This concludes my book study of The Power of Now.

It’s been interesting these last few weeks.

My eldest child got COVID, but they harassed her to return to work too early and she is not healing. I am upset about a situation that I can’t help.

My middle daughter got her wisdom teeth out.

My third child got their cast off their leg and is starting physical therapy.

I have lots of responsibilities and my schedule is full.

I love how this chapter reflects on illness and injury and how being present, conscious, in The Now gives enlightenment to tragic circumstances in our lives. I have longed to express that inner knowledge that I knew in my soul for decades.

I have felt saddened by so many who wear an illness on their sleeves like a badge of honor. Many American Christians attest to suffering as following Jesus and I am always bothered by that sentiment.

Chapter Ten: The Power of Surrender

Favorite quotes:

To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action.

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.

Let me give you a visual analogy to illustrate the point I am making. You are walking along a path at night, surrounded by a thick fog. But you have a powerful flashlight that cuts through the fog and creates a narrow, clear space in front of you. The fog is your life situation, which includes past and future; the flashlight is your conscious presence; the clear space is the Now.

It is true that only an unconscious person will try to use or manipulate others, but it is equally true that only an unconscious person can be used and manipulated.

Then one day, in the middle of an argument, you will suddenly realize that you have a choice, and you may decide to drop your own reaction — .just to see what happens. You surrender.

Nonresistance doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. All it means is that any “doing” becomes nonreactive.

Remember the deep wisdom underlying the practice of Eastern martial arts: Don’t resist the opponent’s force. Yield to overcome.

In Taoism, there is a term called wu wei, which is usually translated as “actionless activity” or “sitting quietly doing nothing.”

Until there is surrender, unconscious role-playing constitutes a large part of human interaction. In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real.

What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover you discover your true and essential invulnerability.

Surrender does not transform what is, at least not directly. Surrender transforms you. When you are transformed, your whole world is transformed, because the world is only a reflection.

When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance. If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything “bad” that happens in your life – use it for enlightenment.

Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.

Are you seriously ill and feeling angry now about what I have just said? Then that is a clear sign that the illness has become part of your sense of self and that you are now protecting your identity — as well as protecting the illness. The condition that is labeled “illness” has nothing to do with who you truly are.

As far as the still unconscious majority of the population is concerned, only a critical limit-situation has the potential to crack the hard shell of the ego and force them into surrender and so into the awakened state. A limit-situation arises when through some disaster, drastic upheaval, deep loss, or suffering your whole world is shattered and doesn’t make sense anymore. It is an encounter with death, be it physical or psychological. The egoic mind, the creator of this world, collapses. Out of the ashes of the old world, a new world can then come into being.

Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender. By giving full attention, you use the power of the Now, which is the power of your presence. No hidden pocket of resistance can survive in it. Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no negativity, can survive.

God is Being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not conscious of God.

Choice implies consciousness — a high degree of consciousness.

Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.

It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion.

You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary.

When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.

You might also like:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine

Whew, I feel like this chapter, it all started coming together.

I’ve felt an awakening coming the last ten years or so. I knew there was more to religion than how American Christians teach and live. I’ve gone through many cycles of despair and joy; it’s a constant spiral of learning.

I feel like I’ve come back around to the mystic spiritualism of my youth from evangelical Christianity and seeking Truth.

I’ve grown on a path to inner healing despite all the outside forces trying their darnedest to keep me stagnant, comfortable, status quo. I lost so many friends and even family members in my quest for Being.

Some days it’s hard. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. I sometimes wish I could be ignorant, mainstream, basic: bliss. It’s often unpleasant seeing all the people around me living under capitalism, in their pain-body, striving to keep up appearances.

I know how far I’ve come from when my eldest was a teenager and would hurt me immensely with her words and behaviors. I would internalize it all and feel so bad, wondering what I did wrong, how could I make it better. Now that my third child is acting out in similar ways, I take it in stride, with so much more peace. I don’t take it personally. I know they are in pain and lashing out and I allow it and I wait for it to pass.

