Many of us spend our lives searching for peace, joy, and fulfillment. We look for it in different ways: through accomplishments, relationships, experiences, and material possessions. The Power of Now proposes that the only way to find true peace and fulfillment is through being solely and intensely present in each moment. The more we live in the Now, the more we are able to connect with our true selves and experience life fully, without extraneous thoughts and speculations clouding our minds and altering our lens of the world.
What will I make for dinner tonight? I should have spoken up during that meeting. I wonder if I’ll get that promotion. I really want that car. I have to remember to buy bread and eggs on the way home. All of these thoughts distract us from experiencing the present moment.
Our endless thoughts often focus on the past or the future. However, we have no control over either — the past is over and the future isn’t here yet — so we are in an endless cycle of wasting our mental and emotional energy on things we can’t control. The only moment we can impact is the present.
When you focus on the past, you feel guilt, regret, resentment, sadness, bitterness, and unforgiveness. You also carry old hurt from your pain-body, the invisible entity of cumulative pain you have experienced in your life. The pain body is like a parasite, feeding on negativity and driving us to think and act in negative ways.
When you focus too much on the future, you create anxiety, tension, stress, and worry. In the full summary, we will explore how to plan for the future while remaining present.
Why are so many of us driving ourselves crazy thinking about things we can’t control, and distracting ourselves from the real moment we are experiencing right now? The inner voice in your head, called the ego, is responsible for this endless internal monologue. The ego is a part of your mind that tries to control your thinking, emotions, and behavior.
Your ego projects a false identity, made up of your membership in groups and communities (such as gender, nationality, profession, and religion) and your past pain and experiences. The ego tells you that your memories, experiences, religion, upbringing, education, career, gender, political beliefs, and nationality make you who you are.
All these aspects of the ego-created identity are based on external forces. If you believe that these external factors — like life experiences, profession, and political affiliation — make you you, then any new experiences, career changes, and challenges to your political beliefs have the potential to shake your identity.
In fact, your ego is distracting you from connecting with your true self or Being. Your Being is a purer energy that lives within you, unaffected by external forces and circumstances.
You can only be your true self when you are present, when your thoughts are not focused on the past, future, or the ego-created false identity. By connecting with your true self through presence, you access inner peace.
You can disconnect from your ego and connect with your true self by observing your thoughts, as if you were a third-party witness to your own mind.
The past only exists in memories and the future only exists in projections, so when you are present, you experience the only moment that is real — Now. Presence is the only antidote to the control of the ego and the pain-body.
Being present does not change your external circumstances. When we face hardships in life, being present allows us to tackle them moment by moment. Added stress from our ego-controlled, worried thoughts only makes the obstacles seem more overwhelming. When we are present, we have more mental capacity to face these challenges.
Life consists of cycles of success and failure; each one is a necessary precedent of the other. When you are present, you must accept the lows as much as the highs as part of the reality of the Now. Why fight a cycle that is inevitable?
If you are wishing that a situation were different in some way, then your thoughts are in the past, future, or some hypothetical scenario — and you are not in the present.
If you are facing a difficult or unpleasant situation, you have three options:
Accepting the present means to acknowledge that it already exists, and that no amount of wishing, complaining, or worrying will change this current moment. You can, however, take one of the first two actions and make steps to change or leave the situation.
Does this seem easier said than done? Presence is a simple concept but is not necessarily an easy practice. Most of us are in the habit of letting our egos run the show, so keeping our focus on the present will be like a muscle you strengthen with time and practice.
We will explore how to put this into practice and be more present in your everyday life. The key is maintaining awareness of both your mind and body.
Your body is a gateway to your mental and emotional state.
By the same token, your body is a tool to get your mind back in the present. Putting your focus on your body will bring your mind back to where you are in this moment.
Being present benefits you as well as those around you. Presence allows you to have true connections and relationships with other people because you are interacting with them from a place of inner peace.
By contrast, when your ego is running the show, you often react to people based on the worry, stress, fear, anxiety, guilt, pain, or resentment your ego and pain-body are generating. This affects everything from day-to-day interactions to friendships and romantic relationships.
Humans’ collective lack of presence sends negative energy into the world around us. Cumulatively, that negative energy is having a damaging effect on the planet. (Shortform note: This is a more minor point that is never fully fleshed out, but mentioned sporadically throughout the book.)
In our fast-paced, high-stress world, nearly everyone is trying to find the source of true peace, joy, and fulfillment. We often look to religion, relationships, career accomplishments, and material possessions.
The Power of Now insists that we can’t find the peace and happiness we seek in anything outside ourselves. Instead, the only way to find true peace and fulfillment is through being present in each moment. The more you live in the Now, the more you are able to connect with your true self and experience life fully. The concept requires you to be solely and intensely present in each moment, by accepting external circumstances that you cannot change and resisting the temptation to dwell on the past and future.
The text is written largely in Q&A format, curated from questions Tolle fielded through years of teaching and public speaking. This approach intends to address the questions and confusions readers are likely to have as they read the book.
However, the principles include some very abstract concepts relating to time, the mind, and personal identity. These ideas can be difficult to grasp and can be alienating to some readers (a TIME magazine review notably called it “spiritual mumbo jumbo”), but are unavoidable in examining such inherently abstract concepts as mindfulness and inner peace.
The book does not align specifically with any religion, though it includes many examples of various religions preaching the same principles. Parts of the book are written like a guided meditation, to draw readers into understanding by practice, rather than purely explanations. This approach reinforces the notion that these principles cannot be understood intellectually but must be grasped intuitively; this is reiterated regularly in the book. To this end, don’t get caught up on the strict definitions of terms used to explain the concepts.
In this Shortform summary, we have divided the book’s contents into a step-by-step guide to understanding what it means to be present, how it can improve your life, and how to put it into practice.
