Spirituality

A Cancer Diagnosis & Spiritual Transformation

How Eckhart Tolle´s "The Power Of Now" uncovered the true blissful self beyond fear

One week before my breast cancer was discovered, I saw Eckhart Tolle´s name everywhere for about two days straight. I rejected him at first because I imagined him to be a guru who runs around on stage like an evangelist. But the universe kept nudging me to have a look at him. At the time, I thought it was just a coincidence. But as I repeatedly saw his name, I finally looked upward and said out loud, "OK! I will look at him!" and I laughed at my own joke.

I will never forget listening to him for the first time. It was the last weekend in March 2021 and my family and I were taking a trip up north. I watched a YouTube video of Eckhart on my phone and remember being very impressed by what he was saying. I was also impressed by his gentle, humble nature. He wasn’t at all what I had thought him to be. I immediately bought the audio version of The Power of Now and became completely enamored with it. It seemed that I was reading about the answers to all my questions in life.

A few days later, I was about 1/3 through the book when I had an appointment with my Gynaecologist. I had discovered something that looked strange in my breast and thought I should have it looked at. He absolutely surprised me when he said that it looks like I have breast cancer and that we will have to do a mammogram & biopsy to be sure. I was shocked and suddenly terrified. I used the teachings in the book during the whole week to stay intensely in the present moment—in the now. It was like a lifeboat in a rocky sea and I held on tight. This book was changing me, it challenged everything that I thought I knew.

When my biopsy results came 4 days later, I was shocked: the tumor was large but it was also a fast-growing tumor. I went home and cried. I asked myself, "What now? How long do I have? 3 Months? 3 Years?" I knew it would kill me fast; the doctor said the tumor was only about 4 months old, but it was already 3 centimeters in size. I didn´t know what to do: I had always been strictly against chemotherapy after watching my mother die a horrible death from breast cancer (and chemotherapy) back in the 1990s.

For about two days I sat on our balcony staring at the trees and the birds singing. It was June and the weather was gorgeous. I was reading and listening to The Power of Now; to Eckhart´s words nonstop. I felt lucky to have discovered Eckhart Tolle before my diagnosis because he calmed and centered me as nothing else could. I think it was about the middle of the second day when I felt a kind of emotional distance from my cancer arising in me. I was the observer looking at my cancer and my death—but I did not feel scared.

I read the last chapter many times over. This chapter is about acceptance of and surrender to the present moment. In the book, Eckhart states, "Die before you die...and know there is no death." I was very intrigued by this sentence and I knew that I wanted to do this: "Die before I die", even if I did not quite know what it meant. "Ok," I said. "Then death has come for me, and I will go through it."

I made a conscious effort to just let go: to accept and surrender. Then it came: a profound peace. It came so gently and so subtly at first; if I hadn’t been intensely present, I might have missed it. But it became more and more powerful, as I stayed alert and present. It completely filled me, and after some time, I felt not only peace but a wonderful bliss as well. It was the most beautiful state I have ever experienced. It was not of this world. I sat like this for a few hours. My mind was quiet.

Here is a quote from The Power of Now:

"There are many accounts of people who experienced that emerging new dimension of consciousness as a result of tragic loss at some point in their lives. Some lost all of their possessions, others their children or spouse, their social position, reputation, or physical abilities. In some cases, through disaster or war, they lost all of these simultaneously and found themselves with “nothing.” We may call this a limit-situation. Whatever they had identified with, whatever gave them their sense of self, had been taken away.

Then suddenly and inexplicably, the anguish or intense fear they initially felt gave way to a sacred sense of Presence, a deep peace and serenity and complete freedom from fear.

This phenomenon must have been familiar to St. Paul, who used the expression “the peace of God which passeth all understanding.” It is indeed a peace that doesn’t seem to make sense, and the people who experienced it asked themselves: In the face of this, how can it be that I feel such peace?

The answer is simple, once you realize what the ego is and how it works. When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter."

I didn´t realize it at the time, but I now know that what Eckhart says here in this quote, is what happened to me. I thought I would soon face death, and I knew this was the end of my "self", the end of "me". This realization felt very foreign and new, and it felt as if I was already in the process of death.

I awoke each morning at 5 am to go back out on the balcony and sit with the trees and the birds and to bathe in the peace and bliss that I felt inside. It had stayed with me. I was calm. After some hours or days, I realized that I no longer had any fear. The fear of death and fear of cancer was gone. I couldn’t believe it! I could hardly believe any of it actually.

My mind was reeling, and it was saying to me: "this makes no sense!" It said that I´m living in a dream-like state. But I decided that I would choose this state, rather than live in fear. I also realized that I no longer cared about how long I had to live, and what my survival chances were. The now (what Lao Tzu called the "Dao") is timeless and time no longer matters to me. That is how powerful "the peace which passes all understanding" is.

I waited for days, weeks, and even months for the fear to come back. But the absence of fear has remained. I have been given a beautiful, most precious gift. It brings tears to my eyes to write this here. This experience has changed me like nothing else ever has and I wish for everyone to have this! I want all who are suffering from cancer to have it. I want all who are suffering from anything to have it. I want criminals to have it. If everyone could experience this, fear and hate would no longer exist. How could it?

I decided quite suddenly that I would go through chemotherapy and surgery. It was a decision that arose not from fear, but from a place deep within me. So I trusted it. I knew all would be well, whether I lived, or whether I died. Today, I feel that it does not matter what therapy we choose, but rather that we change our inner state. If we honor the present moment and live in a state of acceptance and surrender to life, we will be transformed. Today I know we are not our bodies or our illnesses, but rather we are mysterious, powerful—capable of great change and vast depth. The answers are inside us.

Book & Audio

Personally I find the audio version of The Power of Now particularly helpful.

The Power of Now

by Eckhart Tolle

Do you shop at Amazon's?

If you do, please join those who already use healingcancernaturally's international Amazon partner links. This means no extra cost for you but a 1 to 4% commission for the makers of this site to help them pay their bills. See Support this site or go directly to my affiliate links and start your shopping trip from there.

Note: the above link to the audio version already contains healingcancernaturally's Amazon partner link.

Related sections

... and for the best, easiest, and least expensive ways I know to heal cancer after studying the subject for twenty plus years,

click here.

Spirituality

A Cancer Diagnosis & Spiritual Transformation

How Eckhart Tolle´s "The Power Of Now" uncovered the true blissful self beyond fear

Book & Audio

Related content

Related sections