The Power of Now

After I finished reading A New Earth (for the first time, will read it again soon), I started Eckhart Tolle's first book, The Power of Now.  Everybody needs to read both.

There is no way that anything that I write can substitute for reading these books.  But I want to post some excepts to tempt you into heading straight to your nearest bookstore or library.  The difficult part for me is deciding which passage to start with. . . .

OK, page 146

True salvation is a state of freedom--from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and  insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging.  It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.  Your mind is telling you that you cannot get there from here.  Something needs to happen, or you need to become this or that before you can be free and fulfilled.  It is saying, in fact, that you need time--that you need to find, sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become, or understand something before you can be free or complete.  You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation.  You think that you can't get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there.  You "get" there by realizing that you are there already.  You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God.  So there is no only way to salvation: Any condition can be used, but no particular condition is needed.   However, there is only one point of access:  the Now.  There can be no salvation away from this moment. 

Somebody stop me. . . I could just keep typing his words all night.  Please, have mercy on my poor little fingers,  tell me you're gonna read the book!