Another must read: The Power of Now

This book, The Power of Now, by Eckart Tolle, unlike The Seat of the Soul and Sacred Contracts is useless in helping you form your believes about life after death or life before birth, but it is perhaps the most vital piece of information anyone will need to endure moments of unhappiness. Tolle claims that by living in the present moment, you can overcome all things and find peace and contentment. I've lost track of how many people I've talked to who said, "This book saved my life when..." As a mentor of mine says, "if you want to experience guilt, depression, or anger, live in the past; if you want to experience fear and anxiety live in the future; if you want to experience peace and contentment, live in the present".

 I must make a disclaimer before I offer my current opinion about whether Tolle is right in his claim that ALL things can be overcome through present mindedness: this is just an opinion, one that I have formed from my current experiences of living life according to his teachings for the last two years. Furthermore, following Tolle's teachings, I try my hardest not to identify with my opinions; that way, I can change them easily when they no longer suit my current world view/experiences. Here is my opinion:

There are some subconscious forces that, unless dealt with, prevent you from progressing in life. These unconscious forces arise from the past, and must be dealt with, in the present, but the past must be healed. Now as I said, you deal with it in the now, through hypotherapy or what have you, but it is a past force, the pain body as Tolle calls it, that must be dealt with. Simply breathing or asking yourself "I wonder what my next thought will be" may not prevent yourself from acting out the self destructive behaviors that get you fired, or arrested, or broken hearted, particularly if you have the Saboteur as one of your archetypes (see Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss). Now I am open to the idea that I didn't live in the present perfectly, all the time, 24/7 for the last two years and that's why I experienced my Saboteur, but that's a pretty stupid argument, frankly. It's like saying, "Well if you had enough faith you would have been healed of your cancer. You weren't healed because you didn't have enough faith, obviously"

Again, I could be wrong; frankly it's not worth arguing about.