A New Earth (finished!).

Another book down on my lululemon library list. Here are my final take-aways from A New Earth:

• When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change. The Roman philosopher Tacitus rightly observed that "the desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise". If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness and creativity.
• When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do - and with it the quality of your life - increases dramatically. Joy is the dynamic aspect of Being. You don't have to wait for something "meaningful" to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The "waiting to start living" syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state. Expansion and positive change on the outer level is much more likely to come into your life if you can enjoy what you are doing already, instead of waiting for some change so that you can start enjoying what you do.
• When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you are doing, you become stressed. The balance between enjoyment and structural tension is lost, and the latter has won. When there is stress, it is usually a sign that the ego has returned, and you are cutting yourself off from the creative power of the universe. Instead, there is only the force and strain of egoic wanting, and so you have to struggle and "work hard" to make it. Stress always diminishes both the quality and effectiveness of what you do is under its influence. There is also a strong link between stress and negative emotions, such as anxiety and anger.
• Enthusiasm brings an enormous empowerment into what you do. Unlike egoic wanting, which creates opposition in direct proportion to the intensity of its wanting, enthusiasm never opposes. It is non-confrontational. Its activity does not create winners and losers. It is based on inclusion, not exclusion, of others. When enthusiasm encounters obstacles in the form of adverse situations or uncooperative people, it never attacks but walks around them by yielding or embracing turns the opposing energy into a helpful one, the foe into a friend.