Eckhart Tolle and other self help gurus

[MysterionMuffles]

What does everybody think about this wave of self help gurus that have come onto the scene this past decade or two? Do they really contribute to the self knowledge movement, or is it a derailment to true self knowledge? I personally think that there can be some self help gurus out there who are all about the super fun time goody feeling of thinking positive, while others are genuine in their approach. There's a whole lot of them and I'm not in the phase anymore where I need to look into their work, so that's why I want to ask what everyone else's experience is with them.

For me, the one that had the most impact was Eckhart Tolle. When I read The Power of Now, it made me feel like I have overcomplicated my life all from my own doing. Basically his message, for those who don't know, is that life can only happen in the Now, the present moment. It was such a simple message, but that simplicity is often buried beneath a lot of egoic behaviour and thinking patterns. I consumed that book in three days and felt the hours slip by nicely, as opposed to dreading each tick of the clock when I worried so damn much about what I was going to do with my life. At the time, I had just graduated high school after taking an extra year, and I was confused what direction I was gonna take. Was I gonna work, was I gonna go to post secondary? I was so obsessed with comparing my self to everyone else around me and at first envied their situations, but even to them they didn't seem all that satisfactory. So with the help from The Power of Now, I learned to cool my damn jets and just enjoy life as it unravels before at this very moment.

Recently though I find his videos kind of boring, even though he has developed the ability to add humour to his talks. It's just as if I had levelled up to something bigger and more beneficial to my life, but at the time, I could appreciate tremendously how it helped me open up my eyes to the basic idea of self knowledge. I really was at a loss with who I was back then. The concerns of who I was up until that point and who I will become, those ever nagging concerns were trifled when I realized shaping my future can only happen within one time frame: The Now.

[Lowe D]

Earlier today I was out walking, and I was listening to a YouTube video through my phone.  I got to thinking about what it takes to motivate oneself, and how often those who seek help doing that, are people whose lives have been sabotaged by their unsupportive and exploitative families.  This was true for me, and it's been true for many people I have met.  Listening to that video and thinking on the subject, I wound up crying.

I was also reminded of this yesterday, when I listened to a show Stefan must have done a couple weeks ago.  A caller outlined some of his problems in the areas of socializing, dating, and interviewing for jobs.  These have been problem areas in my life, and I think in the lives of other readers and posters here.  One thing that struck me was how hard it was for the caller to see the horror of what had happened to him as a child and an adolescent, to cause these difficulties, and to feel into it.

That's something I've had tremendous trouble with, over the years.  Entire parts of my life disappeared because of the choices my parents, relatives, and teachers made: the wounds they left, and then ignored.  Accepting that is difficult, even with the positive turns my life has taken over the past couple years.  The sadness, shame, and loneliness of being an attacked and neglected child, has a way of sticking.  That's what parts of us believe is best, for our own safety.

Feeling safe is important.  Feeling safe to put yourself out there with potential employers, to approach others socially and romantically, and to welcome the challenging feelings these experiences cause.  Some people get denied safety, for years on end.  This absence is hard to correct, and I think the only thing that can correct it is trust.  Trust in someone; trust that that person sees you, and will tell you the truth.  This may be the kind of trust one vests in Stefan, and hopefully the kind of trust one vests in a therapist.

If I were reading a self help guru, trust is one of the first things that would come up.  Can I trust this person to tell me the truth?  To see me, as I am?  Does this person see children?  Or are they invisible to him?  I think that to last, the motivation to life one's life, has to be based on trust, in oneself.  But trust in oneself, can start with other people, as long as they can see you, and your personal truth.

[MysterionMuffles]

I would assure you that Eckhart's books are honest for the most part. He does talk about the innocense of children and how much more present they are than adults. He himself was a victim of a very hostile home environment and recognized the hostility in his school environment, so he would run away from home or skip school a lot and bike out to find peace in nature. The very core of his message is for readers/listener's to see theirselves as they are within this moment, free of judgement and free of past. He respects that things have happened to you in your past, but reminds you that within the eternal Now, this very moment is all you ever have. When you think of the past or future, you still experience the thought of it in the Now. 

