A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club)

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a b c d e f g h Blaskovitch, Sarah (August 1, 2008). "New awakening: controversial book continues to stoke interest". Success . Retrieved August 4, 2013.

Once you have reached a certain level of consciousness, (and if you are reading this, you almost certainly have), you are able to decide what kind of a relationship you want to have with the present moment. Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you want to have with life. Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend, it is up to you to make the first move: become friendly toward it, welcome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative. One decision changes your entire reality.“ Of course different people fulfill different functions in this world. It cannot be otherwise. As far as intellectual or physical abilities are concerned – knowledge, skills, talents, and energy levels – human beings differ widely. What really matters is not what function you fulfill in this world, but whether you identify with your function to such an extent that it takes you over and becomes a role that you play. When you play roles, you are unconscious.“Early chapters of the book give simple explanations and provide a foundation for further concepts and ideas. [2] In "Chapter One: The Flowering of Human Consciousness", Tolle discusses the "inherent dysfunction in humanity" and proposes ways that readers may rise above it. [2] He then develops these concepts in chapters two, three, and four by offering his descriptions of the ego and its "vices." [2] In the book, Tolle defines the term ego as an "illusory sense of self" [5] based on one's memories and thoughts. [6] In chapters five and six Tolle uses the phrase pain body to describe the human tendency to carry "an accumulation of old emotional pain". [7] In chapters seven, eight, and nine: "Inner Space, Inner Purpose and Who You Truly Are", Tolle makes many distinctions: between "knowing yourself and knowing about yourself"; between the "Dreamer" and the "dream"; between the objects of consciousness and the space of consciousness; between outer space and inner space; and between outer purpose and inner purpose. In chapter ten, "A New Earth", Tolle gives his readers suggestions for implementation of his ideas in their personal life but cautions them by saying: "You are still an ordinary human. What is extraordinary is what comes through you into this world". [2] Reception [ edit ] I was a skeptic at first glance. It was only moments after i read about "feeling my inner-body" that i was feeling my pillow and sleeping soundly (and this is no small feat.)

There are so many positive things occurring that are not considered newsworthy, but are in fact of much greater significance than any of those daily acts of unconsciousness. Those changes in fact started to arise long before A New Earth and The Power of Now were written. Those books were written to speed up the process of spiritual awakening that had already begun, as well as to enable greater numbers of people to become part of that process and thus find a deeper meaning in their lives that transcends the merely personal dimension of existence. She looked puzzled briefly, and after a minute or so of sitting silently, I suddenly noticed a significant shift in her energy field. She said, ‘This is weird. I’m still unhappy, but now there is space around it. It seems to matter less.’ This was the first time I heard somebody put it like that: There is space around my unhappiness. That space, of course, comes when there is inner acceptance of whatever you are experiencing in the present moment.” She was quiet for a moment. Suddenly she looked impatient, as if she was about to get up, and said angrily, “No, I don't want to accept this.” “Who is speaking?” I asked her. “You or the unhappiness in you? Can you see that your unhappiness about being unhappy is just another layer of unhappiness?” She became quiet again. “I am not asking you to do anything. All I'm asking is that you find out whether it is possible for you to allow those feelings to be there. In other words, and this may sound strange, if you don't mind being unhappy, what happens to the unhappiness? Don't you want to find out?”The surrendered state of consciousness opens up the vertical dimension in your life, the dimension of depth. Something will then come forth from that dimension into this world, something of infinite value that otherwise would have remained unmanifested. Some people who surrendered to severe limitation become healers or spiritual teachers. Others work selflessly to lessen human suffering or bring some creative gift into this world.” But nothing can satisfy the ego for long. As long as it runs your life, there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.“ The physical body is no more than a misperception of who you are. In many ways, it is a microcosmic version of outer space.” Until now, human intelligence, which is no more than a minute aspect of universal intelligence, has been distorted and misused by the ego. I call that ‘intelligence in the service of madness.’“

The self-help author, highlights the benefits of life spent "in the moment" and gives concrete exercises to help 'transcend our ego-bas When doing becomes infused with the timeless quality of Being, that is success. Unless you are present, you lose yourself in what you do. When you contemplate the unfathomable depth of space or listen to the silence in the early hours just before sunrise, something within you resonates with it as if in recognition. You then sense the vast depth of space as your own depth, and you know that precious stillness that has no form to be more deeply who you are than any of the things that make up the content of your life.” The ego identifies with having, but its satisfaction in having is a relatively shallow and short-­lived one. Concealed within it remains a deep-­seated sense of dissatisfaction, of incompleteness, of ‘not enough.’ ‘I don’t have enough yet,’ by which the ego really means, ‘I am not enough yet.’“If we look more deeply into humanity’s ancient religions and spiritual traditions, we will find that underneath the many surface differences there are two core insights that most of them agree on. The words they use to describe those insights differ, yet they all point to a twofold fundamental truth. The first part of this truth is the realization that the ‘normal’ state of mind of most human beings contains a strong element of what we might call dysfunction or even madness.”