Part 1 - Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now Notes and Summaries

(I've decided that it will immensely help me to deal with the lurker situation by doing notes and summaries for The Power of Now.  Also, I've found that limiting my viewing of world news and intel sites to 1-2 times per day greatly helps me to be more balanced.  I'm feeling very strong guidance to detach from such events and news.  Others may do so as well, or not, as they see fit.)


When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it cannot be understood mentally.  

Prior to I am this or I am that, is I Am.

Don’t be used by the mind.  Instead, be the user of the mind.  

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker.  Knowing this enables you to observe the entity.  When you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness is activated.  Beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – all of this arises from beyond the thinking mind.

If the voice in the head starts chattering, listen to it.  Be there as the witnessing presence.

There is the voice in the head, and there is your presence that listens to it.  This sense of your own presence is not a thought.  It arises from beyond the mind.

When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought, but also of yourself as the witness of the thought.  A new dimension of consciousness has come in.  You feel your I Am Presence – your deeper self, behind the thought.  The thought then loses power over you because you are no longer energizing it through identification with it.  You can experience liberating gaps of “no-mind.”  You can access the joy of Being.  This is one of many ways to access your true self beyond the mind.

Become intensely conscious of the present moment.

Take a routine activity and give it your full attention, so that it becomes an end in itself.

Focus on your breath, even if only for one or two breaths.

Learn to dis-identify from your mind.

One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child.  This means your sense of self no longer depends on the mind.

Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.

You can use your mind for practical purposes, but you can be free from involuntary internal dialogue.  There can be inner stillness.

You can oscillate between thought and no-mind.  The greatest genius is accessed beyond the mind.  All true artists, whether they realize it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.  The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight.

Even the greatest scientists say their greatest insights came at a time of mental quietude.  The greatest innovators agree that “Thinking plays a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself.”  The majority of scientists lack creativity not because they don’t know how to think, but because they don’t know how to stop thinking!

The workings of the body are far greater than the mind.  When the mind reconnects with this, it becomes a wonderful tool, serving something greater than itself.

Mind also includes emotions and mental-emotional patterns.  Emotions are the body interacting with the mind.

Destructive thoughts and emotions feed one another as a viscous cycle.

People who carry a high amount of anger in them without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked verbally or even physically by other people, often for no apparent reason.  Their emotion of anger activates anger in others.

Feel your body from within to get in touch with your emotions.  Thoughts can lie but the body tells the truth – not the truth of who you are, but the truth of the state of your mind-body.

As with thoughts, emotions can be watched with presence.  If there are not emotions present, take attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body.  It is the doorway into Being.

Emotions are dualistic, as pain vs. pleasure.  Beyond this duality, joy can be felt as a Good that requires no opposite.