I like how Tolle differentiates between happiness and joy.

I mentioned last week I was also reading The Island by Aldous Huxley.

Lo, and behold, this allusion to the book is in this chapter of The Power of Now! It’s incredible to me that I just happened to decide to read these simultaneously. I often like to read a fiction and nonfiction book side by side. These two go well together.

There is a novel by Aldous Huxley called Island, written in his later years when he became very interested in spiritual teachings. It tells the story of a man shipwrecked on a remote island cut off from the rest of the world. This island contains a unique civilization. The unusual thing about it is that its inhabitants, unlike those of the rest of the world, are actually sane. The first thing that the man notices are the colorful parrots perched in the trees, and they seem to be constantly croaking the words “Attention. Here and Now. Attention. Here and Now.” We later learn that the islanders taught them these words in order to be reminded continuously to stay present.

Tolle alludes to The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism in various ways:

The First Noble Truth: There is suffering. Suffering should be understood. Suffering has been understood.

The Second Noble Truth: There is the origin of suffering, which is attachment to desire. Desire should be let go of. Desire has been let go of.

The Third Noble Truth: There is the cessation of suffering. The cessation of suffering should be realized. The cessation of suffering has been realized.

The Fourth Noble Truth: There is the Eightfold Path—the way out of suffering. This path should be developed. This path has been fully developed.

Chapter Nine: Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There is Peace

Favorite quotes:

Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

And when you live in complete acceptance of what is — which is the only sane way to live — there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore. There is only a higher good – which includes the “bad.”

Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment — allow it to be as it is — then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.

For example, when a loved one has just died, or you feel your own death approaching, you cannot be happy. It is impossible. But you can be at peace. There may be sadness and tears, but provided that you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. This is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite.

“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?” This was written two thousand years ago by Marcus Aurelius, one of those exceedingly rare humans who possessed worldly power as well as wisdom.

Whenever you are not honoring the present moment by allowing it to be, you are creating drama.

You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person.

“No one who is at one with himself can even conceive of conflict,” states A Course in Miracles.

There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of failure, when they wither or disintegrate and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise, or for transformation to happen. If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refusing to go with the flow of life, and you will suffer.

Many illnesses are created through fighting against the cycles of low energy, which are vital for regeneration.

The cyclical nature of the universe is closely linked with the impermanence of all things and situations. The Buddha made this a central part of his teaching.

Whenever a major loss of one kind or another occurs, just become deeply unhappy or make themselves ill. They cannot distinguish between their life and their life situation.

Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or struggle to attain.

Many people never realize that there can be no “salvation” in anything they do, possess, or attain. Those who do realize it often become world-weary and depressed: If nothing can give you true fulfillment, what is there left to strive for, what is the point in anything?

A Course in Miracles rightly points out that, whenever you are unhappy, there is the unconscious belief that the unhappiness “buys” you what you want.

No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it.

I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats. Even ducks have taught me important spiritual lessons.

Recurring negative emotions do sometimes contain a message, as do illnesses.

Somebody says something to you that is rude or designed to hurt. Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as attack, defense, or withdrawal, you let it pass right through you. Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable. You can still tell that person that his or her behavior is unacceptable, if that is what you choose to do. But that person no longer has the power to control your inner state. You are then in your power – not in someone else’s, nor are you run by your mind.

Having gone beyond the mind-made opposites, you become like a deep lake. The outer situation of your life and whatever happens there is the surface of the lake. Sometimes calm, sometimes windy and rough, according to the cycles and seasons. Deep down, however, the lake is always undisturbed. You are the whole lake, not just the surface, and you are in touch with your own depth, which remains absolutely still.

True relationship becomes possible only when there is an awareness of Being.

Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures.

One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also die. Yet you are still there — the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

To have deep empathy for the suffering of another being certainly requires a high degree of consciousness but represents only one side of compassion. It is not complete. True compassion goes beyond empathy or sympathy.

Just as the images in a dream are symbols of inner states and feelings, so our collective reality is largely a symbolic expression of fear and of the heavy layers of negativity that have accumulated in the collective human psyche.

