Exploring the Power of Now with Eckhart Tolle

The present moment has always been available to spiritual seekers, but as long as you are seeking you are not available to the present moment. “Seeking” implies that you are looking to the future for some answer, or for some achievement, spiritual or otherwise. Everybody is in the seeking mode, seeking to add something to who they are, whether it be money, relationships, possessions, knowledge, status—or spiritual attainment. “Seeking” means you need more time, more future, more of this or that. And there is nothing wrong with it. All that has its place in this world.

To make money, to gather knowledge, to learn a new skill, to explore new territory, even to get from A to B—for all these things you need time. For almost everything you need time, except for one thing: to embrace the present moment. You need no time to open yourself to the power of now and so awaken to who you are beyond name and form, and realize that in the depth of your being, you are already complete, whole, one with the timeless essence of all life. For that you not only need no time, but time is the obstacle to that realization, seeking is the obstacle, needing to add something to who you are is the obstacle.

The story of your life, how it all unfolds, whether you succeed or fail in this world ... yes, it matters, yes, it's important—relatively, not absolutely. Only one thing is of absolute importance and this is it. If you miss it, you miss the deeper purpose of your life, which I call the flowering of human consciousness. And ultimately nothing else will satisfy you.

About Eckhart Tolle