A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Eckhart Tolle, 2005
A student on the London Underground sees a woman angrily arguing with herself and, a little later, realizes that his own mind works the same way. Eckhart Tolle explains how a false “I” clings to things, to being right, to roles and to old grievances, and why it doesn't need to be defeated, only noticed. You'll learn how to stop feeding quarrels and where to look for life's main purpose.
Who it is for
For anyone worn out by inner arguments, grudges and the endless feeling of “not enough.” And for readers of “The Power of Now” who want to see how Tolle's ideas work in relationships, at work and in the search for purpose.
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right.
The woman on the Underground and the student at the mirror
London, morning, a carriage on the Underground. Opposite a first-year student sits a woman of about thirty, loudly and angrily arguing with someone who isn't there: “…you are a liar how dare you accuse me of…” The seats on either side of her are empty. The student is curious and follows her. To his surprise, she walks into the same university building he's heading to.
A little later he's washing his hands and thinking: “I hope I don't end up like her.” The man next to him glances over, and the student realizes with a shock that he said it out loud. His name was Eckhart Tolle. In that second he saw that his mind ran just as ceaselessly as hers. In her head anger dominated; in his, anxiety. She thought out loud, he thought silently. The difference was only one of degree.
The main idea of “A New Earth” starts from this scene. In Tolle's view, there is a dysfunction in the “normal” state of the human mind. Ancient teachings called it by different names: Buddhists called it suffering, Christians called it sin, and the Greek word translated as sin literally means “to miss the mark.” Tolle calls it ego. Not arrogance, as in everyday speech, but a false “I” made of thoughts, things, roles and grievances, which a person mistakes for who they are.
The book doesn't teach you to fight the ego. Tolle thinks that's as pointless as fighting darkness: what you need is light, meaning the ability to notice. Ahead: how the ego clings to things, why it needs enemies and being right, what roles it plays, how old pain looks for fights, and what, according to Tolle, the main purpose of life is. If you know what it's like to argue with an imaginary opponent in your head, you're already standing at the door of this book. Let's begin.
The ring that didn't make her any less
Twice a week Tolle visited a teacher in her early forties who had cancer. The doctors had given her a few months. One day he found her furious: her grandmother's diamond ring had gone missing, and she was sure the caregiver had stolen it. She asked whether she should call the police or confront the caregiver. Tolle said he would ask her a few questions and told her not to answer right away, but to listen inside herself after each one. Did she realize that soon she would have to let go of the ring anyway? Would she be any less if she let it go?
After a few minutes of silence the woman smiled and said that at first her mind had answered that yes, of course she would be less. But when she tried to feel the answer rather than think it up, for the first time she sensed something in herself that was calm and intensely alive and that the loss of the ring didn't diminish at all. In the last weeks of her life she let go of much of what she owned, and she forgave the caregiver. The ring turned up after her death, in the bathroom.
For Tolle, this is how identification works: the “I” invests itself in a thing, and the thing becomes part of “me.” The ego has content and structure. The content changes: a toy in childhood, then a car, a house, clothes. The structure stays the same. A child who has a toy taken away cries not because of what it was worth, but because of the word “mine.” Advertising knows this and sells not a product but an addition to your self-image.
Stronger than having is wanting. Tolle writes that the ego wants to want more than it wants to have: behind “I don't have enough” hides “I am not enough.” That's why the joy of a new purchase fades so quickly.
You can't get rid of attachment by effort, the author believes. It weakens when you notice it. The sign is simple: if losing a thing, or the threat of losing it, throws you off balance, the thing has become part of your “I.” Tolle adds that this doesn't mean it's time to stop locking your door. You can value things and take care of them, you just shouldn't look for yourself in them.
About the author
Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and writer who studied at the University of London and the University of Cambridge. His first book, “The Power of Now,” became a worldwide bestseller, and “A New Earth” is his second major book.
All books by this author: Eckhart Tolle
Terms from the book
- Zen
- Ego
- Pain-body
- Presence
- Awareness
- Identification: In Tolle's account, the habit of investing your sense of “I” in a thing, a thought, a role or an emotion, so that it starts to feel like part of you. The word goes back to the Latin idem, “the same.”
- Reactivity: The habit of reacting strongly to anything that irritates or offends. Tolle sees it as one of the ways the ego strengthens itself.
- Grievance: A long-held resentment that a person keeps alive by telling themselves, again and again, the story of what was done to them.
- Kasan: A Japanese Zen teacher, the subject of Tolle's story about sweaty palms.
- Ram Dass: An American spiritual teacher and writer, the author of “Be Here Now.”
- Ethel: Tolle's neighbor, whose story he tells in the book. As a teenager she escaped from Nazi Germany.
- Hakuin: Hakuin Ekaku, an eighteenth-century Japanese Zen master and one of the central figures of the Rinzai school.
- Enthusiasm: For Tolle, the third mode of awakened doing: the joy of doing something, with a goal added to it.
All terms
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