Customer Reviews

Embracing The Now: Finding Peace And Happiness In What Is

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Gina's written a powerfully clear book about living from presence (as Eckhart Tolle calls it) or essence as she does. The formidable opponent on such a path is of course ego. But ego is not to be resisted or fought against or repressed or denied. Instead, Gina explains how to accept the ego as it arises while still seeing through its various tricks for pulling one out of presence. She details the various emotions, judgments, fears, denials and mind games that are common tools of the ego in clear and easy-to-understand language. I find Gina's books to be as helpful as Eckhart's in the journey to living from presence. With this book in particular, I had an `aha moment' as Oprah calls them around my emotions. Although I had learned not to give attention to the stories and dramas of my mind, I was still paying untold amount of attention to my emotions. I felt them to be somewhat closer to truth because they seemed so intuitive and natural. I know realize that they are simply thoughts translated into bodily sensations and deserve no more analysis or attention than the mind. Of course, essence uses emotions such as joy or love or peace or acceptance and even sadness to guide us towards fulfilling our life plan with the eventual goal of awakening. It does not, however, use grief, depression, anger, jealousy or other such negative emotions.
Gina outlines the ego's mechanisms so clearly that it becomes difficult not to recognize, accept and thus heal them in oneself. All of this is in the service of greater peace, greater joy, and eventual liberation. The messages may be conceptually simple but in an ego and mind-dominated time and society, they are easy to forget. I enjoy reading Gina's words to remind me of what I know in my own heart to be the shining truth.

If there were a way I could just click and put this book in your cart and have it fast on its way to each of you reading this review...I would! It is that important. As many of us, I have devoured Eckhart Tolle's work and was intrigued and dazzled by its brilliance...but maybe a little intimidated. This book helps us understand Be-ing in the NOW and making it work! I have read it twice in one weekend and am ready to call Gina for a private reading, as this work is just that amazing.

She digs right to the core of the EGO and helps us understand how it works (and doesn't work) and how to tame the Ego! I actually gasped at some passages as it was so clear now. It was one huge AHA moment after another as I turned each page.

Not only does Gina give us the workings of the ego, she also helps us learn how to tame it and lead a life...yes IN THE MOMENT!

All weekend I have had a big grin on my face and my heart feels ready tio burst with contentment at finding this book.

Please, click and get it...your life will be enriched...mine certainly ahs been. I thank you, Gina.

If you like Byron Katie or Eckhart Tolle, don't miss this extraordinary book by Gina Lake. It really tells you how to lead an awakened life continueing where those wonderful authors leave off. It gives the hopeful message that we can stop suffering once and for all and tells us that not only is it possible but that's what we're all here to do.

I am blown away by "Embracing the Now." After reading all of her books and doing many private sessions with Gina, I thought smugly, "What more can she say on the subject that I haven't already heard?" The answer is: a tremendous amount. This book is filled with innumerable insightful gems that are so easy to apply to ever day life - on trusting life, coping with feelings, loving your work, and finding work you love. The new short essay format made the book very easy to digest because it distilled each topic into bite sized pieces. This book was so incredible that I'm about to reread it to make sure that I haven't missed anything!

I highly recommend all of Gina Lake's books. I was severely depressed, anxious, having suicidal thoughts, and frustrated with therapy when I stumbled upon Gina's books. The Universe brought me her books at just the right time and in just the right manner and thankfully, I was open to receiving them. Through her books, I have learned how to be grounded in the moment; how to be aware of my thoughts and the "egoic mind" with its obsessive, negative messages; and how to notice and listen to my intuition, and change my entire outlook on life. I am also starting to realize the "oneness" of all life. Having before never trusted anyone or anything, I am now learning to trust the Universe and the divinely unpredictable nature of every day events which makes life so wonderfully rich. The tremendous fear I used to feel is now subsiding. Gina talks about the importance of meditation as a spiritual practice which has helped me to restart my meditation practice which in turn helps me stay in the present moment. Refreshingly, Gina's books are free of religious dogma and rules and are available to all readers regardless of religious/spiritual backgrounds and belief systems. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

