Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

Just finished reading and re-reading the book Stillness Speaks; as the book itself states it is not something that you read cover to cover in one go, I also felt that I needed to go back to specific parts and read them over and over again as the words sank in.
As Eckhart Tolle says in the book that if you are ‘seeking enlightenment’ as in future then you will spend time finding it unless you believe that you have it ‘now’ and can stop seeking it.

I read through his words and understand them but it’s tough to realize them and there is a part of me that knows that I am not ready for it. I realize the nature of materialistic view that I’ll be bereft of once the realization sets in and maybe it’s the fear of change or unknown that I am resisting the realization to set in.

I like his philosophy but it is not something that I am ready to live at this moment. He talks about being in the moment and I can do that for smaller segments of time but in the big picture I am a die-hard planner or have become one over the course of time. I understand how much fun planning can be and I totally enjoy doing just that but in the end if that trip that I was so meticulously planning for doesn’t work out then I am bound to be disappointed.

What appealed to me most about the book that he explained the moment of stillness in a way that I couldn’t. It tried explaining what I felt one early morning in Duluth a couple of years ago or like the post about waking up on Dal Lake in Kashmir, this summer. I totally get it…

One of my most favorite quotes from this book that I hope to remember in moments of distress is:

Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less.
… Being cannot be given or taken away; being in its fullness is already within you, ‘now’.
Another series of his words that I find strength from is: “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

I got the book from the library but is now on my wish list because it is one of those book which can rest next to my bedside and prop me up when I am too entrenched in my fears and diminish my presence in the ‘now’. Totally recommend reading it once.