Given how abstract the principles can be, we have added examples to help illustrate many of the concepts. We will note them as (Shortform examples) when they are not directly from the book, but we believe they’re faithful to the author’s meaning.
What is the power of Now? The Now is the present moment — each individual moment in the innumerable sequence of moments that makes up our lives. The power of Now is in experiencing each of these moments with your full and undivided attention, without being distracted by your internal monologue (whether that includes thoughts of your to-do list, replaying an interaction from this morning, or running commentary and analysis of the present). By actively engaging in each moment, you can prevent much of your pain and stress and live in a consistent state of inner peace and fulfillment. We will explain how and why in later chapters.
Sounds easy? Set a timer for five minutes. Until the timer goes off, pay attention each time your thoughts drift to something besides what you are doing in that exact moment.
Staying completely focused on the present is a simple concept, but it is not necessarily easy; most of us have such a strong habit of getting carried away in our thoughts that it will take deliberate effort and practice to stay present.
We give a lot of power and credence to the past and the future. We tend to think the past shaped us, and that the future holds our hope and salvation (or, perhaps, demise).
In reality, the past and future exist only in your mind. The past was Now when it happened, and the future will be Now when it happens. But in this moment, the past consists only of memories, and the future is purely speculation. Take a moment to wrap your head around that.
When we think about the past or the future, it takes away from the present, which is the only true experience.
Much of our unhappiness is caused by putting too much mental energy and attention on the past and future, instead of being present in the Now. We don’t gain anything from dwelling on the past and future because we have no control over them — it’s too late to do anything about what happened in the past, and we can’t do anything about the future until it gets here (and when it does, we don’t even know if it will happen the way we expect).
The more we live in the past, the more we carry pain from past moments with us in the Now. Too much focus on the past creates guilt, regret, resentment, sadness, bitterness, and unforgiveness.
When we live in the future — always hoping and anticipating what may come later — we skip over experiencing the present.
Too much focus on the future creates anxiety, tension, stress, and worry. Jesus asked the disciples, “Can anxious thought add a single day to your life?”
Stress is so common that it’s practically considered a normal part of life, but in fact it is unnecessary. When you are so focused on getting to some point in the future (e.g. finishing a project or crossing off everything on your to-do list), the present becomes just a means to getting to the future. Stress is created by this inner split, when you are in the present but want to be in the future.
Humans created the concept of time.
We know that time passes in the way things progress and evolve — the sun and the moon rise and fall, and the four seasons cycle with each rotation around the sun. But humans created ways of measuring time (minutes, days, years), and we constantly think about past and future points in time. We cling to time because the past gives us a sense of identity, and the future holds hope. Both are illusions, as we will discuss more later.
In contrast, look at nature: Plants and animals go through life in the Now, living and dying without regret or anxiety about the future. They may learn from the past, but they don’t dwell on it. They are always engaged in the task at hand.
There are two forms of time: clock time and psychological time.
Clock time is used for practical purposes, like making appointments, learning from the past, setting goals, and predicting/planning for the future. Clock time is always tied to impacting how you act in the Now.
Psychological time, on the other hand, is the preoccupation with past and future in a non-productive way, like playing over and over in your head a conversation you had with your spouse, or stressing about whether you will be considered for a promotion. Psychological time takes over your thoughts and pulls your attention away from the present.
You may attempt to use clock time to reflect on a past situation you can learn from or to set a goal for the future, but be aware of your state of mind: Clock time can turn into psychological time if you begin dwelling on the past or future.
Psychological time distracts us from the brilliance and vibrancy of the Now, creating an unsatisfactory life. That dissatisfaction then fuels an obsession with the future as a form of hope and escape from the present, creating a vicious cycle.
People facing chronic hardship often rely on hope to get them through. While hope can feel like it keeps you afloat, it is acting as an escape from the present by keeping you focused on the future. Hope does nothing to change or help you accept the present situation; it is a distraction and short-term fix. After a while, many people get tired of hoping while still dealing with the same challenges, so they eventually give up hope.
There are moments in life when we feel like we are at time’s will, when it feels as if there is nothing to do but wait — whether it’s for the traffic light to turn green or for your life to make a drastic turn. There are two types of waiting, based on whether you’re using clock time or psychological time: small-scale and large-scale.
Small-scale waiting is what you do in line at the post office or DMV. This form of waiting happens in clock time, and allows you to still be present.
Large-scale waiting is perpetually waiting for something that you think will make you happy or make your life more complete — like your next vacation, reaching a certain point of success in your career, or meeting the perfect partner. Large-scale waiting is when you’re constantly waiting for the thing that will supposedly make you happy or fill a deeper void in your life. This is another psychological time trap.
We’ll dive deeper into practical tips for staying present in later sections.
It’s possible to learn from the past and plan goals for the future while staying present: The key is not to get so consumed in the past or future that it distracts you from the Now. Use this exercise to assess how you are using time, and how you can avoid dwelling on the past or future.
Describe a mid- to long-term goal you are currently working toward.
What is your motivation for this goal? In other words, why have you chosen this as a goal to put your time and energy toward? What do you hope to gain from it?
Reflect on what you’ve already done to get closer to achieving your goal. Were you present enough to really experience each of those steps, or were you so focused on your goal that your actions were just a means to an end?
Think about how you can remain present and engaged in the journey as you continue working toward your goal. (Maybe you keep a journal of your experience along the way, or remind yourself that you can only take one step at a time.) Describe some strategies you could use moving forward.
Now that we know that there is power in being present, let’s examine what keeps pushing your thoughts away from the Now: It’s that voice inside your head. It can be characterized as the devil or angel on your shoulder. It is the voice that analyzes what’s going on around you, comments on your interactions, dwells on the past, speculates about the future, complains, likes or dislikes things, and makes you question yourself in moments of doubt. This internal voice is the ego.
