"The Power of Now"

If there is one book that profoundly informs my practice as a Quantum One Life Coach, it is the book by Eckhart Tolle entitled “The Power of Now.” Although it’s sub-title is “A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment,” it is also an essential guide for a Life Coach and a guide that I would recommend to any committed coachee at the outset of our coaching practice, especially if the coachee is seeking Spiritual coaching.

The transformational coaching approach to which I subscribe maintains that 80% of our work comes from our “being” and 20% is about what we know as coaches. “The Power of Now” addresses this experience of “being” and offers principles and practices on how to be “present” in the Now.

Presence is a quality of being that is essential to my practice as a coach. It informs the way I listen to my clients and what I listen for and at the same time allows me to listen from essence and purpose. But it also informs how I embody this presence with my clients. The Quantum One Life Coaching process is founded on “co-creating our wildest dreams and highest aspirations with the Power of Imagination.” Hence it requires a quality of being and presence that invites the clients to also come from their own being. “The Power of Now” encourages one to move deeply into the Now and this is where the deepest connection is made with the client/coachee and the One. The relationship between Presence and Imagination is one that Ekhart Tolle does not fully explore, but it has been my experience that Imagination is most successfully evoked and cultivated through our quality of being and Presence.

This process of Being uncovers what Tolle refers to as the Inner Body. Not only does the Coach connect with his or her own Inner Body but Tolle also addresses the somatics of coaching:

“Transformation is through the body, not away from it. This is why no true master has ever advocated fighting or leaving the body, although their mind-based followers often have.”

The ability of the coach to be in his or her own inner body and also be present to the inner body of the client is paramount in creating this experience of presence for both coach and client. It is from this experience of Presence that the coach is able to discern what it is that wants to emerge for the coachee.

Tolle also writes with profound depth about enlightened relationships. This applies both to the Coach/coachee relationship as it does to the relationship issues that the coachee may be struggling with. Tolle differentiates between “romantic relationships,” and addictive relationships or co-dependent relationships from relationships that are based on the client’s wholeness. He advocates for a suspension of judgment and a move towards acceptance of what is, which make us free of the mind: “You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.”

Tolle identifies relationships as “spiritual practice,” which is entirely in alignment with the principles of Quantum Life Coaching because underlying all relationships is the Oneness of all being. This is not just limited to persons but also to all of creation, events and phenomena.

“The Power of Now” implicitly addresses the question of one’s relationship with Time. This is valuable both for the coach as well as the coachee. In situations where a coachee may be identifying with the past, with their story, the coach can facilitate an awareness of the Now and the possibility of choices in the Now, choices that let go of the stories in the past and focus on the field of possibilities in the present.

Tolle makes important distinctions between inner purpose and outer purpose as well as distinctions between one’s life and one’s “life situation.” This is a vitally important distinction to make in Quantum One Life Coaching because often clients may be focused on their outer purpose and have no sense of their inner purpose. Such clients are then at risk of losing their centeredness if their outer purpose is not fulfilled, whereas clients who are more focused on their inner purpose are in the position of identifying an outer purpose in alignment with their inner purpose. And if their outer purpose is unfulfilled, they are more apt and prepared to accept a change of course in their life situation:

“The outer purpose belongs to the horizontal dimension of space and time; the inner purpose concerns a deepening of your Being in the vertical dimension of the timeless Now. Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now. As you become more deeply aware of this one step, you realize that it already contains within itself all the other steps as well as the destination. This one step becomes transformed into an expression of perfection, an act of great beauty and quality. It will have taken you into Being, and the light of Being will shine through it. This is both the purpose and fulfillment of your inner journey, the journey into yourself.”

This awareness by the client may take time to cultivate but it clearly provides for an enduring experience of well-being, which in and of itself can inspire the client to define the scope of their outer purpose with more clarity. Ultimately, the quality and manifestation of the outer purpose can be greatly enhanced when it is alignment with one’s inner purpose. What Tolle brings to the coaching milieu is an ability to identify effective spiritual principles for transformation without over-loading the content with “spiritualitis.” Hence there is an opening here to connect with one’s inner body, inner being and inner purpose especially for those who may not follow any particular spiritual tradition.

“The Power of Now” concludes with the meaning of surrender, emphasizing that no transformation is possible with an “unsurrendered state of consciousness.” It is only when we can fully accept what is that we can contemplate the next realistic incremental action steps. This is fully in alignment with the Quantum One Life Coaching practice.