New Earth: Chapter Seven, \"Finding

¶ … New Earth: Chapter Seven, "Finding Out Who You Really Are"

In A New Earth, chapter seven, "Find Out Who You Really Are," author Echkart Tolle begins by noting the importance of self-discovery in attempting to learn the meaning behind the long-utilized phrase regarding personal knowledge of self: "Know Thyself." He notes that these words were inscribed above the entrance of Greece's temple of Apollo. This site held the sacred Grecian Oracle, of which people would seek hoping to have answers to their questions and struggles laid out before them. Such a journey to seek out the answers to our own lives through asking others, Tolle points out, is completely irrelevant to our own lives, as only we have the ability to look inside ourselves in a manner that allows us to have all the answers if we have the courage to both look deeply enough and to trust what we find.

Who we think we are shapes nearly every capacity of how we handle our lives. How we perceive things are rooted in this mindset as well as how we act towards others. We often allow ourselves to become upset and defensive, defending the physical entity that we possess on Earth. However, in really finding peace, one must understand that the physical body does not encompass our true selves, and our true selves actually lie in the spirit that is not attached to the body, but its own entity. How we act, Tolle notes, is a representation of how conscious we are of this fact. People who are conscious allow little things to pass by them without affect while the unconscious continuously become worked up and stressed, focusing on the body and not the mind and spirit.

Such unconsciousness of spirit leads people to believe they possess nothing. Tolle notes that to truly have abundance in these areas, act as if you already have it. He notes: "Whatever you think people are withholding from you -- praise, appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on -- give it to them" (Tolle 116). In doing so, you will eventually find that you already have what you thought you lacked, because you have the capacity to give it, you therefore already hold it within yourself.

We must avoid labeling events in our lives as "good or bad" solely relying on concepts that others have placed within our minds, but instead try not to mind what happens because the order of events in our lives are uncontrollable. It is in how we handle these events in our own minds and spirits that we are able to exert control. We must embrace the now, give up the idea that time controls everything, and live more for the present state of being in which we exist. In doing so, one is better able to eliminate the consistent draw to act in accordance with one's ego and act more in a capacity that allows a full life to be led without restraint.