The ego is a part of your mind that tries to control your thinking and behavior. (Shortform note: This book personifies the ego as a thinking, feeling entity.)
The ego gives you an interpretation of the world, not a true reflection. The only true way to see the world is by being fully present and experiencing the Now, without judging or analyzing it.
(Shortform suggestion: Think of your mind as the screen in a movie theater — it can have rips, wrinkles, and other flaws that distort the movie being projected. Each one of us is watching the movie of life play on our own screens, which all have wear-and-tear from our past experiences, cultural conditioning, and other influences from our ego-created identity.)
Your ego is your “I” or self, how you distinguish yourself from others. The ego creates your identity from your social status; job; possessions; education; appearance; relationships; personal and family history; beliefs; and membership in political, national, racial, and religious groups.
We tend to think that these thoughts and experiences define us, and that our ego is who we are — after all, it’s coming from inside our own head, so who else could it be? But, in fact, the ego is not our true Being. Our true Being is the essence of who we are, separate from our mind and body. We’ll discuss this more later.
In order to connect with your true self, you must stop identifying with your ego. You may resist letting go of this identity because if you are not made up by the contents of your mind, then who are you? But problems arise when you identify with your ego, believing that your thoughts, memories, beliefs, and mental condition define you.
While cultural conditioning, past experiences, and other influences can, indeed, affect your behavior, there’s no need to cling to them as your identity. Allow yourself to be present and their influence may or may not come out naturally.
The ego only has as much power as you give it, and it gains power when you identify with it. Your ego is threatened by your true Being because when you connect with your true Being, you realize that, by contrast, you are not your ego. (We will explain what, exactly, your True Being is in the next section.)
You can feel your true Being when you are present in the Now, so the ego is also threatened by presence. In the interest of self-preservation, your ego will do whatever it can to prevent you from being present and identifying with your true self.
The ego creates worry about the past and future that cause you to dwell on problems and situations you often have no control over.
The ego is not responsible for productive forms of fear that comes in response to a present and immediate danger, which activates your fight or flight response for survival. The ego only creates hypothetical and speculative fear.
(Shortform example: when you’re stuck in traffic and running late to a meeting, the ego is responsible for your stress about walking in late, your worry that your coworkers will think you’re irresponsible, and the hypothetical scene playing in your head of the boss reprimanding you. In reality, your boss and coworkers may (or may not) be more understanding than you think, and some of them might even be caught in this traffic snarl too.
Regardless, stressing about it won’t make the cars move any faster. If you’re present instead, you’ll at least be calm and alert when you do arrive for the meeting, instead of frantic and distracted. Plus, with a clear head, you might even be able to think of another route to circumvent the traffic.)
If a situation or person is challenging some aspect of your supposed identity — e.g. your religious beliefs — and you relent, will you no longer be you? No, you will continue to be yourself, and you may realize that this element or belief didn’t make you who you are. That epiphany is one step closer to understanding that your ego-created identity is a sham and to connecting with your true Being. This, again, is a threat to the ego.
For example, if you always need to be right in an argument, that stems from a fear of losing your sense of identity. If you believe your thoughts and your mental positions are part of who you are (based on your ego-created identity), then being wrong shakes the foundation of your identity. But if you know your true self is not tethered to your thoughts and beliefs, then it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong.
Notice when you get defensive about something. Ask yourself, “What am I defending?” You are likely defending the identity your ego has created.
The ego will feel threatened as you start practicing mindfulness and resisting its control, so it may create more fears in an effort to stay in control.
The ego’s lacking feeling can create an intense, ego-fueled craving or desire for possessions, money, success, power, recognition, a relationship, or another temporary pleasure to fill that void.
The ego falsely believes that temporary pleasures can make you feel complete. When we identify with our mind, we identify with those desires and cravings. We seek fulfillment and happiness through acquiring those things, but although they may momentarily satiate the craving, satisfying a desire will never bring peace and enlightenment.
Desires and cravings keep our focus in the future: “Once I attain this, I will be happy.” That mindset keeps us out of the present moment, which is the only place to find peace and enlightenment.
Your desires may even include enlightenment. You might think, “I will work to achieve enlightenment, and when I reach it, my life will be better.” Although enlightenment does bring joy and peace, your ego is still placing that in the future. Instead, you can experience joy and peace now by being present.
When you identify with your ego and are not present, you are in a state of unconsciousness. There are two forms of unconsciousness: ordinary unconsciousness and deep unconsciousness.
Ordinary unconsciousness is a normal state for someone who identifies with her ego, with a consistent low-level of unease, discontent, boredom, or nervousness. This is like the hum of an air conditioner, a subtle background noise that you don’t notice until it stops.
Deep unconsciousness is more acute and painful. This is when the panic alarm goes off — when problems arise in life, you face a conflict in a relationship, or the ego is significantly threatened.
Deep unconsciousness inspires intense anger, fear, aggression, depression and other negativity, causing our more extreme actions like physical violence.
If you already experience ordinary unconsciousness in day-to-day circumstances, challenges will typically intensify that to a level of deep unconsciousness. In other words, if you struggle to be present when life is calm, how will you do it when stress and chaos ensue?
For this reason, it’s important to practice being present in day-to-day life when things are going relatively smoothly. We’ll talk more about how to practice being present later.
How much time do you spend thinking about things besides what is happening in the present moment? Put another way, can you turn your mind off whenever you want? If not, then your mind is in control, instead of you controlling your mind.
Nearly everyone is constantly consumed in thoughts, so it’s considered normal, and we don’t stop and realize how it is affecting us.
Who are you, if not your thoughts, beliefs, and experiences? Are those not the things that make you uniquely you?
Your ego leads you to believe that your identity must be steeped in the qualities that make you different from everyone around you. However, your true Being connects you with everyone and every living thing in the world.
