Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose—and to Yoga!

By Brooke Hewes, 7-03-08

As far as I can tell, Eckhart Tolle is a yogi—or at least he’s talking the same talk. And, as illustrated in his two bestselling books The Power of Now and A New Earth, walking the same walk. Clearly, he’s awake. He sees beyond the veil of illusion that keeps most of us believing that we are not all connected; that we are not all, inherently, made of love; that we are not each particular articulations of divine consciousness (of God, Buddha, or whatever it is that you choose to call the spiritual thread that connects and enlivens all beings).

I have been reading The Power of Now (1999, Namaste Publishing) slowly, on and off, for going on two years. I keep it in beside my bed and often read a page or two before bed. I bring it camping. I place it beside my mat and flip through the worn pages before practicing to recall my purpose: to remain present (never minding those meddling thoughts about dinner; those shoulds attached to various postures; those distracting aches in my back). Invariably, my flips land on the following dog-eared topics:

• Pretty much all of Chapter One, “You Are Not Your Mind,” where Tolle sheds simple light on enlightenment: “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.” The next logical question—what is Being? –is quickly clarified: “Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death,” which is accessible “to you now as your deepest self, your true nature.” The stumbling blocks, the veil, are those mental monkeys that seemed to be time released by the ego, consisting of past fears, future anticipations and trepidations, other people’s stories taken as seamless truths. In other words, all that veils reality, which is, only, the present.

• Page 90 of the chapter titled “Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now.” The past cannot survive in the presence, nor does it need to, writes Tolle. Why? “There is no need to investigate the unconscious past in you except as it manifests at the moment as a thought, an emotion, a desire, a reaction or an external event that happens to you.” Whew! That’s a load off. No point in delving into the past, that seemingly bottomless pit. Experience the past only as it manifests in the moment. And how to you know this is happening or what to do? Trust. Trust that by just staying present (and by “just” I don’t mean to say it’s easy), all that needs to be addressed will surface. 

• I love what he refers to as the “gaps of no mind” throughout the book. It is in these breaks of mental wrangling that we experience joy, the intrinsic emotion of Presence.

• And of course, “the joy of being” on page 67, which requires not shifting what you are doing—that’s a big ol’ illusion. Rather, shift how you are doing. Let expectations fade in favor of experience.  Doing this, of course, requires yielding to what is—perhaps even, as Katie Byron suggests in her namesake book, by “loving what is”—and smiling at the resistance to the present that subsequently fades. Joy, after all, is the release of tension, of which resistance is the armed guard.

A New Earth (2006, Plum Printing) more or less says the same things, though the format is more user friendly. And though I appreciate the questions-answer format of The Power of Now, it encourages a piecemeal reading (which, in hindsight, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the message is one that needs to be planted, watered and long tended before flowering). The newer book is difficult to put down—perhaps not a page turner, but entirely fluid and engaging. In fact, writes Tolle, the crescendoing nature of the prose fosters its purpose: to initiate an awakening. Or, to use the flower metaphor again, at least propagate the seeds that eventually mature into blossoms. And it’s not just antidotes and tips on the topic of spiritual dawning; reading the story, he writes, will actually purport the flower blooming into its Presence—its mature, beautiful being. As we read, we transform. We become conscious. We, if ready, awaken.

As with most popular religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism—Tolle presents the premise of “inherited dysfunction.” Whether “original sin,” “suffering,” or “maya,” though, each religion offers a way out. Tolle writes about this dysfunction in terms of the mind as it is controlled by the ego and what he terms the “pain body,” both of which keep us prisoners to the monkiness of human existence. We are trapped not because we have an ego or pain body, but because we identify with these sneaky versions of our non-Self. The ego tricks and often traps us, just as we are roped into believing ourselves to be the mental or physical facets of our painbody—the negative energy field that causes depression, anger, anxiety, chronic pain and that desperately wants to cloud our consciousness. Both the ego and the pain body work hard to keep our minds off the present, for in the present they lose steam. They deflate like tired balloons trying their darnedest to stand tall against gravity.

Sounds like yoga to me. Each time we step on our mats for asana or meditation, we practice being present. We practice coming back to the breath as it travels through our bodies. We practice watching the monkiness of the mind and the small tantrums of the body without being swallowed by the drama. And as we let these veils fall to the background and our breath (Presence) fill the foreground, we wake up. Our consciousness flowers as our connection to the Source becomes clear—as it becomes our experience.

As a path, Yoga leads us to the inherent truth about our divine nature. Buoyed by 4,000-year old techniques, Yoga helps us escape what a teacher of mine recently called the “spin master of the mind.” Both of Tolle’s books are also paths toward the same refreshing end, which will, he is sure of, create a new earth where “the momentum in the collective consciousness grows” and our innate dysfunction is replaced by the sheer, inherent joy of Being.

Keep in mind, as Tolle suggests in his last chapter under the subheading “The New Earth is No Utopia,” our only job is to live fully in each moment and, without dragging our heels, let the future unfold within the space of here and now: “Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free.”

So onward we practice, each small moment by moment. Thank you Eckhart Tolle (and, of course, Oprah for her book-club endorsement) for so skillfully reminding us.