Book Review of a Best Seller from Eckhart Tolle

Book: A New Earth- Awakening to your life’s purpose

Author: Eckhart Tolle

What is the purpose of my life? How do I make my life more meaningful? How often have we asked ourselves?Countless times for most of us.  Yet most of the time we do not have an answer.Yet there is this book which claims to have the answer  what we are searching for.After the highly successful book “Power of Now” and several other books, Eckhart Tolle has written  this new spiritual  book.

The word awakening in the title has not been used in the traditional sense. Rather it is a sign post to enlightenment. Now is that really the purpose our lives?To get enlightened?  Then what about money, what about power, what about my job, we ask ourselves? Am I supposed to sit down all day and meditate? Is this meditation going to fill my purse or stomach?

If I could put all that I have learnt from this book in one line it would be “True success is giving your full attention to what you are doing right now”

Now imagine, how your job would be, if you were to focus on it completely for 8 hours in a  day, 5 days a week and 52+ weeks in a year. Is it possible that you would ever produce a low quality work?  Is it possible that , you would be unsuccessful?

What would be the quality of your relationships, if you focused only on your wife, spouse or children when you are with them? What if  you listened carefully to each and every word  every time without bringing in any judgment.? Would your life be ever deprived of love?

The answers are obvious aren’t they?

Yet why do we ignore the present and live in the past or the future? Why are so many people “Waiting for something to happen, to start living”? It’s the way we are.

Through out the book he uses quotes from Budhhist philosophy, Bible, Taoism, Hinduism, Sufism to stress that all philosophies point to the same essential truth. What he is saying is not some new age mystical stuff, but has been said repeatedly by the torch bearers of consciousness like, Jesus, Buddha, Vivekananda and in recent times by Deepak Chopra and Dalai Lama.

What Eckhart is saying through this book is to start living our lives in a different manner. Because when we start giving our whole hearted attention to what we are doing now, it opens up the dimension of consciousness, the sacred  to come into our lives.

 According to Tolle, most of us confuse our life situations or problems with our lives. Our lives and us are in fact one. What we can do is, accept the life situation, remove ourselves from the situation or change the situation. But no matter what we do , we should give it our  fullest attention. This never means denial of the situation or doing nothing. But it is in fact the most empowering thing that one can ever do. Acceptance of a situation negates any kind of negativity, and puts us in the touch with the power of God and brings in the sacredness in our lives

On the outer level of form, our purpose can always change. Our outer purpose is always transient. But inside ourselves our only purpose is to be in the Now, to be one with life and let it flow through us.

Living in this way, we become the hole in the flute, that God’s breath flows through.
Living in this way, makes, doing anything a joyful experience.

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Let's make, each step in our lives joyous and beautiful.

Cheers,

Anupam

NB:  Oprah became a huge fan of this book and started an Oprah web class on the new earth along with Eckhart Tolle. I suggest you check them out on You Tube.