There are moments in life that arrive quietly, disguise themselves as ordinary, and only reveal their weight years later. One of those moments happened back in my university days.
A few of us—four or five close friends—would often sit together and drift into conversations far beyond textbooks and deadlines. Something about youth makes you believe you can understand the universe just by talking long enough. One afternoon, while we sat in the middle of the sports ground, surrounded by noise yet strangely isolated from it, a debate arose:
What truly guides a human life—love or intellect?
Everyone spoke passionately about love. I, on the other hand, clung to intellect like a shield. I believed logic was the backbone of human progress, the force that keeps life structured when everything else collapses. I argued hard, but deep inside, I wasn’t debating them—I was defending myself.
That debate resurfaced again and again, flowing through the semester like an unresolved chapter. We never arrived at any conclusion, but one sentence spoken by my friend Al-Moveed Hussaini quietly carved a place in my memory:
“You can never understand love unless you are fully present.”
I didn’t accept it that day. My pride wouldn’t allow it. But life has a way of returning to the truths we once ignored.
The Dark Night That Led Me Back to His Words
About a year and a half later, life turned heavy—almost unbearably so. I felt surrounded by questions with no answers. Everything I thought I understood about myself began to dissolve. It was as if the world had dimmed, not because the light had gone out, but because something inside me had.
In that darkness, the sentence I once brushed aside came back like a whisper:
Be present.
It echoed so softly, yet carried the weight of something I could no longer ignore. I searched for the meaning of presence, and that search led me to Eckhart Tolle. When I discovered his book The Power of Now, I opened it with curiosity but continued reading with something closer to desperation—a silent hope that the words might hold a key to lifting the heaviness inside me.
A Book That Didn’t Give Answers—It Gave Awareness
Reading The Power of Now felt less like learning and more like remembering something I had forgotten long ago. Tolle didn’t ask me to believe anything. He simply pointed toward the quiet space beneath the noise—the part of us untouched by fear, memory, or expectation.
He wrote that suffering is not an external force crashing into our lives; it is the echo of the mind clinging to illusions about who we think we are.
And for the first time, I understood:
My pain wasn’t happening to me. My mind was creating it.
The steps he offered felt like steps back into myself:
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Observing the mind as it wanders, instead of drowning in it
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Waiting for the next thought with awareness, and watching silence appear
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Feeling the subtle energy within the body, the space that exists beneath identity
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Going deeper into presence, into a place that has no time—only being
Each step felt like peeling away a layer of noise, revealing something softer, quieter, more real.
What Presence Gave Me
As I practiced the teachings while reading the book, something inside me slowly shifted. Not suddenly, not dramatically—but gently.
I began noticing the moments between thoughts.
Moments where the world felt still.
Moments where I wasn’t struggling, or remembering, or worrying.
Moments where I simply was.
And in those moments, I felt a peace I had never known before—peace that didn’t depend on circumstances, achievements, or anyone’s approval.
It felt like rediscovering my own existence.
A Message for Anyone Walking Through Darkness
If you are lost, hurting, failing, or simply unable to understand why life feels heavy, hear this:
Your suffering is not who you are.
It is the mind’s shadow, not your soul’s truth.
Presence doesn’t solve life’s problems—but it dissolves the illusion that you are your problems.
And sometimes, that alone is enough to begin healing.
For that reason, I believe The Power of Now is not just a book—it is a doorway.
A doorway into the part of you that life cannot break.
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