Your true Being is your deepest self, which you can connect with only when you are present. Your Being is your life energy, which is unaffected by your physical body, your mind and ego, and any external factors.
The world is made up of life energy taking on physical forms (like humans, plants, animals). This means that every living thing has a true Being, and all Beings are connected by a unifying life energy. (Shortform note: This concept is very nebulous and difficult to grasp. Tolle acknowledges this, and says you can only grasp it by experiencing your true Being. He asks readers not to try to understand Being, but rather to feel it when they are present.)
Your Being is indestructible, even in the death of your physical body; it exists before you are born and lives on after your death. Think of your body as merely the physical form that your Being takes on. We should not get attached to the physical forms, because they are only temporary. (Shortform note: “Being” seems somewhat comparable to “soul,” though that word is never mentioned.)
Connecting with your Being is the only way to attain true happiness, and being present is the only way to connect with your true Being; you can’t have one without the other.
You can access presence and your Being only by shedding your ego-created thoughts and identity, which are responsible for your pain, fear, and unhappiness (We will explore this more in later sections). Thus, being present and connecting with your Being are the only routes to inner peace, joy, and true happiness.
How do you disconnect from the voice inside your own head? It takes deliberate effort, attention, and practice.
You can begin to separate your true self from your egoic mind by observing your thoughts. This is called “watching the thinker.” Thoughts come from your ego, making your ego the “thinker.” The part of you that can observe your thoughts without engaging in them is the “watcher,” your true self.
Try this: think, “I wonder what my next thought will be.” Wait and watch. Notice that your thoughts will likely stall for a moment while you are in this state of presence and alertness. You’ve just watched the thinker.
When you can understand that the watcher and the thinker are separate, then you can realize that you are not made of your thoughts. In moments when your mind is still and thoughts are quiet, you still exist and are still yourself.
As soon as you witness your thoughts, you’ve separated yourself from them — even if only for a moment. This is a victory in itself.
As you are watching your thoughts, be mindful not to analyze or judge them. Those analytical or judgmental thoughts would be your ego slipping back in through the back door. Instead, simply observe.
As you start practicing, you will experience states of "no-mind” — also called presence or consciousness — when there is a pause in your thoughts and you are connected with your true self. (In contrast, when you are not present you are under your ego’s control and are stuck in your thoughts.) These moments will be brief at first, but will extend with more practice.
Although your thoughts are quiet when you are present, it is a state of alertness and awareness of the present moment and of your true Being.
You can practice being present in your day-to-day life by putting your full attention on a routine, mindless task. Here are a few examples.
We are so accustomed to the ego’s control — and the low, constant hum of thoughts running through our mind — that it can be easy to overlook. To notice if you are present, ask yourself, “Am I feeling joy, ease, and lightness?” If the answer is no, then you are not present.
If that’s the case, you may not need to change what you are doing in that moment, but how you are doing it. Focus your complete attention on each minute detail of the task at hand to bring yourself back to the present.
Disconnecting from your ego is the only way to access presence, your true self, and inner peace. Use this exercise to practice being present.
For the next 10 minutes, try to stay entirely focused on being present in what you’re doing. When other thoughts arise, take note of them.
What were the thoughts that started popping in your head?
Did these thoughts employ the tools of the ego (e.g. past or future, fear, or desires)? Explain.
Describe what you felt during the moments when your thoughts were quiet.
The ego’s power is not confined to our minds. The thoughts and fears the ego produces lead to outward reactions.
The ego creates thoughts and thought patterns. Those repeated thoughts produce emotions. Emotions are your body’s physical reactions to your thoughts.
(Shortform example: Your spouse or roommate didn’t wash the dishes, even though she said she would. You can’t help but notice that they are piling up in the sink and you’re out of clean forks. You think about how you’re about to make dinner, and how that will add even more dishes to the mound. You think about the unwashed dishes and her unkept promise, and you begin to get angry, causing your heart to beat faster and your muscles to tense up. Your anger then brings up thoughts about other chores she has neglected, and how it feels like you are always stuck doing dishes. This makes you even angrier, creating a vicious cycle.)
Research shows that strong emotions can affect your body’s biochemistry. (Shortform note: Scientific research shows that every cell in the body has receptors (or keyholes) for the neuropeptides (or keys), like endorphins, that the brain sends out. Emotions are the biochemical interactions of different keys fitting into the keyholes.)
Like thoughts, emotions are a product of the ego that distract you from the present, keep you disconnected from your true Being, and pull you further from inner peace and happiness.
Every emotion you experience is part of an alternating cycle of positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions can’t last forever and inevitably fade, as do negative emotions. This is because emotions result from thoughts, which are constantly changing and influenced by external circumstances. As long as you identify with your mind and ride the wave of your thoughts and emotions, you are subject to the highs and lows of these emotional cycles.
Pleasure is a temporary feeling of happiness that comes from something outside yourself (e.g. a great meal, a fun vacation, romantic love). When that external source is absent, pleasure turns into pain, creating a positive-negative emotional cycle.
You might think, “but aren’t we pursuing love, peace, and joy through presence? How can those be negative?”
True love, peace, and joy are states of being, although we often confuse them with fleeting emotions like pleasure and euphoria. You can only feel love, joy, and peace by being present in the Now; they will always be determined by your internal state. In contrast, emotions respond to external factors.
Love can be confused with euphoria, which inevitably fades, creating a love-hate cycle. Real love — from presence and an internal state of peace and love — can never turn into hate or cause suffering.
Think of your past romantic relationships. There was probably euphoria in the beginning. That feeling ebbs and over time things come up that cause arguments or even a breakup, and what you thought was love turns into bitterness or hate. This completes the love-hate cycle. (Shortform note: Hate may be a strong word, but regardless of what you call it, you’ve likely experienced the emotional lows that feel like the polar opposite of the bliss you once had in the relationship.)
