Power of Now

"What is the power of NOW" from the book Power of NOW by Eckhart Tolle.

None other than the power of your presence , your consciousnes liberated from forms. Deal with the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it , the more likely you are to make a "self" out of it.Dont misunderstand. Attention is essential but not to the past as past. Give attention to the present. Give attention to your behaviour, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There is the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically or judgementally then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.

Questioner: Isn't it helpful to understand the past and so understand why we do certain things, react in certain ways, or why we unconsciously create our particular kind of drama , patterns in relationships and so on?

As you become more conscious of your present reality , you may suddenly get certain insights as to why your conditiong functions in those particular ways. For example why your relationships follow certain patterns, and you may remember things that happened in the past or see them more clearly. That is fine and helpful but it is not essential. What is essential is your conscious presence. That dissolves the past. That is the transformative agent.So dont seek to understand the past but be as present as you can.The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.
You cant think about Presence and the mind cant understand it. Understanding presence is simply being present.

Try a little experiment . Close your eyes and say to yourself : "I wonder what my next thought is going to be " Then become very alert and wait for the next thought. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole. What thought is going to come out of the mouse hole.Try it now.

I had to wait for quite a long time before a thought came in.

Exactly. You are in state of intense presence, you are free of thought. You are still , yet highly alert. The instant your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in. The mental noise returns; the stillness is lost. You are back in Time.