Eckhart Tolle
April 15th, 2008 by Grace
I haven’t yet read ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle though I was once a volunteer gardener at a Buddhist retreat centre and I had to try to ’stay in the moment’ while weeding, collecting slugs for relocation and lugging large wheelbarrows full of leaves to compost heaps etc. It was a silent retreat centre and I sometimes found myself saying “Hi Squirrely Squirrely” to the squirrels. I think I even once conversed with a duck. Most of the brief conversations I had with people tended to be about organic gardening. Sometimes at meals I found I’d forgotten to relocate some slugs and they were still in my pocket. Ram Dass tapes made me giggle in my spartan bedroom. Once I found an empty cardboard loo roll in the bathroom with ‘Please save me!” scribbled on it and I wondered if it was a message from one of the other people staying in the huge house. I then realised it referred to recycling. However the moment is, of course, hugely important…even when one wishes one was in a luxury hotel by the Med and not up very early hunting for a long list of vegetables required by the kitchen staff.
I have started to read Eckhart Tolle’s book ‘A New Earth Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose’ and, so far, I have found it insightful and wise. He doesn’t want to be anybody’s ‘Guru’. I have even watched some of the excellent discussions between him and Oprah Winfrey on
http://www.oprah.com/obc_classic/webcast/archive/archive_watchnow.jsp
Lots of love,
Grace