True love, joy, and peace always live within you, and can only be temporarily eclipsed by the ego’s endless chatter and distractions. Even when the clouds cover the sun, it is still there.
All emotions are rooted in pain, which manifests in different forms as various emotions. Even positive emotions are tied to pain because of the inevitable positive-negative cycles.
Your mind may be able to figure out a way to cover up the pain, but only temporarily. The more your mind struggles — and eventually fails — to heal the pain, the more pain it causes.
You will never be able to heal your pain (in whatever form it manifests) through thoughts and ideas, because those are coming from the same source as your pain: the ego. Ultimately, your ego can’t afford to heal the pain: it thrives on having problems and puzzles to work on (giving you a reason to use it, causing you to identify with it, and preventing you from being present). If your pain is gone, the ego has no work to do.
Think of the ego like a chief of police who is trying to catch an arsonist — but it turns out the chief of police is the one setting the fires!
The only way to eliminate your pain is by being entirely and intensely present in the Now.
Since emotions are your body’s physical manifestation of your thoughts, you can use cues from your body as a tool to help notice your emotions.
Paying attention to your emotions can make you aware of your mental state and help you realize when you are not present.
Sometimes your surface thoughts may not reflect your subconscious mental processes (think of when you’re suppressing an emotion — you think you’re not letting stress get to you, but you woke up with a headache and knew you must have been grinding your teeth as you slept). Your body and emotions will always reflect your mental state more accurately than the thoughts that may try to cover it up.
Just like when you observe your thoughts, as soon as you begin witnessing your emotion instead of taking part in it, you’ve separated yourself from it.
Practice observing your emotions. Regularly ask yourself, “What’s going on inside me at this moment.” Thoughtfully observe your inner state, without analyzing (“I’m feeling this way because ...”) or judging (“Why can’t I just let this go?”).
Emotions often result from a strong and repeated thought pattern that has built up a powerful momentum of energy, so it is very easy to get sucked in and overtaken by an emotion when you are trying to observe it.
Your thoughts and your emotions can create a vicious cycle: The repeating thought pattern strengthens the emotion, and the emotion feeds back into the thought pattern.
Emotions are your body’s physical reactions to your thoughts, both positive and negative. Use this exercise to help recognize the causes and effects of your emotions.
Think of a recent situation when one external factor (e.g. work, a relationship, an event) caused you to have either a positive reaction that eventually became negative, or vice versa. Describe what happened and how it made you feel.
How did the positive feelings manifest in you physically? What did you feel in your body?
How did the negative feelings manifest in your body?
The emotional pain-body is the invisible entity of pain that accumulates through your life. This starts with painful experiences from childhood, and every experience that brings you emotional pain is added to the collection.
As an accumulation of emotions, the pain-body is ultimately a product of the ego that prevents you from being present and feeling inner peace.
The pain-body is a mass of negative energy that can occupy your body and mind. It is like a parasite, living in you and feeding on you physically, mentally, and emotionally. But the pain-body only has as much power as you give it; the pain-body feeds on the negative energy that is created when you get swept up in the emotions it produces and identify with the pain-body.
Events, conversations, and thoughts can trigger the pain-body, especially if it hits a nerve with a familiar pain pattern from the past. When your pain-body is triggered, it can cause you to be irritated, impatient, somber, angry, depressed, or antagonistic.
When the pain-body is in control, you become a victim or a perpetrator, either inflicting pain on others or yourself. This feeds negative energy back into the pain-body and strengthens its power, creating a vicious cycle.
This seems nonsensical — why would you feed into your pain-body? Who would want pain? But when you look at your patterns of thoughts and behaviors, you may recognize this.
Not all pain-bodies are created equal. Some people have lived through more frequent or more severe pain, creating greater pain-bodies. Additionally, each pain-body has different triggers and different levels of sensitivity to those triggers.
Like the ego, the pain-body only has the power to survive and thrive if you identify with it. When the pain-body’s negativity — whether anger, depression, self-pity, or resentment — takes over your thoughts, you are identifying with it. When you do so, you’re feeding into the pain and creating more of the negative energy that strengthens it. And when the pain-body is in control, you are not present.
Some people create a strong identity based on their pain-body. For instance, some people who have faced incredible hardships and misfortunes forever define themselves by those experiences and the pain they caused them. Some people with chronic illness make that a primary part of their identity.
Although those experiences surely required admirable amounts of strength and resilience, constantly carrying that pain into the Now weighs those people down and prevents them from accessing peace and happiness in the Now.
Many of us live our lives identifying with our pain-bodies to some degree, believing those hardships make us who we are. If you’ve long identified with your pain-body, you may resist letting it go; it can feel like losing your identity (e.g. Who are you without your survivor story?).
But when you stop identifying with your pain-body, you can free yourself from carrying that pain and being consumed in the negative energy it creates. This also allows you to be present and connect with your true Being.
The pain-body is a product of the ego, and the way to separate your true self from the ego is to observe it. So to disconnect from your pain-body, you must observe it when it awakens; resist engaging with the thoughts, emotions, and negative energy the pain-body creates.
Separating yourself can be very difficult because the pain-body accumulates so much negative energy that it creates a powerful force of negative thoughts and emotions. You have to focus deliberately on observing these without getting sucked in.
When you observe your pain-body — even if it’s just for a moment, before the negative energy pulls you back in — you can see that there is a part of you that is not consumed by your pain-body, that is merely witnessing it. What’s more, with time and practice you begin to learn your pain-body’s tricks and tendencies. The more you do this, the more power you have to stop identifying with the pain-body and break its power over you.
