A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
In A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Eckhart Tolle simply and beautifully employs spiritual parables from many traditions to distill and illuminate the One truth to which they point: God in me; me in God. Form (the material world) is interpenetrated by nothingness (space, quantum possibilities, consciousness, spirit, God). If so many cultures can agree that we, as form, are permeated with spirit, why do we experience so much separation and suffering? Tolle states that suffering is created when the ego identifies completely with form:1. Physical Forms: personal, socio and spiritual conditioning from the past (such as gender, social status and race), 2. Feeling Forms: accumulated emotional pain, and 3. Thought Forms: beliefs, expectations and judgments.“This results in total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every “other” as well as the Source. This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering and delusion.” Tolle posits that this forgetfulness creates a schism between what we perceive and the realm of possibilities—or spirit. This schism is the result of an outmoded egoic consciousness. Does that mean that ego is bad? We use this ego consciousness as a vehicle to identify with form. It’s how we experience and engage the world! It’s in this identification and mastery of form, that we find our security, certainty and power. Look at the vast possibilities we’ve created in our world: technological convenience, accessibility of information, sanitation, medical science, culture, etcetera. Tolle does not say that ego is bad, but suggests, however, that it’s no longer a necessary vehicle. Eckhart Tolle believes that it is imperative that our ego consciousness evolves. He doesn’t urge us to stop thinking—but to stop identifying with our thinking. Nor does he urge us to stop suffering, but to recognize it as a messenger to be conscious. How can we do that when we are suffering? Tolle offers an alternative to identifying and defending our old physical, feeling and thought forms. He calls this Awakened Doing and defines three modalities: acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm. If you are not in the state of at least one of them, no matter what you are doing, you are creating suffering for yourself or others. 1. Acceptance is to assume responsibility for your identification with beliefs, expectations and judgments. If you are living an old situation over and over in your thinking, you are not in the present. Bring your consciousness here. This is what you have control of. If you’ve relinquished your thoughts and still cannot accept what you’re doing—if it’s causing you suffering—stop. 2. To experience Enjoyment is to find the joy of conscious Presence in whatever you are doing. Instead of identifying with your feeling, obsessively wanting something or expecting joy to come from a certain activity, you bring yourself to the present moment. Perhaps in this moment, no matter how small, you are alive and alert. Practice this, and each moment will expand so that you begin to experience connection to the universal creative power. Joy flows from there into activities that were once tedious or painful, because a new consciousness is awakened in you. 3. Enthusiasm is the spiritual will or vision manifesting through you. To find your relationship to enthusiasm you must recognize how you are connected to the spirit. You are not your gender, title, cultural conditioning, or race.The result is the Earthly manifestation of Heaven. Awakening now is your life’s purpose! Eckhart Tolle is an articulate writer, and his ideas flow logically. The stories he chooses enliven the concepts he presents. I have two minor critiques of this book: 1) I wish the end-notes contained source references to all the stories—not just the Biblical references, and 2) It would have allowed me greater contemplation if he included pauses in his writing for personal discovery and practical applications. But, all-in-all, I thoroughly enjoyed A New Earth.
What is so powerful about this book is not that there is much new material here. We’ve all heard about how the ego keeps us chained to our judgements, fears, and desires. The difference is in how the author explains his points. Finally, we understand! Wouldn’t you love it if all the stuff you’ve read about enlightenment suddenly became crystal clear? (I see you all nodding!) This is it.Throughout the entire book, he reiterates the same points. He does not offer ‘instructions’. Here’s a great example-how to let go of attachment. “Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.”My copy is frilled with flags (the best Christmas present I got last year was a flag dispenser!). There is so much you’ll want to remember that once you have finished it, you will find yourself picking it up at odd times and leafing through it. You’ll find a page and read something, and it will resonate. Here’s the author’s summary: “Enjoyment of what you are doing, combined with a goal or vision that you work toward, becomes enthusiasm. Even though you have a goal, what you are doing in the present moment needs to remain the focal point of your attention; otherwise, you will fall out of alignment with universal purpose. Make sure your vision or goal is not an inflated image of yourself and therefore a concealed form of ego, such as wanting to become a movie star, a famous writer, or a wealthy entrepreneur. Also make sure your goal is not focused on having this or that, such as a mansion by the sea, your own company, or ten million dollars in the bank. An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself having this or that are all static goals and therefore don’t empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole. Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all. All this implies that your goal or vision is then already a reality within you, on the level of mind and of feeling. Enthusiasm is the power that transfers the mental blueprint into the physical dimension. That is the creative use of mind, and that is why there is no wanting involved. You cannot manifest what you want; you can only manifest what you already have. You many get what you want through hard work and stress, but that is not the way of the new earth.”All I can say is read it, and watch your life change!
