I was given my first Eckhart Tolle book” Guardians of Being” as a Christmas present by a dear friend in 2009. I clearly remember sitting and reading it with my two dogs close beside me on Christmas morning. I thought it was amazing as it struck a chord with me and it was simply and beautifully written and illustrated. This made it both easy to understand yet really profound at the same time.

Since that time, on the level of form, my life has been quite challenging. My mother died last summer after a long and difficult battle with both cancer and with life in general, and within six weeks of her death I was diagnosed with cancer myself. (It’s quite handy really, as I know all the consultants because of mum!)

At the time of writing this, I don’t know what the outcome will be, although I have been told my type of cancer is incurable. Yet when I look at my life now, it is in many ways immeasurably better than the life I had before I was diagnosed. My enforced break from work has enabled me to have the time to immerse myself in “being” and “accepting” and “forgiving” as well as allowing me to listen to and read books by Eckhart Tolle. It would be untrue if I said that I no longer have an ego or that I don’t get cross or depressed sometimes. But I do know that there are increasing times in my life now where I can laugh at my “old” self getting hung up on ego issues. Perhaps the greatest thing for me has been learning how to watch myself from a position of consciousness, and also learning how to squeeze every ounce of joy from any given moment by being there 100%. Beginning to understand the difference between suffering and pain has also been very useful to me in my journey.

It would be so easy to see myself as a victim, potentially cheated of a long and healthy life, as that seems to be the way a lot of people see things. But actually I am really OK now. I’m OK because right here, right now, in this moment the sun is shining, my dogs are snoring and all is exactly as it should be! – Pretty perfect actually!
Thank you Eckhart for all the little “nuggets” in your teaching that continue to inspire me each day and especially for making “now-ness” so easily accessible if I simply allow it to be.

Ellie