Power of Now, The : Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

What is the power of Now?

None other than the power of your presence, your consciousness liberated from thought forms.

So deal with the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a "self" out of it. Don't misunderstand: attention is essential, but not to the past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your behavior, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There's the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but nonjudgementally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. You find yourself by coming into the present.

Contents:

CHAPTER ONE: You Are Not Your Mind

CHAPTER TWO: Consciousness - The Way Out of Pain

CHAPTER THREE: Moving Deeply into the Now

CHAPTER FOUR: Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now

CHAPTER FIVE: The State of Presence

CHAPTER SIX: The Inner Body

CHAPTER SEVEN: Portals into the Unmanifested

CHAPTER EIGHT: Enlightened Relationships

CHAPTER NINE: Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There Is Peace

CHAPTER TEN: The Meaning of Surrender

Excerpts:

The Power to Choose

.....So break the old pattern of present-moment denial and present-moment resistance. Make it your practice to withdraw attention from past and future whenever they are not needed. Step out of the time dimension as much as possible in everyday life. If you find it hard to enter the Now directly, start by observing the habitual tendency of your mind to want to escape from the Now. You will observe that the future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory. ....


.....The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm. .....
End excerpts