Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy 

For the last few weeks, I have been reading a book called "Power of Now" by Eckhard Tolle and finished it finally last week. I just couldn't put down. I was madly underlining everything. There wasn't a wasted word; every sentence he wrote went straight to the heart. 

Early in the book, Tolle relates how, after years of depression, he reached a place of utter despair and said to himself,  " I just cannot live with myself longer." In that moment, on the brink of suicide, he suddenly realized how odd that thought was. His next thought was, "If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with.

This intellectual breakthrough led Tolle directly into a radical experience of personal transformation. With the awareness of these two apparent identities- the "I" that was the consciousness observing the thoughts, and the "myself" that was doing the thinking-he understood for the first time that he was not the content of his mind. When he stopped identifying with those thoughts and could observe them as separate from himself, he found love and joy where before there had been fear and suffering. He writes that from that point on, there was a permanent undercurrent of peace in his life.

Most of us remember  hearing the phrase " I think, therefore I am". However what Tolle says, in effect, is, "I am therefore I think."

Tolle's book helped me to understand that no matter what is going on in your mind, it's not really who you are. Your mind is a tool of the self- a part of your being-but not the real you. The real you stands behind your mind-and is far greater than the mind itself. I realized that I was no longer at the mercy of my mind; even if fearful thoughts came into my mind, I wasn't fearful. I didn't have to be gripped by emotions but could watch them come and go.

What Tolle said wasn't new, but because it was presented in the context of his own life story, it had tremendous clarity and power.  All fear comes from living in the past or the future, which are both in our minds- in reality, it is always now. As long as we stay with the Now, we have peace. Knowing this, we can choose peace at any moment. I learned to find peace in the moment and this is something which I need to take it forward in the future.

I think the truth and wisdom that Tolle bring forth can help anyone in a time of crisis, as well as in everyday life. Emotions come and go, but we are not those emotions; they just pass through us. At any moment, we can choose to participate in fear and doubt, or we can turn to the Now and find peace. Then, from that place of peace, we can continue forward to deal with the situation at hand. Our life situation may be the same, but we can alter our response to it. The peace that I found in the moment of Now is at the core of every individual being and also the collective Being of everything that is.