Mindfulness
by Eckhart Tolle
Are you the voice in your head?
Until he was nearly 30, Eckhart Tolle lived with almost constant anxiety and spells of suicidal depression. One night he kept thinking he couldn't live with himself any more. Then the thought struck him as odd. Were there two of him, an I and a self it couldn't stand?
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Tolle's first practice is to listen to the voice in your head as if it belonged to someone else, without judging it. The moment you notice a thought, you've stepped out of it. You're the one watching, and the thought loses some of its hold on you.
Tolle has no problem with clock time, meaning diaries, deadlines and learning from mistakes. The trouble is psychological time, living in the past or future, like replaying an argument or waiting for the weekend, while now goes unnoticed. Most worry, he argues, lives in a future that hasn't arrived.
That's Tolle's name for the old emotional pain everyone carries. Much of the time it sleeps. Then something small, a tone of voice or a late reply, wakes it, and it feeds on drama and gloomy thinking. Catching it as it wakes, instead of becoming it, starts to weaken it.
In a situation you can't stand, Tolle says you have three options. Leave it, change it, or accept it completely. Staying and complaining is the one choice that only adds suffering. He calls full acceptance surrender, and it doesn't stop you acting. You just act without the inner fight.
The watcher
You are the one who notices your thoughts. You don't have to be ruled by them.
Pain-body
Tolle calls old hurt that flares up the pain-body. Watch it rise without feeding it.
Now
The present moment is the only one you ever live in. Past and future are thoughts.
Clock time
Use time to plan, then come back. Most worry lives in a future that hasn't happened.
Inner body
Feel the life in your hands and body. It keeps you anchored in the present.
A story from the book
Tolle says he fell asleep that night and woke into a deep calm that didn't go away. He spent much of the next two years on park benches, content to watch the world go by. Later he set out to understand what had happened. This book is the result.
One thing to try
A few times a day this week, stop and feel your hands from the inside, the warmth or tingle in them, without looking. Tolle calls this sensing the inner body. It pulls attention out of your thoughts and into the present, and you can do it in a queue.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. The Power of Now comes with a Name That Idea round to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appAre you the voice in your head? Until he was nearly 30, Eckhart Tolle lived with almost constant anxiety and spells of suicidal depression. One night he kept thinking he couldn't live with himself any more. Then the thought struck him as odd. Were there two of him, an I and a self it couldn't stand?
Watch the thinker; Two kinds of time; The pain-body; Leave it, change it, accept it.
A few times a day this week, stop and feel your hands from the inside, the warmth or tingle in them, without looking. Tolle calls this sensing the inner body. It pulls attention out of your thoughts and into the present, and you can do it in a queue.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from The Power of Now in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Name That Idea round to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
