Over the weekend I went to the local bookshop with my cousin and went straight to ‘my section’… personal development and spirituality, of course!
He told me this isn’t really his genre, and asked for a recommendation. I immediately let him know that if there was one book to rule them all… to give you the biggest positive ‘bang for your buck’, then it’s got to be:
The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
The cool ‘concept’ or ‘psycho-spiritual state’ that this book is designed to point us towards is the very essence of the formal Islamic prayer (Salah). In fact, I would go as far as to say anyone who has attempted to pray without “the power of now” as the central focus of the prayer… has not really tasted the beauty, power and depth of personal transformation that the prayer is designed to give us.
One of the greatest Islamic scholars of all time Abu Hamed Al Ghazali (ra) called “the power of now”, hudur al-qalb or “presence of heart”. He put forward a compelling case that without this quality the prayer is simply not acceptable.
Here are a few of the highlights and takeaways from the book:
- Presence is a state of mind that we naturally enter into when we disregard thoughts of the past and the future
- There are several doors into the state of presence (7 of which I cover in my podcast, In the Moment with Mamoon season one)
- Inner peace is our natural state which is experienced directly the moment we disregard thoughts of the past and the future
- Beauty is the experience of seeing an object before the labels of the mind enter into the picture
- The ego knows that presence is powerful enough to kill it and it will do anything and everything to stop you from being present by distracting you with machinations of the past and future and imaginary situations
- There is a difference between “clock time” which we all use for practical purposes and “psychological time” which our ego uses to trick us out of maintaining a state of presence
- The ego based intellect ceases to exist the moment we eliminate time from our minds… and it returns the moment we start thinking about the past and future again
- It is possible to plan and set goals using “clock time” while maintaining a state of presence. Most people never achieve this.
- You will never be able to be as present, peaceful and content and you are able to be right now
There is one insight which is left out of the book, which has actually caused me to become far more present than anything else I’ve ever read put together.
That insight is what we call the “Psychological Switch”. In essence, it is to disregard the idea that anything other than thought in the moment has the power to determine our feelings.
Most of our non-present thinking is based on the Psychological Illusion that the outside world will make us feel good or bad, so we obsessively think about the outside world continuously. The moment we ‘flip the switch’, we break free from this pattern and the mind quiets down dramatically.
To go more deeply into a state of presence and gain as much insight as possible that enables you to stay there more of the time, I recommend you begin your training with me.
No time like the present:
