Book - The Power of Now

Flash_hound · 8th August 2007, 05:01 PM

I picked up this book after it was suggested at the end of Energy Work by Robert Bruce.

I'm surprised there isn't a thread about this book already. I just finished it and it is a VERY enlightened book. The author had an experience where he was going through deep deppression and woke up one night and said to himself, "I can't live with myself anymore" when he said that he realized that there were two people, I, and myself. He felt like he fell through a vortex and fell asleep. He woke up the next day and felt at utter peace with himself and spent the next 5 months in a state of joy and peace.

The book is in a question and answer format and is VERY good, it has so much stuff in it that I feel like I am going to have to re-read it several times in order to understand it all. But the basic gest of the whole book is that he believes that we should live in the NOW, or in a constant state of meditation, emptying our brains and becoming aware of the fact that we exist in the future and the past and we don't live in the now. That little voice in our head which he calls our ego... By watching our thoughts, and observing that we have a greater Being then our thought, that our conciousness isn't thought, but a greater Being, that exists within us and that all external wants are just there to feed this Ego, we reach what he defines as enlightenment. A simple state of joy and peace, of acceptance, and submit to the fact that what is, is, and that we should first accept the isness of the Now. Before trying to commit change to the Now, to the current situation, that you shouldn't lay judgement and it allow it to effect you internally, that you should lay down iternal resistance.

Have any of you read this book? And how are you doing in trying to exist in the "Now"?

I enjoyed it's peaceful effects on my and I hope that anyone who doesn't own it buys it, as it is very good and potentially life changing if you can manage to exist fully in the now... As I believe I am already talking to partially enlightened people it is probably just the next step in your developmental process.

**Mishell** · 8th August 2007, 05:15 PM

Every time I've gone into the bookstore I end up picking it up off the shelf. I realize I've been guided to buy the book, but never did because of the format it is written in.

You are the 2nd person I know to recommed it. After the first, something really cool happened in my life. Maybe this will work out the same for me.

Thanks.

I just got a very strong Deja vu while writing this post. I guess I will go buy this book when the next paycheck comes in.

**CFTraveler** · 8th August 2007, 06:03 PM

I used to work in a bookstore and got it as a present for myself. I've read it more than once and always get something new out of it every time I read it. It is awesome.

Flash_hound · 8th August 2007, 07:31 PM

Have you managed to fully live in the "Now" yet? I wish we could start a board about trying to live in the "Now" like the Energy Work Board... Because I think it is something that would be more effective when trying to work with a group...

Do you think that is a good idea/ plausible?

**Korpo** · 8th August 2007, 07:37 PM

It does sound like a huge oversimplification to me.

Living in the "Now" without the mind disgressing into past or future is the result of meditation in the Insight/Awareness school. It does not happen by chance. There are reasons why our mind is constantly drifting from the present into the past - because the mind is not ready. It is subject to automatisms and unresolved problems.

It is not something you will yourself to. Living in the present is a state that can be gradually achieved through meditation. I'm currently listening to a meditation CD set that deals with the topic - "The Tao of Letting Go".

I do however wonder - we don't have a meditation sub-forum. I mean, it arises in so many topic - that could be worth a sub-forum, IMO.

Oliver

**Beekeeper** · 9th August 2007, 10:50 AM

I've read it (in fact I'm waiting for a couple I know to give it back- they keep fighting over who's reading it, which is really funny if you think about it). I loved it so much I bought my sister a copy. She didn't get it. I guess it speaks to some people more than others.

I bought it after a friend lent me "A New Earth." I liked that one better but it may have been because I read it first.

**CFTraveler** · 9th August 2007, 02:26 PM

Originally Posted by Korpo

It does sound like a huge oversimplification to me.

Living in the "Now" without the mind disgressing into past or future is the result of meditation in the Insight/Awareness school. It does not happen by chance. There are reasons why our mind is constantly drifting from the present into the past - because the mind is not ready. It is subject to automatisms and unresolved problems.

It is not something you will yourself to. Living in the present is a state that can be gradually achieved through meditation. I'm currently listening to a meditation CD set that deals with the topic - "The Tao of Letting Go".

I do however wonder - we don't have a meditation sub-forum. I mean, it arises in so many topic - that could be worth a sub-forum, IMO.

Oliver

IDK Oliver- Sometimes living in the Now becomes not so much a choice as necessity- and when that happens will has something to do with it.
No, I won't explain more than that.

**Korpo** · 9th August 2007, 02:30 PM

I'm just saying, that it sounds like a very old idea newly shrink-wrapped and oversimplified, that's all.

Oliver

Flash_hound · 9th August 2007, 03:37 PM

He doesn't over simplify it if you read what he is saying.

He is saying that you can't just "let go" and he gives a laundry list of ways to start "moving into" the Now. The reason that it is simplified is because people are already so scared of anything spiritual that it is amazing that he sold as much as he did with what he has in there. If he made it anymore complicated and in "depth" then he would have turned off 95% of the population of the western world. He did what he had to do in order to get people to read his book and still be able to change then and help them. It's a good book and he gives good techniques to move into the now.

Most of them are basic meditative techniques ("observe your thoughts" "feel your body" etc.) but it's still a good book and he goes more in depth and explains what he wants to get well. There is a lot more depth to the book for people who are reading it and I think you should read it Korpo before you make judgements on it...

That being said it is a simplification, but I think that it is a very purposeful simplification.

**Korpo** · 9th August 2007, 08:06 PM

Originally Posted by Flash_hound

Most of them are basic meditative techniques ("observe your thoughts" "feel your body" etc.) but it's still a good book and he goes more in depth and explains what he wants to get well. There is a lot more depth to the book for people who are reading it and I think you should read it Korpo before you make judgements on it...

Nah, that would spoil the fun of nagging!

Oliver