(Shortform example: When you’re worked up and angry because someone just insulted you, try to stop for a moment and take a step back. If you can pull yourself away from embodying that anger, you can observe the situation almost as a third party: “She just said that I’m lazy, and it was really offensive. I got upset because I am absolutely not lazy, and in fact I work incredibly hard.
On a deeper level, it’s very important to me that people recognize me as a hard-working person, and she hit a nerve by saying the opposite. The reality is that whether she — or anyone else — acknowledges it or not makes no difference in the work I put forth. (Furthermore, it might be worth examining why it’s so important to me that people recognize me as a hard-working person.)”)
As you observe your pain-body, do not judge: Don’t call it bad or good. Don’t blame yourself for feeling that way or succumbing to the pain-body’s power. Don’t blame others for triggering it. Just observe it.
Notice how you may be attached to your pain-body by wanting to talk about it or think about it. This is a way of creating more negative energy, and is likely a habit you formed from years of identifying with it.
Even after you’ve separated yourself from the pain-body, it may still have some momentum and take time to wind back down to dormancy. You may even feel temporary physical aches and pains while the pain-body is subsiding.
Pain is part of the human experience, and every person has a pain-body; it can be triggered by thoughts or actions, and then both spews and feeds on negative energy. In this exercise, you will reflect on your individual pain-body.
What’s a painful experience from your past that is part of your pain-body? This is an emotional scar that gets triggered easily by other events, and then consumes your thoughts and emotions.
Think of a time when something or someone hit a nerve tied to this particular pain. What was said or done that activated that part of your pain-body? And how did you react when it was triggered?
What kinds of situations or conversations are likely to trigger that pain again in the future?
The power of Now is the power of being present. Presence is the only way to feel peace and true fulfillment. We’ve explored how not being present makes us unhappy and unfulfilled, and how our ego uses thoughts and emotions to prevent us from being present. Now that we’ve identified the problem, we’re going to talk about how you can become more present, and how it will impact your life.
Being present does not change your external circumstances. In fact, life consists of cycles of success and failure; each one is a necessary precedent of the other. These cycles can last from a few hours to years, and are part of the inevitable impermanence of everything in life. (There are also cycles of highs and lows when it comes to your physical energy, productivity, and creativity.)
When you are present, you must accept the lows as much as the highs as part of the reality of the Now. Why fight a cycle that is inevitable?
Much of the pain you experience is self-inflicted because you’re not accepting the reality of the present moment. The circumstances of your life — your “life situation” — can be unpleasant, but begrudging them does nothing to change the situation. When you resist the Now you are only creating negativity and unhappiness for yourself.
When you feel resistance and negativity build in you, observe it. Put your attention on it, acknowledge it, and then drop it.
It is true that external circumstances in your life can create challenges for you, but they are merely “situations” unless/until you start labeling them as “problems.” Rather than resisting the present because it can be unpleasant or painful, try to stop labeling things as good or bad and instead accept it as reality, as part of the cycle of highs and lows. Judging a present moment and circumstances as bad will make you want to resist it, which in itself will cause more pain. If you accept it as it is, then you can work with it (more on this later).
(Shortform note: It can be hard to make this argument to people who are dealing with real hardship. It might be more palatable to frame it by saying that presence and acceptance allow you to better deal with hardships, rather than succumb to them mentally and create added negativity around a situation you either can’t or haven’t yet changed. Presence, then, gives you more mental and psychological capacity to improve external challenges.)
If you are resisting some aspect of what exists in the Now, your focus is on how you wish the situation could be, or how it might improve later. You are not present. Presence requires accepting what is — or surrendering to the Now — without judgment. (We’ll talk more about surrender in the next section.)
Examples of judgment are thinking, “I wish I were doing something besides working on this report right now,” or “I can’t believe I’m stuck in this long line at the post office.”
Even judging something as good (e.g. “I’m having a great day” or “This is going to be my best work yet”) creates a mindset of classifying things as either good or bad.
Acceptance and presence are the only way to get through a difficult (or any) situation in life. You can’t go around it (avoidance) or go backward (time travel), so you must go through it, moment by moment.
Engaging only with each moment — and not with the past and future — allows you to break down problems to a more manageable size. When you isolate problems to just the present moment, you start to see that most problems only exist in the context of time.
You may find clarity and context by asking yourself, “If everything stayed the way it is at this exact moment, would I be OK?” (Shortform note: You can relate this to the adage, "This too shall pass." If you're only taking life moment by moment, nothing is beyond what you can handle.)
Imagine you are walking along a path while it is pitch dark and very foggy, but you have a flashlight that illuminates enough space in front of you that you can make your way forward.
Many people have a negative connotation of surrender, associating it with passively tolerating a situation without taking further action. However, surrendering to the Now means to stop fighting the flow of life and to accept the reality of the Now; only then can you take productive, positive action forward.
In any undesirable situation you have three choices:
These first two options involve action. Any action is typically better than none — either it improves the situation, or it is a mistake that you learn from, which is still ultimately benefiting you.
If you’re resisting taking action, ask yourself whether it’s out of fear. If so, observe the fear and be present with it; don’t judge or analyze it. Once you’ve acknowledged and accepted that fear, then you can decide your best next step.
There may be something you could do but aren’t doing, perhaps out of laziness. If this is the case, decide whether you are going to take action, or accept and embrace your laziness.
If you can’t change or leave a situation, you may be forced to accept it forever, or at least until things change and you can take another action later.
If you are in an unpleasant or undesirable life situation, your first step is to acknowledge and accept the reality of this moment, because you can’t change what already exists in the Now. If you resist or deny the reality of the present, you’re stuck wishing it were something else. That not only creates pain and negative energy (as we discussed earlier), but also prevents you from being able to move forward or make change.
Sometimes planning your next steps will be the only action you can take in the Now. If so, be careful not to get caught in mental projections of the future (psychological time). Instead of focusing on the myriad things you may have to do in the future, focus on the one thing you can do now, in each moment.
