Tolle begins A New Earth by revealing that his book is purposely intended to advance people's consciousness after reading it. It's meant to help us take a step back and look at ourselves in a new way regarding humanity's past, present, and future survival on this planet. He believes that as a collective race, humans have lived unconscious for long enough. The time has come to expand into a new awareness and live consciously in the present moment.
Religion & The Arising New Consciousness
Tolle states that many religions grossly misinterpreted the teachings of the highly evolved masters: Jesus, Buddha, and Lao Tzu. The world was not ready for them, but they were a necessary part of the awakening of humanity. The original intent of Religions were to unifying people, but some of them became divisive, bringing about violence through wars and persecution. Some relgious leaders made themselves and the masses feel "right" and others "wrong" by saying God was on their side, justifying any acts of aggression towards other religions, backgrounds, and genders. Thus inviting separation from our true selves.
The Illusory Self
Tolle delves into the truth of how people identify themselves with use of the word "I". He believes that it simultaneously embodies the greatest error and the deepest truth. Its usage misleads people to identify with their ego. Tolle urges people to recognize the illusion that humans are more than what they identify with as a physical body, gender, profession, race, and religion. A good question raised in A New Earth is this - "If you take all of these aspects away, what do you have?" Dissolving the idea of possesiveness frees one's spirituality to grow into new awareness of your true nature which is ultimately love, joy, and peace regardless of what people own or their situation in life. This realization that allow for sharing rather than possesiveness.
The Pain-Body
Tolle touches on an interesting subject called the Pain-Body, which he defines as the human attraction to negative emotions. If a person resides in this negative state of being, the person will derive more energy by seeking if from others by holding grudges and issues with another person. Their inner turmoill will boil over, resulting in arguments and confrontations that fuel their need for negative emotions, which they unknowingly equate as pleasure. The media and entertainment industry plays a large role in perpetuating this by feeding our senses with violence, natural disasters, and stories of hopelessness. They are created by people with Pain-Bodies, but as humans grow spiritually, this negative stimulus will ultimately turn towards the positive.
Breaking Free
To break this cycle of attracting negativity, people must find ways to release the past in terms of traumatic situations and events that stay alive in people's minds. The key is to be mindful of the present and let go of the constant thought processes that runs like autopilot in our thoughts regarding the past and future. Once people step back for a moment to live in the present, their dependence on negative emotions decreases. In scientific terms, "The energy trapped in the body changes its vibrational frequency and eventually frees itself."
Eckart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and bestselling author of A New Earth and The Power of Now, regarded as the most influential spiritual books of our time.
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
336 pages
Publisher: Penguin, January 30, 2008
ISBN-10: 0452289963
 |
