I think I’ve read each one of Tolle’s books on the “Power of Now”, and they’ve had a big part in my inner development. Many things seeped into deeper levels and became a part of me. But some things reached levels that obscured these tools for me in everyday life. All the more, this quote has awakened me again. A lot can be said about it. But here I go with something essential that came to mind after reading the quote.

No one is free of tasks that can become challenging and burdening. I don’t even want to say problem. There are no problems. There are incidents, happenings, and challenges, and they all can cause change or call us to action – whether we want or not. Some of them are hard to swallow and difficult to work through. But a problem is a mountain we only build in our minds. Even when I use the world problem, I don’t mean it as an object that threatens us from the outside. I only use it as a term for a task that we would have rather avoided.

The more we distance ourselves from the word “problem” as a threat, the more we distance ourselves from our identification with it. When we see everything that happens as a part of our lives, as stepstones, rungs of a ladder, individual roads we are walking through this life, then we are much more open to working ourselves through that task, and to come over the side effects, it can bring along. Then we automatically detach from the “problem” and focus on the part beyond it. That is the crucial turning point through which we align with the energy of the solution. That is what builds up hope and strength instead of fear and weakness.

I don’t say it is an easy thing to do. It needs conscious distancing in the beginning until it becomes more and more of a habit. Also, this kind of distancing doesn’t mean closing our hearts. No, not at all! We shall feel all that goes along with it because that is part of why we came here. We want to feel ourselves in every fiber. But the difference is that we won’t hold on to it longer than necessary. We let come, what wants to come, we let rest, what wants to rest, and we let it move on again. We accept instead of pushing away. But we also understand that whatever happens to us is only part of life and not part of us. We become compassionate observers. And what problem does an observer have?

Life could be so simple
if we did not make it so complicated.

In Love and Light