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A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

In his book, Eckhart Tolle introduces readers to the concept of the power of now. In essence, the book examines the state of humanity, highlighting the different ways through which people live their daily lives based on a mistaken identity. He examines humanity’s egoism and how human beings have used their intellect for survival. As the author explains, the world presents humanity with plenty of opportunities for personal growth and self-improvement. However, this opportunities are only available to those who have the ability to recognize them and accept them into their personal lives. The author further explains that all human beings face plenty of challenges, which they need to accept and confront at all times.

This paper presents a critical analysis of the book, A New Earth: Awakening Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Specifically, the paper explains how the book teaches its readers on how to overcome their life challenges

New Journey

In his book, Tolle writes ‘‘to forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.’’(Tolle63). This statement simply means that forgiveness is a crucial aspect in the human life and that individuals must practice forgiveness in order to survive their life’s challenges. In support of this statement, my personal life has been a good example of what Tolle proposes. After a fight with my parents, I experience a swam of negative thoughts owing to the conflict between my parents and me. However, through forgiveness, I am able to overcome some of these negative feelings and be able to let go of these challenge with ease. Every time I practice forgiveness, it feels like a new awakening, just as Tolle explains. Forgiveness is the first step towards overcoming life’s challenges, as it allows individuals to evade the potential for suffering. As Tolle explains, “How you react to people and situations, especially when challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know yourself.” (Tolle188). Put simply, if one decides to forgive others for their shortcomings, there is a higher likelihood of such an individual to successfully proceed on with their lives with minimal disruptions.

Tolle also explains that

Travel to an unknown destination may lead to unpredictable dangers but I believe that is a challenge for me. When I travel to new cities or new countries, I make it a point to talk to as many locals as possible. You can learn so much more from one conversation than you can from one hundred tour books, so I introduce myself to strangers, share experiences with travelers, bargain with shopkeepers and ask taxi drivers questions. When I speak to a waitress, I ask her where she’s from and what life is like there. If you open yourself up to strangers this way, you can learn so much not just about this new place in the world but also about yourself. Sometimes there is no way to predict what balance of enlightenment and endangerment might occur when one takes a chance with the unfamiliar such as venturing to speak to an unknown member of the opposite sex may lead to embarrassment, or a high seas adventure might well lead to scurvy, but there is, to be sure, value in the experience either way. To this end, great challenge has the capacity to bring about great insight.

4. In the journey of my life, any conflict and unhappiness is a kind of test. Also, this is a best practice opportunities for the awareness. I remember when I attended the growth groups; the speaker Mr. Chen tells a story about awareness: At the first time, when you walk on the road, you don’t notice that there has a big hole on the middle and then you will always fall into it. At that time, you need to spend lots of time to climb out from the hole. The second time, you walk on the road, and fall into the hole again. However, you stay in the hole’s time is shorter than before. Again, you walk on the road, and you try to go around, but still fall into it accidentally. But, you know how to climb out. Finally one day, you know there has a hole on the middle of the road, and you are able to bypass. On the other hand, this does not guarantee that you will not fall into another the hole. The hole perhaps is depression, sadness, anger, or the pain, and the only thing you can do that is we need to maintain awareness. This story makes me realize that we must be willing to fail, to falter, to suffer, in order to become greater versions of ourselves. Sometimes, being shown lesser versions of us can be the key to this personal evolution.

5. And perhaps most importantly, we must recognize that this personal evolution doesn’t occur in a freedom like Albert Einstein says that “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us the ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space.”To the contrary, we improve ourselves only if we improve the value we represent for the whole of humanity, in whatever modest capacity this may be possible. By dispatching with these prejudices, we have a chance to know so much more, not just about the world but also about ourselves.

6.This is perhaps the standard in our discussion. Nothing that we do occurs independently of the needs and wishes of family, friends, communities, societies, civilizations and so on. We are insignificant units of an infinitude that is well beyond our comprehension. The best we can do is attempt to comprehend this notion as a function of that which we can impact. Where we can improve our lives, the lives of those around us and the lives of those beyond us, we have a responsibility to attempt to do so. Only through openness to the unfamiliar, a willingness to learn from suffering and recognition of the broader level of the universe will allow us to do this.

Work Cited

Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York: The plum Book, 2005. Print