Just let the thoughts pass through your awareness. So during your meditation exercise, you don’t try to stop the mind from thinking. To overcome the obstacle, we must go beyond the mind. However, we simply cannot stop the mind from thinking.

The same goes for experiencing Being.īecoming identified with the mind is the greatest obstacle to this, Tolle adds. Having the idea of riding a bike is not the same as the actual biking experience. We cannot think our way into knowing who we are. It’s a basic error to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. He says Descartes’ I think, therefore I am was a mistake. Now here, Tolle points directly to where that voice is coming from - your mind. “What voice?” you might be asking in your head… That voice, hah! Remember “The Voice” we just talked about in The Untethered Soul? To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of “feeling-realization” is enlightenment. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. You can know it only when the mind is still. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind.

This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.

The power of now review