How to liberate Yourself From Your Thoughts

 A beggar had been sitting at the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by, when the beggar mechanically mumbled: "Spare some change?" The stranger answered as he has nothing to give him, and in return asked the question about the box the beggar was sitting on since years. The stranger asked, did you ever look within? The beggar refused and upon insistence of stranger he opened the box. To his astonishment the box was filled with gold.

The Power of Now is an amazing book written by Eckhart Tolle who is a German-born resident of Canada. In the year 2011, he was listed by the Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world.

The short story narrated above is the essence of the whole book elaborating the inner treasure that are mostly unknown to us only because we never bother to look within to explore the treasure we have been bestowed with. The condition of any person who did not explore inner wealth is same like the beggar who is sitting on box of gold and is begging and looking for it somewhere else. 

“Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth.”

The Power of Now

The author stresses to have the experience of being united with “Being” that is beyond the imagination and very vast, yet everyone have created their own perceptions. When one identifies oneself with the perception of what one THINKS, it creates obstacles in the form of images, labels, words, judgments, opinions that blocks the truth, the reality and everyone judges the truth as per their perceptions, as per the thought created by their mind. This way we cannot be benefited with the gold that is there in the box but we only perceive as per the thoughts created in our mind based on our past experiences.

When we are able to get the message that we are not our mind, we are not what we think, we are a separate being and mind is like an instrument, then we become successful in liberating ourselves. The author says we should use our mind, but what’s happening is our minds are using us. The thoughts continue to come in our minds like a disease and we are never free from what we think. The question of freeing yourself from your mind is beautifully asked as:

“Can you be free of your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?”
The Power of Now

The idea is to liberate you from the thoughts that are consistently being created in the mind and change the meaning of any situation. We look at anything through the perception or lens of past experiences.

The remedy of liberating the self from thoughts or to find the off button is to start watching your thoughts as a watcher and notice all the thoughts that had been there since years. This sense of “I am” who watches the thoughts coming in the mind, arises from beyond the mind. This way the thought loses its power over you because now the thought and you are two different objects.

When you realize the thought as a separate object, it starts liberating you and you find mental peace gradually. This is the beginning of feeling oneness with being that is within you that eventually leads you towards the present moment.

This is the state when you are highly alert and aware but not thinking, that is the essence of meditation. The core idea is to be in the present moment, to be in the "NOW" and the success would be measured with "the degree of peace that you feel within" as a result of liberating yourself from your thoughts 

“Learning from The Power Of Now”