He also talks about how the Ego confines us in repetitive negative thoughts to only some regards to how the past has shaped your behaviour and thinking, and that the only way to break free is to be present in the moment. It sounds easy peasy, but the part of it that I find disingenuous is the idea that thinking about your past too much and trying to rationalize it is worthless. Thinking CAN be used for good when it comes to constructive things, but when it comes to your past and life, you ARE creating a story and that story keeps you limitted. He's kind of onto something, but at the same time, you do need to think of these things to connect the dots and figure yourself out. 

[LovePrevails]

I've been listening to Eckhart a lot recently to see what it's all about and I do find a lot of his reasoning very convincing

on the other hand I worry that the whole philosophy winds up with you accepting any old shit behaviour because "it's not them it's your ego."

does that make sense?

 

I've not seen a satisfactory response to that, I think people like Eckhart and Anthony deMello (whose book called Awareness I loved and you probably will also if you like The Power of Now)
Is that people from abusive backgrounds read them and actually misread them as a reason to dismiss all their emotions the way they were forced to by their difficult upbringings
their misenterpretation of the text (confimation bias) causes them to repeat the abuse upon themselves

[MysterionMuffles]

right that's what I fear about it. The skipping of anger towards the instant forgiveness thing that Stef talks about when he mentions therapy. Sometimes it isn't just our egoes that cook up fears about certain people, it is actual intution that some people are just unempathetic evil doers. Not sure if Eckhart ever addresses this but I am interested to see his conversation with Deepak Chopra later this month. I'm on the fence about it. It's been years since I was into their work, but now I can't be bothered. I've moved on to bigger things: philosophy without the guise of spirituality! But back then I was always wishing and hoping the two of them would come together (Eckhart and Deepak) and have this mind exlpoding conversation, and now it's gonna happen. What do you guys think? Should I pay that $25 to get access to it or just continue to move on?

[LovePrevails]

 

 What do you guys think? Should I pay that $25 to get access to it or just continue to move on?

I say if it's a walk down memory lane and a very enjoyable nostalgia trip for you, as well as something you anticipated with glee once, chuck in ya 25 brotha

you won't miss them that much, but you'll probably enjoy listening to the two chat "in the present"

 

 

[MysterionMuffles]

LOL awesome response. Alright, I will give them one last go to fill my life with (hopefully beneficial) spiritual babble. Might make me feel like that insecure kid I was only 4 years ago and remember that willingness to improve my self, you know as opposed to that innate daily thing that it is now. Which can't be a bad thing, we all gotta respect where we came from right?

[Existing Alternatives]

There is definitely some room for this type of help or external motivation in general. Although, at risk of sounding like a complete douche, nobody can “self-help” you, except for … self. These guys usually work like either a jolt of caffeine to one’s motivation or provide a band-aid solution to a more serious problem. If over-used, however, one may end up ignoring the underlying problems altogether, while developing an outright addiction to this kind of “help.” Scientology seems to use a similar approach (hope I’m not offending anyone here) – they don’t address deep psychological problems, but rather create a sensation of euphoria, which can only be sustained by more “auditing”.

Yet another risk is that “self-help” business is very lucrative and as such attracts huge number of charlatans, who just throw in a bunch of profound sounding statements together and wrap a couple of cool sounding stories around it. Often times they would be akin astrology or cold reading, where a lot of what they say seem to make deep personal sense.

Personally, I greatly enjoy listening to these guys: Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, Dennis Waitley, Brian Tracy every once in a while. I also enjoy a nice latte in the morning to keep me perked up. This helps, but you can’t use any of that as the foundation for your personal life.

[LovePrevails]

When I used to practice the piano for hours a day

I would listen to hours and hours of Wayne Dyer, Chopra, Steven Covey, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, etc.

they would put me in a really good mood and I'd be practicing at the same time! super-win

it does do something for your positive mental attitude to consume motivational speakers

[Lowe D]

@ MCS

I think that the most important children to see, are the children in yourself.  I know that's definitely been the case for me.  And for me, those children need my presence, my kindness, and my strength.  They need me close, in other words.  I can't claim to be a fully formed person, or even happy most of the time; I'm functional, and that is due to a lot of hard work.  Having said that, I don't believe lasting self improvement can be achieved by acting as if the past doesn't exist inside us, but only by finding the past inside us.