If there’s nothing you can do, surrender; accept it without resistance. Often you may find that circumstances change on their own, or as the book says, “Life becomes helpful and cooperative.” (Shortform note: This is comparable to the notion in The Alchemist that as you follow the call of the Universe, the Universe will help you on your path.)
We have explained why you must surrender to both the good and the bad in life in order to be present and access inner peace, but dealing with money problems or a job you don’t like is one thing. How do you accept extreme situations like chronic illness or suffering? Although the circumstances are more difficult, the process is essentially the same.
Like life problems, illness needs the context of past and future to exist. In each isolated moment of the Now, you only experience symptoms — physical pain, weakness, discomfort, or disability — not the entire illness. Accepting an illness can be overwhelming, but if you surrender to the existence of symptoms, you can be present and transform your experience.
(Shortform example, if you deal with chronic migraines, you can choose to experience your migraine one of two ways.
Surrendering to the present won’t make the migraine go away, but it will alter your experience of it.)
Do not surrender to the idea of illness. Since illness needs the context of past and future (otherwise it is reduced to symptoms), it engages your ego and takes you out of the present. Making an identity out of being sick does nothing to help you, it just keeps your focus on the unpleasantness and suffering.
Do not feel you’ve done anything wrong to cause your illness. Do not feel guilty for it, do not blame yourself. Also do not blame life for cursing you with it.
If you find yourself feeling defensive or upset by this, reflect on whether you may have taken on this illness as part of your identity. If so, your ego may be reacting to this questioning of your supposed identity.
Sometimes reality is so painful — like when you lose a loved one — that it’s too difficult to accept initially. But you always have two chances at surrender.
Once you recognize and accept these negative emotions, you are less likely to blindly act on them.
When you have accepted suffering, you have indirectly accepted death. In death, only your ego and physical body cease to exist; the energy of your true Being can never be destroyed. When you can be present through suffering and understand that your true Being is really separate from your mind and body, you can then accept that this part of you is unaffected by what happens to the physical and mental parts of you.
You can use pain, illness, and suffering to push you deep into presence and enlightenment. Through extreme circumstances and pain, you may find yourself in a position where you have nowhere else to turn but inward to finally find peace and enlightenment. We’ll discuss this more later.
Highs and lows are inevitable in life, and you must accept both to remain present and be at peace. Use this exercise to work toward accepting something undesirable situation in your life.
Describe something in your current life situation that you are unhappy or dissatisfied with.
How have you reacted to this situation so far? Perhaps you have made a plan of action, or felt hopeless and overwhelmed, or looked to others for advice and sympathy.
Is this situation one that you can leave or change? Or is it something you must accept (at least for the time being)?
If you could take action (by leaving or changing the situation in some way), but have not, what do you think is holding you back? Or if you must accept the situation but have not yet, why do you think you are resisting surrender?
We have discussed how important and beneficial it is to be present — but easier said than done. Presence will inevitably take practice (this is why meditation is called a practice), and it will be like a muscle you can strengthen over time. The keys to this practice will be maintaining awareness of both your mind and body.
Presence does not mean never using your mind, but rather using it deliberately. Your mind is a tool; use it productively for specific tasks, then put it to rest.
Pay attention to your thoughts: How often do you think about the past, future, or something that is not helping you with the task at hand? Are you in control of your thoughts, or are they taking you on a ride?
Many of us spend unnecessary time and energy in repetitive and unproductive thoughts that can actually do more harm than good. The mind becomes dangerous when it stops being a tool that we use, and instead has control over us, as we discussed earlier.
When you use your mind only for practical purposes, instead of leaving it running all day, it will be sharper and more focused when you need it.
If you stay present in the Now and face a situation that needs immediate action, you will be able to act with clarity and awareness.
We are most creative when we are present. Artists tend to talk about creative processes characterized by ideas flowing through them, not painstaking sessions of overanalysis.
The mind is good at collecting, storing, and analyzing information. True creativity and innovation come from moments of no-mind, when you are unrestricted by thoughts (e.g., “No one has ever been able to do this before.”) and judgments (e.g. “This is a terrible idea!”).
When you need to approach something with creativity and innovation, take a moment to clear your thoughts. Put all your attention on your breathing. When you return to the task at hand, your thoughts will be fresh and creative.
Being aware of your inner body —your mental and emotional state and the energy it creates within you — keeps you present in the Now. As you move through your day, don’t put all your attention in the external world around you. Keep some awareness on your inner body at all times.
Follow these steps for inner body awareness.
Ask yourself, “Am I at ease in this moment?” Or, “What’s going on inside me right now?”
If you’re having a hard time connecting with your inner body, try these methods.
The more often you can connect with your inner body, the more presence you are able to maintain. Once you are present, you will not stay there — you will need to remind yourself and practice, and eventually you will spend more time in the Now. When you can do this consistently you have reached enlightenment. More on enlightenment later.
Being present impacts your inner state first and foremost. That affects your behavior and, inevitably, how you interact with people around you.
If you are acting on your ego’s influence — largely based on fear and the impulses of your pain-body — you are not reacting to the world as it actually is, but rather to your ego’s perception of it. When you are present and connected with your true self, you can be free of these influences and react genuinely to a clear-eyed view of the world and people around you.
You can only truly see and connect with other people through being present. When you are not present, you will make judgments of other people and confuse their words and behaviors with who they are. This creates a dynamic in which your ego is only seeing and responding to other egos, not their true selves. When you are present, you will be able to recognize that what you see is only a screen (the ego), behind which lies the person’s true Being.
The nature of the ego will often cause you to then perceive people as potential threats — not necessarily to your safety, but to your sense of supposed identity. Compassion entails seeing that there is a connection between yourself and all living things.
