Are you reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle?

Anybody reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose? I am.  I was hesitant to pick it up because of all the Oprah hype — made me wonder if it was pop-spirituality.  But then since I had read his previous book the Power of Now, decided to give it a chance. (I am such a spirituality snob).   Turns out A New Earth is a life-changing book — who needs to go see a counselor/therapist, who needs to sit at a guru’s feet, when you can read this book? <grin>  And talk about helping you relate to every other human in your circle: your significant other, kids, your parents, co-workers, friends… EVERYone.  This book is awesome.  My only complaint, and it’s a small one, is he makes the common mistake of exaggerating the numbers of those “killed by the Church”.  In one such instance in his Sacred Feminine section, Tolle writes “Three to five million women” were burned by the Inquisition.  In reality historians (even pagan historians) say it was only 50,000 over 400 years, many of whom were men (Charlemagne beheaded 4,500 Odin worshippers, no women), many of whom were not burned at the stake, and most of whom local towns / magistrates or kings killed, not church authorities. That’s a myth. But many authors make this error lately it seems — Dan Brown in The DaVinci Code is another — and since Tolle is a European probably “mad at the Church”, we can overlook these errors in his otherwise fantastic liberating book).  I just skipped over those paragraphs (very few) and kept devouring the spiritual hands-on life-altering peace-bringing teachings and techniques in A New Earth.

Tolle puts a lot of esoteric Christian correlations in his teaching such as why Jesus really said “Father forgive them, they know not what they do,” and the real meaning of “Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (the new awakened earth), and Jesus didn’t say “be ye perfect,” but “Be ye whole…” Many deeper meanings opened up with “aha!” moments galore even for this ol’ diehard alternative Christian teacher.  I was just writing to one of our newly ordained ministers that A New Earth is an excellent book for using with one’s pastoral counseling clients. It helps one figure out life’s purpose, not just awaken to one’s own life’s purpose as the title suggests, but THE purpose of life and why we are here, etc. cosmic questions.

Not to mention this book makes a great Mother’s Day gift…. hee hee.  Sending one to my Mom and mother-in-law, too…

Anybody reading A New Earth or have you already read it?  Here’s a link to it for only $7.70 and you can read inside the book online before buying.

Katia

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Katia

Katia is a consecrated independent sacramental bishop. She directs the online Esoteric Mystery School and Interfaith Theological Seminary. Check it out at NorthernWay.org.

2 thoughts on “Are you reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle?”

  1. Hi Katia,
    I’ve been reading the Tolle book too and discovering that he is talking about the sacred feminine in so many ways. I think we use different language in the goddess spirituality community and he uses the language familiar to Eastern philosophies, but we are both “raising up” the sacredness of relational, we’re -connected-to-everything thinking. I thought the ideas about taking a breath and stepping back from the emotionality of things was really helpful to every day life. Breathing puts us instantly back in our bodies, in the sacred union of flesh and divinity.
    I had the chance to talk about two chapters of the book with my friend Lisa Osborne on her radio show at http://www.lisa.fm Click on her Oprah Book Club section podcasts and you’ll see me.
    By the way, I get to see a preview of Bloodline-The Movie this week and I’ll be telling about it on Thursday, May 1 on my blog.
    Peace In Our Time,
    Joan
    http://blog.marymagdalenewithin.com

  2. I am so greatful to Eckhart Tolle and Oprah for turning me onto Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her beautiful book “”My Stroke of Insight””. Her story is amazing and her gift to all of us is a book purchase away I’m happy to say.

    Dr Taylor was a Harvard brain scientist when she had a stroke at age 37. What was amazing was that her left brain was shut down by the stroke – where language and thinking occur – but her right brain was fully functioning. She experienced bliss and nirvana and the way she writes about it (or talks about it in her now famous TED talk) is incredible.

    What I took away from Dr. Taylor’s book above all, and why I recommend it so highly, is that you don’t have to have a stroke or take drugs to find the deep inner peace that she talks about. Her book explains how. “”I want what she’s having””, and thanks to this wonderful book, I can! Thank you Dr. Taylor, and thank you Eckhart and Oprah.

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