Yifeng Shi

Reading The Power of Now

It's good for me to get more aspects of "present" from him, but cannot fully appreciate all the opinions and the way he communicates at this moment

I always have a lot of problems, including a year and half ago. At that time, I was strongly recommended to read this book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I was told that I should “stop thinking or regretting about the past or worrying about the future, all I needed is focusing on and enjoying the current moment.” It was hard to digest for me, and maybe for a lot of other people.

I finally picked up the book by the end of 2024. It talks about, literally, the power of Now. According to Eckhart Tolle, the present moment is the most precious moment and the only thing one has in his/her life. Many things we considered precious, including past and future, time and memory, knowledge and thinking, do not matter. People who can stay at present can reach a status of enlightenment. The “joy” people experience at this stage of enlightenment is different from what we called “happiness”. Unlike  having “sadness” being the opposite of “happiness”, this “joy” is a stage of inner peace that does not have an antonym and is not affected by environmental factors. It’s different from the happiness I have when I was taking fried chicken or seeing a cute puppy, because my happiness relies on the existence of fried chicken or the cute puppy, but his “joy” doesn’t.  

The concepts of being present, focus on breathing, no judgement, acceptance is not necessarily a brand-new idea. It probably came long away from history and display itself in different formats in contemporary society: religions,  behavioral therapies, meditations, movies, and books. It is understandable that some pain felt for the past and worry for the future do not necessarily do us any good and letting them control your life might as well not be the best idea since that prevents you from taking action at the current moment. Nevertheless, we pain and worry. It takes active and good amount of practice to throw the overthinking away, and I'm hoping to get some guidance from the book.

However, similar to many other “unenlightened public”, I feel confused about certain concepts he mentioned in the book. I do not, particularly, appreciate the way Eckhart Tolle talked to convince us in this book. The book has quite a few terms including “ego”, “presence”, “god”, “(un)consciousness”, “oneness”, “(un)manifest”, and “inner body”, which are relatively difficult for me to remember and understand. At the same time he mentioned “words are not important, if you don’t like this term, just replace with whatever you like. Word is just a sign showing you where to go.”  It's like a communication without language: if there is no fixed words for certain concept, how do you express what you want to say? Many ways he talks as if he is making definition on our behaviors: “this is unconsciousness”, “you have not be present in your inner body”, or “René Descartes is wrong”. This is a world hard for me to tell right and wrong, but maybe he has reached a point where true enlightenment shows him what is absolutely correct, the highest level of truth that everyone and everything should obey. Is there such a thing? 

Few years ago I watched a Japanese animation called Fullmetal Alchemist. In the setup in the animation, alchemists can transmute almost everything through a transmutation circle. They can recovered a plate shattered into pieces back to its original states, or getting almost everything they want. However, it is strictly forbidden to transmute human beings, and those who attempted it will lose part of their body as punishment. Nevertheless, a young brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, tried to transmute their dead mother using alchemy anyway. They failed, along with the lost of Edward’s right arm, left leg and Alphonse’s whole body.  Alphonse's soul was fixed into an armor. The story is about the journey of the brotherhood trying to find their lost body parts after the failed attempt.

 According to Eckhart Tolle, what the brotherhood did might just be useless attempt that focused on “memory”, “past”, and “external world”. If they can focus on the present moment, they will be able to move on and compromise with themselves of the fact that their mother was dead and could never come back. However, to most people, it does not require one to know what alchemist is to understand the feeling of the brotherhood: they are trying to get back something  that’s forever lost, something they knew they should have let it gone. Many, many other people understand. At some point of our lives, we all waited for people that would never come back, tried to recover things and relationships that were permanently destroyed. We knew well the best option is to loose our arms and let it go. Nevertheless we held it tighter in vain.  This ability to "resonate" with others, even with fake characters and with painful emotions, still considered by me something particularly precious and I don't really want to lose.  It’s not the feeling that I saw someone fell on the ground and say “I’m sorry it must hurt”, it’s the feeling I once fell on the ground too and remember clearly how it hurt, and now my heart trembles with the scene of the person suffering. Imagining a world where people are all enlightened, walking pass the brothers and say “they are suffering because they didn’t accept the present moment, they didn’t know the power of now. Past and future are merely illusion, and memory is not necessary unless you need it. It shouldn’t be the source of your pain”, I do not feel particularly good. Not saying people enlightened are all emotionless and cannot understand other’s feeling, but I think they lost the ability to resonate. They have their enlightened joy that’s not related to any external factors, they look at this brotherhood like a math teacher looking at a kid insisting that 1+1=3. They know it’s wrong, but they don’t feel the way the kid feels, maybe there is pity or compassion, but that's not what I am talking about. 

It's fortunate yet unfortunate that the boundary between “things can be achieved with effort” and “things that can never recover” is so blur that we struggle to cross the line to the other side. Flying in the sky was considered impossible, but some people made it, and the story was used to encourage the following generation to “never give up your dream”. Then why, trying to take a person already passed away back is something “we should not struggle with because there’s nothing we can do with it”? Why we were told things happened in the past are like plates shattered into pieces, and you can never recover them back to what they originally were.  If Robert the Bruce failed the seventh battle with England even with the inspiration from the spider web, should he say, “I’m not giving up and am going to try the eighth time!” or “This is it, I cannot win with my current ability”? About the future the only thing I could only say “you never know”. The uncertainty for sure becomes the source of anxiety, and I still don't know how Eckhart Tolle accepts every uncertainty and move on without confusion at the same time. 

I always have a lot of things to learn, as many as my endless problems pointed out by Eckhart Tolle in the book. I cannot fully convinced by the solutions he proposed at this moment, but it doesn’t hurt to get an idea of what other people are thinking. (Well, according to the author himself, "thinking" might not be the best way to describe what he tried to express, but I think you get me).  If you think you’re enlightened, will you let me know? It would be good to have a conversation with you : )

Last updated : Jan 2025