A New Earth is subtitled Awakening to Life`s Purpose, which naturally gives us a very clear idea of what the book is about.
Eckart encourages to look beyond the noise created by our ego to that inner presence which takes us beyond our normal sense of who we think we are. This book is revolutionary in that in turns the normal way at looking at what we might call enlightenment on its head.
I have long been fascinated by what I like to refer to as the Body as a Spiritual Barometer and that rather than seeing the body as a block to spiritual progress it is actually our greatest ally. That is another story for another time, but where is it ties in with A New Earth is the use of body sense as an access our spirituality.
I therefore found it really interesting that the pathway Eckart offers us for getting in touch the deeper parts of ourselves is through a simple awareness of the energy in our hands and feet. Tolle uses the awareness of the the “inner body” to lead us to a deeper sense of being which could be called enlightenment (though Eckart Tolle does not seem to use that term and seems to prefer “awakening”). See Feeling the Inner body section in the book if you want to know more about this.
Rather than seeing enlightenment is something unusual, and for the chosen few, the book presents it as normal and natural and it is our current state of consciousness which is unusual -and, in a sense, unnatural.
In A New Earth, Eckart Tolle uses concepts like the pain body to show us how much we get in our own way and that is what makes enlightenment seem so far away. For the ego enlightenment is indeed far away as it is impossible for the ego to experience it. However, as we step past the ego what seemed impossible is not only possible, but natural and straightforward.
The world we have created collectively is the outcome of a fragmented and separate sense of self. Tolle, in A New Earth encourages us to enter into a deeper consciousness of our life and its purpose. He tells us that we need to do so not only for our own peace of mind, but also to put and end to the destructiveness that we humans have inflicted upon each other and other creatures. He goes as far as to say, “A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!”