Don't expect this to be a quick skim or even a straight-through read. Like his previous bestselling book The Power of Now, Tolle uses brief entries and numerous white spaces to give readers easy in-and-out access into enticing spiritual insights that expound on inner stillness, such as learning the difference between surrender and resignation, overcoming the fear death, and how to end suffering. In fact, this is designed to be an ongoing conversation. Pick it up any time or any place, but be sure to allow for plenty of breaks for serious contemplation. Even as you occasionally abandon the book, don't abandon the teachings, pleads Tolle. Embracing and practicing inner stillness is no longer a luxury, he writes,

but a necessity if humankind is not to destroy itself. At the present time the dysfunction of the old consciousness and the arising of the new are both accelerating. Paradoxically things are getting worse and better at the same time, although "the worse" is more apparent because it makes so much noise.