http://fredasvoice.blogspot.com/2009/... ( )

Reynal & Hitchcock(1939)

Slow to start but incredible insights on the ego, who we truly are. ( )

Builds on The Power of Now ( )

Eckhart Tolle's latest guide to spiritual living has proved to be a phenomenal success on the usual bestseller circuit thanks partly to the Oprah Book Club seal of approval which in turn has led to the pioneering webinars that millions of people have already participated in and Christian critics and foes alike have ceremoniously bashed.

The predecessor to Tolle's current chef d'oeuvre, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, was an instrumental tool, a guide to living one's best life right now. In fact, I eventually read Tolle's The Power of Now with glee (after picking it up half a dozen times) because it captured the inner turmoil I had long been feeling about regarding my inability or unwillingness to live mindfully, full of awareness, and always in the present.

As discussed elsewhere, I have often found myself significantly melancholic about the past and always weaving dreams and tales of the future. In other words, I scarcely live in the moment. Whereas The Power of Now was difficult to infuse enthusiasm in the reader and was full of jargon, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose is remarkably easy to understand and it captures the reader's attention and imagination so thoroughly. Indeed, Tolle has cleaned up his writing and the words, ideas, and pages flow into one's mind and consciousness. It is like having a leisurely conversation with the spiritual teacher.

Since childhood, I have been seeking inner peace and struggling to balance the demands of societal mores and demands against my personal values and desires. Indeed, my precocious curiousity for the unknown and the other and my existential thought processes have gradually led me to seek something more. In a world fraught with struggles to make slow and simple living more than a fad or a mantra, I think Tolle's simple and sublime teachings are echoes of our subconscious thoughts and desires. It is time we honour them and bring them alive instead of being a prisoner to our worries, paranoid thoughts, and being captive to endless noise and prattle without knowing how to be still and seeking our true selves instead of seeking them in the next relationship, the next adventure, the next job before we end up disillusioned, disappointed, and blame outside events and triggers for what is merely an imbalance of our very selves. ( )