yourself
by coming into the present"
- Page 75

"...words in themselves
are not important.

They are not the Truth;
they only point to it"
- Page 85

"Don't get stuck on the level of words.

A word is no more than a means to an end.

It's an abstraction.

Not unlike a signpost,
it points beyond itself"
- Page 90

"At the deepest level of Being,
you are one with all that is"
- Page 105

"...the ultimate purpose
of the world lies not within
the world but in the transcendence
of the world"
- Page 117

"You find God the moment
you realize that you
don't need to seek God"
- Page 122

"[Relationships] do not cause pain
and unhappiness.

They bring out the pain
and unhappiness
that is already in you"
- Page 127

"As far as inner transformation is concerned,
there is nothing you can do about it.

You cannot transform yourself,
and you certainly cannot transform
your partner or anybody else.

All you can do is create a space
for transformation to happen,
for grace and love to enter"
- Page 131

"Whenever anything negative happens to you,
there is a deep lesson concealed within it,
although you may not see it at the time"
- Page 147

"It seems that most people need
to experience a great deal of suffering
before they will relinquish resistance
and accept — before they will forgive.
"
- Page 149

"You must have failed deeply
on some level or experienced
some deep loss or pain to be
drawn to the spiritual dimension.

Or perhaps your very success
became empty and meaningless
and so turned out to be a failure"
- Page 152

"Nothing out there will ever satisfy you
except temporarily and superficially,
but you may need to experience many
disappointments before you realize that truth"
- Page 155

Eckhart Tolle -
The Power of Now