Summary of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now

Enlightenment, a feeling of awareness, peace, and joy, comes from within a person, not from outside sources. Enlightenment is an end to suffering and a feeling of connection to a person’s own true self and to the world. Enlightenment is being aware of a person’s own deepest self or Being. People have difficulty experiencing Being because of their identification with their own minds. Their own thoughts keep them from finding the stillness needed to experience Being. When people identify with their thoughts, it blocks their relationships with others, nature, and God. Those who can observe themselves thinking realize that they are not their mind and that all things of importance, such as beauty, joy, love, and inner peace, come from beyond the mind. This state of consciousness is achieved when people feel their own presence beyond their thoughts, emotions, and physical bodies. Another way to experience enlightenment is to focus all attention on the now, the present moment. The ego, or false self, barely notices the present moment. To the ego, only the past andthe future are important. Emotions are thoughts that are felt in the body. To reach full consciousness, people need to be able to see their emotions as separate from themselves…