Josh Macphee's Reviews > The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Eckhart takes what can be practical mindfulness meditation with all its benefits, and adds a whole bunch of magical, convoluted mumbo jumbo that makes it not only a hard read, but also a work of fiction. Other than the fact that some sentences just simply don't make sense, it is coupled with vernacular and jargon that he seems to just create out of thin air. Although it may appear that some of those sentences are blowing your mind with some existential perspective that you don't wholly understand, he is actually blowing your mind with his terrible sentence construction using words and ideas that look nice together, but don't actually make sense. Go back and read that sentence again. It is pseudo-science 101, vague ideas and watered down theories put together in order to make them seem cohesive. Now mix some of that pseudo-BS with a few things that do actually make sense and are entirely helpful, and you can trick almost all your readers into thinking that you know what you are talking about! Fortunately the few ideas that do work are well-documented in many other philosophies if you care to look for them, and they make much more sense without Eckhart's spin on them. Using the imagination to explain certain concepts is sometimes helpful, in this instance it clouds the practical simplicity at the heart of living in the moment. Eastern philosophy has known this stuff since forever, though I doubt he has done much research on that, due to some of the sweeping statements he makes in this book. He might as well take a dump on it with his ultimately flawed western visions. If you are a fan of the thinking in the moment premise, and the real power of NOW, read some basic neuroscience/psychology books like 'The Happiness Trap', 'Emotional Intelligence' or 'The Upward Spiral' which have many of the same concepts, but written in a far more practical and direct way.
'The Power of Now' deserves supreme ranks in the Magical New Age Propaganda Army, as Schizotypal people will flock to this book like flies to trash. If you want to indulge some random ideas about the universe L.Ron Hubbard might provide a more interesting read. If you want to join us somewhere closer to reality then you are possibly better off taking a step back, then reading up on Buddhism, Taoism and mindfulness meditation. The Power of Now does make a nice drink coaster though ;-)