Blog# 10272019book
My reading of Chapter 5, The State of Presence in Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.
It’s Not What You Think It Is
A few notes from lines I highlighted as I read this chapter:
You can’t think about presence, and the mind can’t understand it. Understanding presence is being present.
page 77
Once you slip out of consciousness, you are thinking. There are degrees of presence and only when we are immersed in thought (aka absent) are we unconscious.
Tolle talks about being “rooted within yourself” and defines this as inhabiting your body fully.
Body awareness keeps you present. It anchors you to the Now.
page 78
The Esoteric Meaning of “Waiting”
Tolle says that the state of presence is like that of waiting in total alertness, being absolutely awake and still, a state where all your attention is in the Now. He calls this alert presence.
There is a discussion about a misinterpretation by some of the writers of the Gospels, that these are parables that had erroneous interpretations. Tolle said that “These are parables not about the end of the world but about the end of psychological time” (p.79). Tolle believes the parables are about the transcendence of the egoic mind “and the possibility of living in an entirely new state of consciousness” (p. 79).
Beauty Arises in the Stillness of Your Presence
The wider the time gap between perception and thought, the more depth there is to you as a human being, which is to say the more conscious you are.
page 81
Realizing Pure Consciousness
There is nothing that you need to understand before you can become present.
Page 81
Christ: The Reality of Your Divine Presence
Never personalize Christ. Don’t make Christ into a form identity. Avatars, divine mothers, enlightened masters, the very few that are real, are not special persons. Without a false self to uphold, defend, and feed, they are more simple, more ordinary than the ordinary man or woman. Anyone with a strong ego would regard them as insignificant or, more likely not see them at all.
Use the master’s presence to reflect your own identity beyond name and form back to you and to become more intensely present yourself. You will soon realize that there is no “mine” or “yours” in presence. Presence is one.
Page 87
Heidi Macomber 