What do You think about A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose (2006)?
Okay so I had high expectations for this book. Normally I don't really go for Oprah selections but I heard so many great things about it plus I am totally into new agey type things, I thought it would be right up my alley.My problem with this book was twofold. First, a lot of the ideas weren't new to me. Living in the present (you are not walking across the room to get a book, you are walking across the room), not letting your ego attach itself to things (that is not "my car" or "my house"), etc. And for the most part I agree with those ideals. I think because I do a lot of yoga and it's all about being with yourself in that moment, not judging based on what you did in class yesterday or last week, and not thinking about what you need to buy at the grocery store, I've already applied a lot of this to other areas in my life. And this is probably why I love yoga so much - I can totally get into that place. So I was reading the book going yeah, yeah, yeah I get it (and I felt like he repeated himself a thousand times).My second problem is... what's so bad about sometimes attaching yourself to people or things or concepts? Of course it's bad to get yourself totally wrapped in being "x and y's mom" or "z employee of this company" but why is bad to feel pride in that? It makes it harder to lose something if you've attached it to your ego, but I am okay with that. My parents are MY parents and assuming they precede my in death, it will be so hard but I am fine with experiencing a whole range of emotions in this life -- being excessively happy and excessively sad. My kids are MY kids and even though that will likely make it harder for me when they are off to college and doing their own thing, I'm fine with that!
—Michelle
This is basically The Landmark Forum in book form. I'm very curious about the relationship between Tolle and Landmark Education, but I haven't been able to find any info on that so far. I suspect that I find this book so powerful because I've done The Landmark Forum. I suspect it might be a little too theoretical to have much practical impact on my real life if I didn't have that background and training. Read this book if you've ever considered doing the Forum to get a little taste of what the Forum is about, and then go do the Forum to have it actually make a difference in your life.
—Mary
This is a wonderful and very helpful book. Coming from a ACIM vantage point, it takes a little bit to adjust to his terminology, because Tolle uses words in a different way. His Consciousness is ACIM's Spirit and Mind, and ACIM's consciousness (and the thoughts you think you think) is Tolle's "thoughts." Likewise ACIM's "guilt" equates to Tolle's pain body, so in a way it's simply the "wrong mind." His biblical " New Earth" is the Course's " Real World." On and on. So, once you adjust for those variations of terminology, his message is very helpful, though it's different. The way Tolle addresses the "why" is more in line with Advaita Vedanta, and therefore he does not have a clear cause for the dynamics of guilt, as the Course offers in the notion that the world was made as an attack on God, and is a projection from the mind, not a creation of God. But he does a lot to clarify the guilt mechanism in ways that nicely complement the picture, and can help you see things you might not have noticed before.On the whole the book seems very helpful to me, and certainly has a very insightful way of helping us understand our inner workings better, and moreover point the way out of the labyrinth, not deeper into it, which is more than can be said for a lot of materials that are paraded around as spirituality.To watch his presentations on Oprah's show is delightful, and documents that there is a huge pent up demand for this type of information. It seems curious that on one hand, because of his Vedanta-alike way of looking at the origin of creation, that he gets caught up in this evolutionary thinking, which can easily be an ego cop out, for then we're waiting for everybody else to change their mind. However, he is also crystal clear that the whole idea of a spiritual journey is a perfect ego stalling tactic, when the only question always is, what choice am I making right now, in this moment?Within the context of Oprah's network it seems funny that Tolle's presentations are happening at the same time as Marianne Williamson, who gives the Course her own spin and seems focused in a more New Age style on fixing up the world, and not the way out of the labyrinth. So in that context Tolle is more closely in-line with the Course in spirit than her presentations, which purport to represent or explain the Course.
—Rogier
