It as been roughly a year since Oprah made Rhonda Byrne and her book, “The Secret,” a worldwide phenomenon. Now she is doing it again with Eckhart Tolle’s newest book, “A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose.” Instead of tackling the law of attraction, Oprah is applying her book club Midas touch to help readers tackle the world.

Eckhart Tolle, a contemporary spiritual teacher, writes about the illuminating of one’s self by constantly being aware of one’s state of consciousness. Author of the bestselling “The Power of Now,” Tolle follows that title’s immense success by giving readers a deeper look into the current state of humanity, which he describes as being based on false identification with the mind.

“A New Earth” tells humans how to escape from the dangers of their old ways of thinking and inspires readers to tune into the ego, which is a current state of conscious awareness. As people take the time to change their inner awareness, Tolle believes that the world will become a much more loving environment.

Just as with “The Secret,” a book based on the idea that people in tune with the law of attraction can summon to them the life they choose to have, “A New Earth” follows the same sort of New Age guidelines, leaving it wide open to criticism from skeptics.

Despite whatever power Oprah may hold as far as drawing readers to her selected books, “A New Earth” is one that is definitely worth taking the time to read. While readers may not believe or understand everything that Tolle teaches, the author’s basic theme is to try to provide people with more happiness and, in doing so, raise the happiness level of the world.

The idea is simple: If one follows his conscious state of being, or, his ego, he will learn to appreciate himself for whom he truly is, which is greater than what they think they are.

While “A New Earth” may seem repetitive at times, to an interested reader the repetition helps confirm the idea Tolle is trying to explain. An example of this comes from an excerpt in which Tolle talks about dreams.

“There is the dream, and there is the dreamer of the dream. The dream is a short-lived play of forms. It is the world – relatively real but not absolutely real. Then there is the dreamer, the absolute reality in which the forms come and go. The dreamer is not the person. The person is part of the dream…. To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.”

For readers who may feel like their lives are in shambles and are confused about their own place in the world, Tolle recognizes that feeling as an awareness to be awakened, something that he repeatedly admits to being the basis of transformation.

While skeptics may continue to dismiss any ideas that such a transformation is possible, if enough positive people decide to try to change their lives, who knows what could happen?