From your ego’s perspective, your body and superficial associations (e.g. religion, nationality, profession, and other aspects of your ego-created identity) all attest to how different and unique you are from others. But when you are present and understand that your true Being is deeper than your ego-created identity, you can recognize the life energy inside not only yourself but also in all living things.
It’s important to also recognize that the physical bodies of all living things will inevitably die and rot. All thoughts will die with the body, but your divine presence and energy will remain. The same is true of every other living creature.
The mind can know facts and information, but it cannot understand things or people on a deeper level. The mind is useful for practical purposes in day-to-day life. Presence, on the other hand, is what helps you connect with people and nature.
Without presence, a romantic relationship will fall victim to a love/hate cycle because true love can only be felt through presence. The ego will make you misconstrue actions and situations and cause you to be reactionary, eventually poisoning the relationship.
If you look to your partner to complete you or make you happy, you are placing your fulfillment on an external factor, which will never lead you to true peace and happiness. Here are a few reasons love can fail.
Using love as a substitute in this way can be viewed the same way as using food, drugs, shopping, and anything else that brings temporary satisfaction in an effort to mask deeper feelings of pain and dissatisfaction.
Your partner will eventually make a mistake or do something that fails to meet your (ego’s) expectations.
Your ego will blame your partner’s failure for the pain, and your pain-body will cause you to attack her.
The only route for happiness, even in a relationship, is to be present yourself. We’ll discuss how to do this in the next section.
To foster true love, you must be present and aware of your pain-body. If you know your pain-body and its triggers and tendencies, you are in a better position to resist them and prevent the vicious cycle of attacks and counter-attacks between your and your partner’s pain-bodies.
It’s important for both partners to be present. If only one partner in the relationship is present, there are a few options:
Avoiding relationships is not the answer to avoiding pain. In fact, relationship conflicts are more likely to push you to self-reflection and inner growth than isolation will.
How do you maintain presence in a relationship? It’s one thing to be present with yourself, but a relationship brings another person (and her ego) into the dynamic and requires a lot of give and take.
First, stop judging yourself. Accept yourself and the present.
Remember that love exists within you. You do not need your partner or your relationship to access true love, so you don’t need to cling to either. Accept her and accept the relationship as it unfolds naturally, knowing that your love and happiness don’t need to be tethered to every up and down you experience with your partner.
Second, stop judging your partner. Accept her fully, without the temptation to judge or change her in any way.
When your partner acts on her ego, do not judge or react; judgment means you are confusing her action with who she is, or that you are projecting your own ego onto her.
When you get into an argument or conflict with someone, observe your defensiveness when being attacked, as well as the aggression in your counterattack (if you do so). Notice your attachment to your views or opinions, your need to be right and prove the other person wrong. Recognize that your ego is fueling your reaction; acknowledging this will help to dissolve it. With practice, you will realize in future arguments that you have a choice not to react.
Acceptance of both yourself and your partner dissolves mind games, clinging, and the inclination to create a victim and perpetrator in the relationship.
Express your feelings to your partner without blame.
Learn to listen to your partner openly and without getting defensive.
If you are dealing with an ego-controlled person who is manipulating you, walk away from the situation rather than allowing it to threaten your presence. Do not stay in situations that engage and inflame your egoic responses. It is your responsibility to have enough self-awareness to maintain your presence; blaming someone else for breaking your connection with your true self is, in itself, an act of the ego.
When you say “no” and remove yourself from a situation, do not do so in a way that is reactive and negative. Say “no” and choose to walk away from a place of calm and clear insight that the situation is not in your best interest.
Let’s zoom out from individuals to the global scale.
Our presence — or lack thereof — not only affects the people around us, but also the environment. As Beings who are connected to every other living thing on earth through an eternal life energy, our behavior and the energy we emanate impact the world and living things around us.
Throughout the book, Tolle periodically refers to the idea that humans across the globe have strayed further from presence from generation to generation, and are collectively lacking more presence than ever. Our collective lack of presence is sending negative energy into our environment and damaging the planet; environmental pollution evident around the world is an outward reflection of millions of humans’ mental pollution.
Raising collective human presence is the only hope to save our planet. Tolle believes that the whole world is coming around to this knowledge and an awakening of presence, which is encouraging for the future of the planet. But we all have to participate — it is not inevitable.
As you practice being present, you will become present throughout a greater part of the day. Eventually, you may near enlightenment, which is being perpetually present. When you are enlightened you can rise above thought, using your mind in a focused and effective way, without being controlled by it or addicted to it.
Enlightenment is not something you strive to achieve: You do not reach enlightenment by gaining anything, only by stripping away the ego’s unnecessary thoughts and negative energy. Enlightenment comes only through being in the Now and keeping the ego at bay.
Presence and enlightenment bring inner peace — which is unaffected by external factors — even when it cannot bring happiness. You can be unhappy but still at peace.
If you don’t come to presence and enlightenment by choice, you may find it through suffering, when you have nowhere else to turn but inward. Enlightenment through suffering is also called the way of the cross, and can come in cases of chronic illness or extreme circumstances like imprisonment.
This may not heal you or make you happy through the pain, but it can bring you inner peace. (Shortform note: A scientific study found that among patients with chronic illness, strong negative emotions led to denial, avoidance, depression, and anxiety. Patients who held those negative attitudes had worse chances of recovery.)
When you are present, you are like a deep lake. The surface of the water is stirred somewhat by external conditions — rain, wind, or calm. Below the surface, the water always remains calm and still, carrying on regardless of the passing weather. Whatever life situation you may experience, no matter the ups and downs of life’s cycles, your peace remains undisturbed under the surface.
If you know or can find someone who is very present or even enlightened, they can help you in your journey. No one can do it for you, but it can be helpful to have people to fuel your fire and help you stay present.