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

I've been nibbling on this book for a long time. Truly, this is a book to nibble on, to be taken in bit by bit, preferably in small chunks. Fortunately, the book knows this, and leaves helpful "s"-like symbols after every point to cue you to reflect upon and digest what you just read.

That said, the book ends up repeating itself a lot, and while it's a worthwhile message - to let go of psychological time and realize that the "past" and the "future" are really just projections of your brain, while the present moment is really all that currently exists - I think that message gets muddled in trying to be overreaching in its near-religiosity. It starts using terms with capitalizations, as if they're scientific or religiously accepted, such as Being, the Now, the Source, the Unmanifested. In that regard, the language, in an attempt to be more accessible to its content, ends up defeating the strength of the truth in its message.

Truly, this book is attempting to be another be-all, end-all of New Age enlightenment self-help guides, and has a remarkably similar - if perhaps more centralized - message as The Seat of the Soul. I've noticed a trend in both these books, too, in their attempt to be your Sherpa in the Tibetan wilderness, traveling to a high Himalayan monastery where the Zen master will teach you the ultimate wisdom and you'll be so much more content with life. While that's an attractive angle to take in the marketing realm, I think these books would be truer to their messages - and thus more effective - if they deflated their own egos and simply offered a new perspective for you to think about. This book is useful as part of a spiritual empowerment course and a journey for more peace in life, but the ultimate book with the secrets to guide the human race toward a collective species of Buddhas and angels? I'm inclined to disagree with that notion.