The One Book That Will Get You Through Difficult Times
And teach you a different way.
When Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose swept the nation over ten years ago, the book made such an indelible impression on Oprah, she created an entire web series around it.
I tried to read it, several times.
I couldn’t get through the first chapter without wondering why Oprah had lost her mind. Nor could I get through the first chapter on the second pass. Nor the third.
Sentences like, “Seeing the beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature,” had me scratching my head, putting the book aside and reaching for something less esoteric like Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Even after I muddled through the first chapter, I still didn’t know what the heck Eckhart was talking about. It felt like I was reading a book written in another language I couldn’t understand.
I put the book away for a year or two.
Then an event happened to awaken my mind and force me into the present.
Divorce.
Because of this stressful life change, my perspective shifted. I went through the most degrading, soul-crushing, crazy, lowbrow divorce through which a husband could drag a wife, and it wasn’t my decision. None of it. The only choice I had was how I reacted to something happening to me I did not want to happen.
Staying present helped — not something I did very often then — but began to practice religiously to survive, to get through three years of dirty, expensive legal tricks and mudslinging.
I have to give gratitude for my then five-year-old. If you’ve ever been the stay-at-home parent, you’ve observed how children refuse to think beyond the present. Similar to dogs, children are connected to the here and now, moment after moment. If you allow them to be themselves and observe them going about their days, they can teach you through observation a lot about how to live a more present life.
I was taken to court over and over again under the most absurd pretenses.
Living in our house with just my five-year-old while my husband of ten years was off falling in love with a woman he just met at my daughter’s costly private school, I decided to pick up A New Earth for the fourth, but not final time.
This time, I read it in one sitting.
As though the text had been translated for me into my language, I now understood the wisdom within its pages. In the eye of a hurricane, I was finally ready to hear what it had to say. The universe conspired, my perspective shifted, my mind was open and prepared to receive. Now the ideas from the first sentence to the last so eloquently told in Eckhart’s book spoke to me as if I had written them myself.
I carried that book with me everywhere during my three-year divorce, and it carried me through one of the toughest times in my life.
Each time I was dragged into court over some nonsense that cost me a fortune, the only thing I took with me to the courthouse was my copy of A New Earth.
While waiting for the judge to call our case each time, I sat on a cold, hard bench in an imposing hall of the courthouse that stands ominously in Grand Park and takes up an entire city block of Downtown LA reading A New Earth.
Each time I had to wait in that same cold hall to appear in court, I read.
A New Earth was my survivor’s guide to divorce.
I sat down and opened the book, flipping randomly to whatever sentence the universe had for me that day, and would start to read.
It calmed me instantly, even while angry, anxious strangers sat and stood around me waiting for their own troubles to be determined by a judge they’d never met.
I read sentences like “Evolve or die.” I had to let go of my ego.
One way of defining the ego is simply this: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.
Whatever I had done to contribute to the fact that I was sitting on a cold hard bench, reading under fluorescent lights in a vast hall waiting for the court to call a case with my name on it, whatever actions brought me here, I had to let go, and make peace with. At the very least, I had married this person who was now treating me poorly; I was part of that decision. In what way had I been living that led me to this moment?
“The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change will collapse first.” — Page 19
I turned to page 96,
“Action may be required to change the situation or remove yourself from it. If there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, ‘Well, right now, this is how it is. I can either accept it or make myself miserable.’ The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it.”
Tolle goes on to say, “Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”
As soon as I stopped fighting against what was happening to me — having to go to court and defend myself against untrue accusations — acceptance flooded in. As did contentment.
“You are not powerless,” the universe whispered. I have power. My power is to accept my circumstances and move on.
You can decide how you want to get through something, complaining non-stop or meeting it head-on.
I was already doing everything I practically could to address how my husband was choosing to handle his divorce from me. I was making smart decisions, but I was reacting to what he was putting me through. I had to let go emotionally and be neutral to the fact that he was deciding to drag me through the mud, and not allow myself to take it personally.
As soon as I chose not to take it personally, I was present, and the misery I felt lifted.
The spiritual guidance I found in A New Earth was accessible to me when I needed it most.
If you are open, the universe will conspire to bring you the right book at the right time — when you need it. I understood its value when I was ready to meet it. When I got the lesson, pain and anxiety reduced significantly. A New Earth sent me on a path of meditation and reading more books that help me stay in the present.
Eckhart Tolle’s ideas ask for contemplation, they are more to be opened up to than studied:
“Words are only pointers. What is being communicated lies beyond words, but we can use them to go at least in the direction of what is meant, and that is helpful.”
I made a conscious effort to exit the debilitating cycle I found myself living: reacting over and over again to something that was clearly out of my control — my divorce — and stay in the present moment.
The gift that was given to me, to realize I have a choice to let go of reaction and replace it with what is happening right now, has carried me through to this day.
Tolle,
Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.
In awakened doing, there is complete internal alignment with the present moment and whatever you are doing right now. The doing is then not primarily a means to an end, but an opening for consciousness to come into this world. Aligning yourself with the Now is aligning yourself with universal purpose, the purpose of the whole. What is the purpose of the whole? The birth and flowering of consciousness. The whole then guides you in whatever you think or do.
My copy of A New Earth is now tattered with coffee stains, earmarked corners, sentences, and whole pages highlighted in green marker, notes in the margins, and red tabs on particular pages. I have thoughts handwritten in the margins that read, “Stop pleasing your ego. Only the truth of who you are will set you free.”
The book taught me I had to get in touch with the stillness within or perish.
I had to stop reacting to my circumstances.
If I continued to react, I would get sick, have an accident, or drive myself insane. I couldn’t stop what was being thrown at me, but I did have the choice to stay in the moment. I was determined to limit the negative effect he was having on me, so I decided to practice stillness instead of reaction.
This is illustrated on page 141,
We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the pristine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie-making. Our very presence becomes our identity, rather than our thought and emotions…let go of the story — and return to the only place of power: the present moment.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovered Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
