The Power Of Now Flashcards
Should I seek to become enlightenment?
No, don’t seek to be come free of desire or achieve enlightenment. Become present. Be the observer of the mind. Instead of quoting the buddha, be the buddha.
What creates pain according to Eckhart and how does this relate to stoicism ?
Tolle would surely agree since he argues that pain is nothing more than the result of you resisting to all the things you cannot change.

We think a lot about the future and the past, but can live only in the present and have therefore no means to change many things from the other two that we’re unhappy about.
Then we fill the gap between these by developing a resistance to these things, which is what we experience as pain, whether psychological or physical.
When you’re angry, that anger usually makes you think and act less rational, which more often than not results in a worse situation and thus, more pain – but it’s really all in your head.
What is complaining?
When you criticize, condemn, or complain, you aren’t accepting reality. Instead, you are rejecting reality in favor of your expectations or thoughts about what reality should be. And in doing so, you will end up less happy than if you accepted the situation you’re facing and figured out a productive path forward.
What is freedom?
Presence is freedom from thought
“As long as you are in a state of intense presence, you are free of thought. You are still, yet highly alert. The instant your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in. The mental noise returns; the stillness is lost. You are back in time.”
“Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease.”
“Most people don’t know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking.”
Compulsive thinking is the norm – most of us spend the majority of our time in our heads. Instead of being highly alert and free of thought, both of which are requirements of being in the present moment, we allow our consciousness to bring us into the mental noise that clutters our days. But if we learn to escape the collective disease of compulsive thinking, we can better listen and live in the present.
- Why we identify with the mind
We can only dis-identify from the mind by realizing that we are not the mind and its thoughts. If we can observe our thoughts, how can we be our thoughts? The more we can stop identifying with repetitive thought patterns, and create a gap, which Tolle calls “no-mind,” the more there’s a possibility for allowing true, higher-level consciousness to shine. In this state, there is no anxiety, no depression, no fear because we are no longer identifying with the “self” that creates these thought patterns. As we practice this, we identify less and less with the ego, and more and more with the ground of our being.
Being present in the now moment will help you disengage from egoic thoughts, or fear thoughts. All thoughts based on regret of the past or anticipation of the future are outside of full, present consciousness. To be fully at peace and fully conscious, the more time you must spend in the now.
- The secret sauce is the present moment
We are addicted to rumination in the past or future-spinning. Our minds are very rarely in the present moment. The way out of pain is through consciousness. Tolle tells us that most human suffering is unnecessary. It is self-created while the unobserved mind runs your life. Unconscious resistance to what is in the form of judgment, or negativity, relates to how strongly identified we are with what is and how much we resist it. The more we are able to accept what is in the now, the more we can free ourselves from suffering. The ego perceives the “now” as threatening because it cannot operate without time.
- How To Get Well-Acquainted with the now
he mind will do what it does, just don’t mistake yourself as the mind itself. To disidentify with the mind, you just keep practicing being present. You end the delusion of time. Memory and anticipation create an endless preoccupation with past and future, both of which offer you an identity which is illusory. Every moment that you can be in the present, you are dislodging your egoic mind. The now is the only access point into the timeless and formless realm of being.
The essence of meditation is to put us back in touch with the now moment and to cease the endless chatter of a future and past-obsessed ego.
- How the mind avoids the now
To escape the trap of time, an obsession with the past, or the hope of salvation in the future, we must become keenly aware that our minds trend in these two places. Most people cannot free themselves of the mind’s avoidance of the now without deep suffering, which jars them loose from this identification. However, you can also work at it, little by little, to become ever more present and less caught up in memories or future-yearning.
The mind avoids the now by intellectually sparring, egoic posturing, and a million other methods so that you can’t be fully present. The first step is to notice that your mind does this. This is where the “gap” begins to form. When this gap becomes wider and wider, at some point the ego is completely dissolved. Then you are no longer caught up in these crazy mind games, identifying with your thoughts.
- Presence
You can’t think about presence. You can only experience it. Ask yourself, “I wonder what my next thought will be?” then see what thought arises. When you’re in a state of intense presence, thoughts are slow to come. Thoughts only arise when we are not present. When we are “lost in thought,” we aren’t present. We can stay present by staying grounded within our bodies. Body-awareness anchors you in the now.
Myriad forms of life, aside from humans, don’t obsess about time. An oak tree doesn’t ask what time it is, it is constantly just growing toward the sun.
- An inside Job
The body is an access point to higher consciousness. Being-ness arises most easily when we stay present with the physical body and its sensations. The illusion of the self, as the Buddha terms it, arises from the identification with the illusory sense of self, or ego. Words are an abstraction. Thought is an abstraction. Being is an essence, not an abstraction.
- Portals
Meditation on our deeper animating force can help open a portal to the now consciousness. Focused breathing will do the same. When we concentrate on the energy body, we disassociate from the mind’s thinking. Focus on the feelings that arise and don’t get attached to any images that come up. Over time, we can merge the observer with the observed. Tolle calls this an awareness of the ground of being. This frees us from bondage to form.
- Relationships
Most of us wait for relationships – an event in time – to save us. Physical pleasure often offers us psychological gratification which comes from an underlying state of dissatisfaction. This is why many relationships are only temporarily fulfilling. As long as we depend on a relationship with another person to bring us happiness, then we are doomed to more dissatisfaction. Once we are coming from a place of inner fulfillment, we experience freedom from fear, suffering, and a perceived state of desire, or the assumption that we need another person to be happy. We share our happiness with another person, rather than seek it from them.
- Neither happiness or unhappiness but Peace
Unenlightened people require happiness to feel peaceful. Perceived negative experiences can teach us what is real and what is unreal, what matters and what doesn’t. From an enlightened perspective, things are not “good” or “bad.” There is only a higher good which includes the perceived “bad.”
Accidents, illness, death, and other “bad” experiences are not to be disassociated from but dived into to feel completely. In the moment, we can practice forgiveness and allow all moments to be as they are so that resentment isn’t accumulated.
The key message: accept what is. This allows the ego to be quieted, and a more wise consciousness