You want to be happy at all times? You do not want conditions influence your happiness?
The book of Gina Lake is a clear guide to reach this goal. The book is about letting go of the ego, about letting go of your ideas of what should be, about letting go of your resistance to what is. The solution to real happiness is not to go after the longings of the ego, but the solution is contacting your true self, the pure awareness underneath ego and the mind.
That pure awareness has an undertone of happiness always whatever the situation arising in the Now is.
In this book Gina helps the reader to develop this state of unconditional happiness. This can be one of the most important books you have red because it helps you to remain happy whatever the form of the Now moment takes.
It helps you to realize the vision of books like the Power of the Now of Eckhart Tolle in your daily life, especially when life gets tough from the point of view of the ego.
The book is easy to read and practical. The language is clear and to the point. And most important of all the book is transformative and gives you the tools to live from the state of awareness rather than from the state of ego. I highly recommend this book. It has given me many tools to recognize the ego better and live in a state of awareness.

Just when I thought I had looked in every corner, this book comes along and brilliantly shows me all the little dusty corners of my Ego, still holding on, and also points me to freedom from that bondage! What I love about this book is it really shows me how to break free of my conditioning, and recognizing it easily, without trying to GET RID OF IT. That impossible task has cost me years of struggle. And what I am finding is in many cases the conditioning just drops away.

This book has spent many a hot bubble bath with me, and has curled and underlined pages! Sometimes I just pick it up and open it to a section and read it again, and hear something completely new, as I am completely new each time I read it. This is another "Run Don't Walk to your Shopping Cart and Buy it" book. BRAVO!

The previous reviews say it all so well so please read them!

I'd just like to add my highest recommendation for Embracing the Now and all of Gina's work. Her articulate and relaxing presence, coupled with her unique ability to clearly convey awareness where so many others can't, makes her message one that most will comprehend without having to re-read every other line six times! As an example, my wife was having difficulty with many of the teachings I was involved with, but when she read Gina's words, she immediately related to the messages as though she had known all along but just couldn't quite follow others' pointers to the truth. It opened up a whole new world of dialog between us.

I'd also like to recommend Nirmala's books as well, as I feel between the two unique but complimentary messages, most of you will understand how to see through the layers of the you that you think you are, to the you that you know you are.

Also, much heartfelt thanks to Gina and Nirmala for all the other resources they freely provide, such as their web sites, that are full of additional insight and pointers to the "place" we'd all like to be but don't realize we already are.

I started reading Gina's books such as "Radical Happiness: A Guide to Awakening" and "Return to Essence: How to Be in the Flow and Fulfill Your Life's Purpose " about a year ago and was amazed by her clarity and ability to take esoteric concepts and translate them into easy-to-understand language and provide practical tools to help practice them on a daily basis. Her most recent book "Embracing the Now: Finding Peace and Happiness in What Is" takes this a step further by giving you more tools to differentiate when you are in the ego vs. essence and how to break free of conditioning and find happiness in the moment. Like many who read these types of books, I love Eckhart Tolle's works but have always struggled with how to stay present for longer periods of time especially during difficult situations. Gina provides the understanding and tools to help you take your spiritual practice deeper. I highly recommend her books!

Gina Lake has done it again and this may be her best work to date. This is an outstanding clear and practical guide to awakening. The book serves to anchor what has been seen and felt in an enlightenment experience so that this awakened awareness can become our normal state of consciousness rather just the background for the temporal and impermanent.

Great teachers like Eckhart Tolle are rare and they speak of living in the NOW. Gina, who is in that class of great teachers, offers us immediately useful advice and shows us how to live one's life from that state.

In the first section of the book, she explains who we really are as eternal, infinite consciousness and happiness despite all appearances to the contrary. She then explores and confronts the Ego, devoting an entire section of the book to explaining how to overcome its fears and the subtle sabotage it employs to hinder our spiritual journey. Another section deals with overcoming the conditioned mind so that the light of pure awareness may find an ever more abiding home in us.

This is a wonderful book to be treasured and re-read throughout one's life. There is great wisdom and comfort in its pages and there is much to be gained by studying it as a manual for living a more enlightened life.

I too have read several of Gina's books, and I have to say I was more deeply affected by this book than I expected. Many times while reading, I had to just stop for a few minutes and let the truth of her words envelop me. However you want to put it: doorways of conscious opening, limiting beliefs being eliminated, old hurts being cast off, feeling profoundly in the flow of life, awareness of Presence. Quite a gift.
I love the format, I can pick it up anytime and choose a subject, or just pick it up and read the essay it opens to. Gina does it again.