Oneness with All Life

A friend gave me this wonderful book as a birthday present earlier this year. Many readers will be familiar with other books by Eckart Tolle, and this one seems to me to encapsulate the essence of his message in a series of short extracts from A New Earth, which I read when it came out. These are arranged under a number of headings, such as the power of the present moment, awakening, inner space, your life purpose, becoming present, and consciousness. It would be easy to quote any page as significant, and the book forms part of my morning reading, just one page a day. Here are a few representative extracts:

Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Action, although necessary, is only a secondary factor in manifesting our external reality. The primary factor in creation is consciousness.

Only Presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Only Presence can undo the past in you and transform your state of consciousness.

Most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form. Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in your perceptions, however, you can sense the divine life essence, the one in-dwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life form, recognise it as one with your own essence and so love it as yourself.