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THE DELUSION OF TIME
Eckhart Tolle’s Takes on time
Time is a very difficult thing to pin down. When St. Augustine of hippo was asked, “what is time?” He said, “I know what it is, but when you ask me, I don’t.”
Because we often think of time as something linear, as a one motion concept which traveled from the past, through the present, and onto the future. But in actuality, time doesn’t move from the past into the future.
That’s not how it works. The big misconception is overlooking the here and now in its entirely.
And when we do so, we’re identifying with our minds. This moment right now, to paraphrase Ralph W. Emerson, is a passage of the moments that have come before, and will come ever after. The now-o-clock is the only time existed. As the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius puts it, “If you’ve seen the present, you’ve seen all things, for time rooted into all of eternity, and everything that happens is related and the same.”
According to spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, “the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master”.
Identifying with our minds is to be trapped in time.
Tolle says, “We believe the past gives us an identity, and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Which, of course, both are illusions.”
And the reasons so many of us aren’t willing to honor and acknowledge this eternal now, explains Tolle, is because we’d rather identify with the mind to create endless preoccupation with the past and future.
To go beyond this delusion of time requires us to recollect that there was never a time when our lives was not now, nor will there ever be.
The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. — Eckhart Tolle
Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of the mind. It is your single point of access to the timeless and formless realm of Being. — Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and author. Born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge.
Tolle is the #1 New York Times bestseller of The Power of Now, and the highly acclaimed follow-up — A New Earth. Both, are widely ranked amongst top influential, and spiritual books of our time.
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