Your primary task is not to seek salvation through creating a better world, but to awaken out of identification with form.

Only those who have transcended the world can bring about a better world.

When you are fully present and people around you manifest unconscious behavior, you won’t feel the need to react to it, so you don’t give it any reality. Your peace is so vast and deep that anything that is not peace disappears into it as if it had never existed. This breaks the karmic cycle of action and reaction. Animals, trees, flowers will feel your peace and respond to it. You teach through being, through demonstrating the peace of God. You become the “light of the world,” an emanation of pure consciousness, and so you eliminate suffering on the level of cause. You eliminate unconsciousness from the world.

To recognize the primacy of Being, and thus work on the level of cause, does not exclude the possibility that your compassion may simultaneously manifest on the level of doing and of effect by alleviating suffering whenever you come across it. When a hungry person asks you for bread and you have some, you will give it. But as you give the bread, even though your interaction may only be very brief, what really matters is this moment of shared Being, of which the bread is only a symbol. A deep healing takes place within it. In that moment, there is no giver, no receiver.

All evils are the effect of unconsciousness. You can alleviate the effects of unconsciousness, but you cannot eliminate them unless you eliminate their cause. True change happens within, not without.

Without a profound change in human consciousness, the world’s suffering is a bottomless pit. So don’t let your compassion become one-sided. Empathy with someone else’s pain or lack and a desire to help need to be balanced with a deeper realization of the eternal nature of all life and the ultimate illusion of all pain. Then let your peace flow into whatever you do and you will be working on the levels of effect and cause simultaneously.

Remember: Just as you cannot fight the darkness, so you cannot fight unconsciousness.

Raise awareness by disseminating information, or at the most, practice passive resistance. But make sure that you carry no resistance within, no hatred, no negativity.

“Love your enemies,” said Jesus, which, of course, means “have no enemies.”

You might also like:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight

What is true salvation?

This chapter was a hard one for me.

I struggle with interpersonal relationships.

I have no friends.

My husband and I for sure have our ups and downs. It’s difficult to stay in The Now when we’re constantly hurting each other.

The concepts mentioned seem so simple, but they’re very complicated to implement, and have to be recalled again and again and again.

My parents just turned 80. I just turned 46. I know this chapter is more about partnerships and romantic relationships, but my estrangement from my parents affects every single aspect of my life. My memories swing in and whop me upside the head. I feel triggered by my husband and kids and I have to be still to gather myself so I don’t lash out. I don’t always succeed.

I am reminded of all the marriage counselors, both Christian and secular, who pointed their fingers at me, the wife, the woman. I never did enough, am not enough. I still see this online every day – on social media, from abused wives and girlfriends, from pastors, from Christian counselors – blaming women.

Tolle describes how women are more connected to emotions and the body, but he doesn’t blame women for having to carry an entire relationship between two adult people.

Tolle even discusses how women experience personal and collective pain from misogyny.

I am currently also reading Island by Aldous Huxley and this book espouses similar mystic or alternative ideas about society and relationships.

Chapter Eight: Enlightened Relationships

Favorite quotes:

You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle.

Unless and until you access the consciousness frequency of presence, all relationships, and particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional.

They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you.

For love to flourish, the light of your presence needs to be strong enough so that you no longer get taken over by the thinker or the pain-body and mistake them for who you are.

The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way.

What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God.

True communication is communion — the realization of oneness, which is love.

But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world.

To relinquish judgment does not mean that you do not recognize dysfunction and unconsciousness when you see it. It means “being the knowing” rather than “being the reaction” and the judge.

If there isn’t an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.

Your main task as a woman now is to transmute the pain-body so that it no longer comes between you and your true self, the essence of who you are.

A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of truth.

Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not “fit in” with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.

If you cannot be at ease with yourself when you are alone, you will seek a relationship to cover up your unease.

I think The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is a good book to deal with pain-body concepts. We can heal ourselves and our relationships.

You might also like:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven