Eckhart Tolle,  author of The New Earth, Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, is one of the spiritual teachers who has been able to voice millennia-old wisdom in contemporary terms. Since Oprah interviewed him in 2008 as part of her Soul Series, his name has become familiar. Here are some nuggets of his teachings:

"If you are not spending all of your waking life in discontent, worry, anxiety... If you are able to enjoy simple things like listening to the sound of the rain or wind; if you can see the beauty of clouds...If you find yourself treating a complete stranger with heartfelt kindness...it means that a space has opened up…in the otherwise incessant stream of thinking that is the human mind...When this happens, there is a sense of well-being, of alive peace...the bliss of Being."

The New Earth is about how to recognize your being able to enjoy simple things and experience the “bliss of Being.” how to be present to yourself so you can do that more, and what that means for the whole earth, that Tolle believes is in danger of extinction because of people's "ego,” that consists of greed, unawareness, and selfishness.

Staying present in the now, dis-identifying with our thoughts, our associations with who we are, our gender, our neighborhood, our profession, our tribe, our judgments -- all move us toward the consciousness necessary to live in bliss with the rest of the universe.

People think that what happens to them determines their happiness. But, Tolle believes, what happens is transient. "This too will pass." The perfection of what is there, that lies beyond what is happening, is accessible to all of us. Awareness of that is what brings happiness and is in the power of all of us to perceive.