Khalid Ohali's Reviews > The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

I have had mixed opinions on this book, which has been continuously affecting my rating of the book. As much as I enjoyed this book, I have had doubts about it all along. The idea is simple and clear, which is to live in the moment and to stop allowing your mind to control you with its repetitive negative thinking patterns. From the beginning, where Mr. Tolle decided that he couldn't live with "himself" anymore, and after spending two years sitting in a park pondering life, I felt the guy was perhaps suffering some form of depression. And that is why I believe he took the idea to an extreme, ending up with an unrealistic, or perhaps a misleading message. I believe this book could be a recipe for people to become sociopaths, or socially challenged. Detaching from their past and not thinking about their future while being immersed in the current moment? this almost sounds like "Stop using your mind and put extra efforts into forgetting who you used to be, and who you're going to be!" I have applied Tolle's message for almost two years, and I have almost lost my ability to rationalize things and think logically, cause humans tend naturally to link the past, current, and future states together in order to come up with reasonable thoughts and a full picture of anything!

However, to do this book justice, I believe what it offers is a technique to cope with stress and everyday's negative thinking, which simply can be found in other spiritual leaders and motivation speakers' work as well (i.e. Dr. Wayne Dyer). The whole book can be summarized into: how we can trick our minds when we face adversity into thinking that the only time that exists is the "now", which is technically wrong, but potentially could work for some people to a limited extent! Perhaps Mr. Tolle found peace in his message, but it was at the expense of other precious things as well, and the message he's trying to deliver could be dangerous if not applied to its intended extent and purpose!

Kal,