I understand the idea that rationalizing the past is not productive.  I have a part that rationalizes the past, in an attempt to spin a story, to satisfy a critical part.  The critical part then criticizes it for doing that.  "Oh, what are you doing?  I see right through that."  That's the thing about criticism, that it's always on the outside, looking in, no matter how much you try to put yourself on the outside.  It's kind of like standing between two mirrors.

Being on the outside is a tempting thought, and it's what a lot of my parts work on.  Being on the outside of the sense of shame, or needing to run away, the sense of being wanting, of falling short of someone else's mark.  The sense of being buried under someone else's anxiety, and expectations.  Being on the outside can be helpful, and it might get you by for long periods.  Maybe years or decades.  But I don't want to be on the outside of my own life.  And I think that's what this is about.  The senses I mentioned, the feelings, the parts, they don't live on a video tape, or on the pages of a book.  They live in my brain, which is in the now.

Many might wish otherwise, but those things don't go away through meditation, or thought exercises, or anything like that.  In fact they never go away.  They change, if you let them.

[MysterionMuffles]

 

@ MCS

I think that the most important children to see, are the children in yourself.  I know that's definitely been the case for me.  And for me, those children need my presence, my kindness, and my strength.  They need me close, in other words.  I can't claim to be a fully formed person, or even happy most of the time; I'm functional, and that is due to a lot of hard work.  Having said that, I don't believe lasting self improvement can be achieved by acting as if the past doesn't exist inside us, but only by finding the past inside us.

I understand the idea that rationalizing the past is not productive.  I have a part that rationalizes the past, in an attempt to spin a story, to satisfy a critical part.  The critical part then criticizes it for doing that.  "Oh, what are you doing?  I see right through that."  That's the thing about criticism, that it's always on the outside, looking in, no matter how much you try to put yourself on the outside.  It's kind of like standing between two mirrors.

Being on the outside is a tempting thought, and it's what a lot of my parts work on.  Being on the outside of the sense of shame, or needing to run away, the sense of being wanting, of falling short of someone else's mark.  The sense of being buried under someone else's anxiety, and expectations.  Being on the outside can be helpful, and it might get you by for long periods.  Maybe years or decades.  But I don't want to be on the outside of my own life.  And I think that's what this is about.  The senses I mentioned, the feelings, the parts, they don't live on a video tape, or on the pages of a book.  They live in my brain, which is in the now.

Many might wish otherwise, but those things don't go away through meditation, or thought exercises, or anything like that.  In fact they never go away.  They change, if you let them.

 

Yeah you're right, there's only so much meditation and mere presence can do. While at the time, a lot of my problems were self created within my own mind, and The Power of Now helped me break from that cycle. It allowed me to be present during mundane tasks, but I think that's all it really is geared to. Dysfunction IS caused from over thinking, but even if you are quite present, there's always an amount of past trauma you may not even fixate on so much, yet certain instances can bring those responses up.

Eckhart does say that thinking can be more productive if you left in the space for total awareness to enter first and I suppose there's merit to that. But at the same time, I think it's too simplistic to just meditate feelings away. I can't remember if he ever said anything about owning your feelings. He does say to detach from negative ones because they are just built from self storytelling, but I would argue that you need to allow yourself to feel those feelings to understand them, rather than just un-think it away. I may be taking his message the wrong way, or maybe there are some fundamental flaws to it. Either way, when receiving any sort of "help" from an outer source, I do retain some scepticism.

Like I said earlier in the post, I feel like I have outgrown Eckhart and Deepak. And oh, I did get to watch their dialogue tonight. It didn't take me back to any nostalgic time in my life where I needed their message the most, and I was present watching the first hour and 15 minutes of it, for the most part. Though one thing made me lost absolute interest because the format of the dialogue was just Deepak reading off Facebook questions (so far) and for Eckhart to answer with his insight, and then to add his own two cents. Lol I am fulfilling Eckhart's point on expectations causing dysfunction, but I did expect an ACTUAL dialogue between the two to discuss spirituality, instead of just rehashing each other's answers to people's questions.

And another thing that bothered me a lot was this: there was a Facebook question from a woman whose paintings were inspired by the love she had with her husband, but then her husband betrayed her and she has lost all motivation to paint again--and that she feels all that previous artwork is a waste. Eckhart's response was a little...non-answery, and it didn't help that he made a joke about something sensitive by saying "well your husband after all is a human...I would assuuume," blah blah blah, "he is prone to error. He is just that: a human...and a being..." and ah I can't remember. He was trying to formulate an answer, but at its core it was just about the woman finding it in her heart to forgive her husband. That the betrayal is just a story that she tells her self...he didn't even touch base again about the painting aspect of her question.

I would've said something along the lines of, "just because your first muse has ceased to inspire you, it doesn't mean you can find a new one and paint again. At the same time you can't rely on an external source to instill presence within you that would possess you to paint to your heart's content." Or something to that effect. I dunno, it was interesting to watch (and maybe the dialogue becomes an actual dialogue instead of a riff raff off eachother), but so far it's either nothing new to me or something that conflicts with my current set of knowledge.

EDIT: Also, I think your first paragraph kind of resonated with me. I do feel like there's this array of "children" within me, aspects of myself that I need to start tending to more often. Give them the space to be what they are, understand them, and be present when they want to be expressed. There's the child in me who just wants to write and write (as you can clearly see with 95% of my posts here), there's the child in me who just wants to play video games all day, and there's even a child hurt as hell whose confusion about religion has only recently been lifted. Recently, I've been having the discussion with my mom about being an Atheist now, and I can't just sweep that aspect of my life under the rug by not thinking about it or engaging in it. If I can take away anything else from Eckhart's message the days is that maybe I need at least the time and space to live as if it is all just a self perpetuating story (because concepts of Atheism or Christian attached to my identity ARE jsut concepts...), allow awareness to overcome me in the place of all the angst, and then retry for a calmer discussion. Anyways, hate to ramble so much, I just needed that out!

[LovePrevails]

[MysterionMuffles]

My faith is restored in the Turtle Neck of Wisdom.

I'm gonna guess he's against spanking too since it's very conrguent with what's already saying here.

[LovePrevails]

he said "sometimes they even hit the child" which made it clear that he didn't support spanking

 

to be honest when I hear him speak he seems like a  highly functional human being to me

 

like highly functional - quite apart from any spiritual views

 

I feel like the standard which he asks us to aspire to is unattainable to me or most people

[Hugh Akston]

I read the power of now when I was going through my divorce after 23 years of marriage.  Looking back at it now it was the worst book I could have read at the time.  Ayn Rand's Anthem and other works did much more to make me understand what was wrong with my life.  I feel there is too much mysticism in the book.  Logic and reason is what helped me to gain insight into myself.

[MysterionMuffles]

I read the power of now when I was going through my divorce after 23 years of marriage.  Looking back at it now it was the worst book I could have read at the time.  Ayn Rand's Anthem and other works did much more to make me understand what was wrong with my life.  I feel there is too much mysticism in the book.  Logic and reason is what helped me to gain insight into myself.

 

Interesting. Tell me more if you feel comfortable.

 

I mean I experienced a devastating break up with my first ever long term girlfriend and I wasted a lot of time thinking about her. Being present isn't enough, I know, you should always learn to process why things happened. However, I DID need downtime of spacial awareness where I didn't think too much and just lived in the moment. I needed to not think before I COULD think. Eckhart Tolle himself says the point of his practice is to be devoid of thought, however to be devoid of self destructive thoughts. It's a whole different discussion to distinguish what is self destructive vs instructive on how to improve, but for the sake of this conversation. He does say that only after you let yourself experience absolute consciousness in the moment without judgements about your environment or the world, only then can your thinking be clear enough for you to really rationalize things.

 

So yeah, what was your experience of being present? Did you always find yourself over thinking or did you actully achieve some kind of presence, but felt your ego NEED To obssess over things? Sorry if those sound like leading questions, but anyway. What was it about Ayn Rand's Anthem that really helped you?