Eckhart Tolle

[zcarp47]

I would love to see a show on "The Truth about Eckhart Tolle". If Tolle is for real, then everything we know about Reality is in question. Tolle's position is that "thinking" is small potatoes compared to conscious awareness of the absolute. I would love to learn more about this guy.

[MysterionMuffles]

I don't think that's his position...

 

Eckhart sees the value in thinking when it comes to planning and reasoning, but when it comes to compulsive thinking in terms of worrying about the future or obssessing over the past, then it becomes destructive.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

I don't think that's his position...

 

Eckhart sees the value in thinking when it comes to planning and reasoning, but when it comes to compulsive thinking in terms of worrying about the future or obssessing over the past, then it becomes destructive.

 

Well that interesting... So if I plan to kill someone and use excellent reasoning to escape conviction, that is not destructive. But if I obsess for a month over the fact that I lost my mother when I was four years old (I didn't actually), then it becomes destructive (as if losing my mother wasn't the cause of the destruction, but it was only when I decided to obsess over it that it became destructive).

 

This would seem like bogus pop self help that incorporates an idealization of Stoicism and an unwillingness to acknowledge unpleasant thoughts and behaviors.

 

A good way to see the flaw in his premise is to focus in on his phrase "sees the value in thinking." Thinking isn't valued. You don't value a preference. That would be completely tautological, if not outright circular. Calling any thought destructive is an implicit condemnation of reality, and an emotional defense to avoid dealing with the presence of something by insulting it or giving it a negative label. 

[MysterionMuffles]

Well that interesting... So if I plan to kill someone and use excellent reasoning to escape conviction, that is not destructive. But if I obsess for a month over the fact that I lost my mother when I was four years old (I didn't actually), then it becomes destructive (as if losing my mother wasn't the cause of the destruction, but it was only when I decided to obsess over it that it became destructive).

 

This would seem like bogus pop self help that incorporates an idealization of Stoicism and an unwillingness to acknowledge unpleasant thoughts and behaviors.

 

A good way to see the flaw in his premise is to focus in on his phrase "sees the value in thinking." Thinking isn't valued. You don't value a preference. That would be completely tautological, if not outright circular. Calling any thought destructive is an implicit condemnation of reality, and an emotional defense to avoid dealing with the presence of something by insulting it or giving it a negative label. 

 

Hmm that seems like a strawman attack. I feel pretty annoyed by this post to be honest. Not saying that it makes you wrong or am I criticizing you in any way, but let me try to elaborate. 

 

There is such thing as destructive thought such as thinking about killing others or yourself, and all the constant self attack people are plagued by within their own minds. What I should make explicit out of what I implied, and based on what I've read from Eckhart Tolle, is this: when you focus too much on the past you become full of regret, when you focus too much on the future you become anxious. He does say learning from past mistakes is important, but to dwell on them longer beyond having learned the lesson diminishes your capacity to live in the present. You can think about your future and plan out what you want to do and achieve, but if you're too focussed on every last detail, it robs you from the spontaneity of the present moment which is the only place life can really happen.

 

When you think about the past, it is happening now. When you think about the future, it is happening now. When things happened in the past, you still experienced in the form the present took back then. When you finally experience "the future" it really it only manifests in the form the here and now takes.

 

Compulsive thinking, as he and I define it, is when it occupies your mental faculties to the point that you fail to take action in the present. But you're right insofar using thought for planning a murder and reasoning an escape is destructive, while "obssessing"/mourning the loss of your mother at a young age could flip my statement upside down. I was generally speaking about how most people, the non homicidal populace, spends their energy in thought.

 

What's wrong with giving things a negative label though? I think they deserve it so that you can know the difference between right or wrong. It's good thinking to map out a general idea of your future in terms of what you want to achieve in life, but it's bad thinking to use that same energy to plan out a murder. I don't see how that could be insulting or an emotional defense when it's simply stating the facts. 

[Matthew Ed Moran]

Compulsive thinking, as he and I define it, is when it occupies your mental faculties to the point that you fail to take action in the present. But you're right insofar using thought for planning a murder and reasoning an escape is destructive, while "obssessing"/mourning the loss of your mother at a young age could flip my statement upside down. I was generally speaking about how most people, the non homicidal populace, spends their energy in thought.

 

What's wrong with giving things a negative label though? I think they deserve it so that you can know the difference between right or wrong. It's good thinking to map out a general idea of your future in terms of what you want to achieve in life, but it's bad thinking to use that same energy to plan out a murder. I don't see how that could be insulting or an emotional defense when it's simply stating the facts. 

 

So you said "compulsive thinking is failing to take action in the present moment." To say this is destructive is to say acting is always preferable to not acting (unless you want to say there are times where destruction is preferable). Murder is an exception to this, and if someone could chose between impulsively thinking and murdering, one would be seen as an infinitely more destructive option than the other. Sorry if this is a straw man

 

If you are just saying worrying can be destructive sometimes, I agree. It is probably always destructive to worry and not act when there is a predator near you and you need to run away, or if you are in a situation of abuse. That would seem to me a more nuanced argument that a psychotherapist or some kind of healer would be equipped to deal with, and I don't think the remedy is "taking action" unless that were to mean "take very specific action." Does that make sense at all?

 

What's wrong with giving things a negative label though? I think they deserve it so that you can know the difference between right or wrong. 

 

 

Giving something a negative label doesn't change its contents. The only thing which is negative is falsehood, and that is my understanding (hopefully not misunderstanding!) how UPB makes objective value judgments against thoughts. But I do not see how compulsive thinking is necessarily a negative in the way that a false statement is.

[chromanin]

Compulsive thinking is an action as well. We have no choice but to act, until we are dead. The question becomes what types of actions are preferable and in what proportions? Since the actor is a part of this equation and all actors are objectively different, it is ideal to leave this calculation to the actor and those they cooperate with locally. The caveat to this, is that when we are able to objectively determine that a class of action invariably leads to suffering in general (the initiation of force), we should not hesitate to designate such actions as non-preferable. Cultural relativism is utter BS.

[fractional slacker]

I hear about this guy all the time. Don't know much about him other than he seems to be word salad chef. Does Tolle regard philosophy as fundamental to correcting current personal and societal problems? Does Tolle recognize evil? Who are Tolle's enemies?

[MysterionMuffles]

I hear about this guy all the time. Don't know much about him other than he seems to be word salad chef. Does Tolle regard philosophy as fundamental to correcting current personal and societal problems? Does Tolle recognize evil? Who are Tolle's enemies?

 

Tolle regards presence as fundamental to correcting current personal and societal problems. People being unconscious and enveloped in their egos is what caues them. Which is why the RTR mode of conversation is liberating, it's in REAL time, as opposed to the unleashing of repressed and unconscious volatility that is expressed in say a typical loud and verbally abusive argument between two people.

 

Tolle recognizes unconsciousness as an evil and as the ultimate enemy to human happiness. Word salad chef or not, the basic principle of using your mind instead of it using you is fundamental to personal freedom. Being present and conscious dispels falsehood because you no longer misconstrue or misconceptualize reality, you perceive it as it is. 

 

What his approach to personal development simply leads down to is this: obssessing over the past only fills you with regret and nostalgia, while obssessing over the future fills you with anxiety and anticipation, thus robbing you from experiencing the present moment which is all we ever have. You can think about your past mistakes and learn from them, you can plan your tasks and goals ahead of time, but to seek fulfillment anywhere else other than this eternal moment is living unconsciously. 

 

Think about it, when you think about the past you're doing right now. Think about the future, you're doing it right now. No other moment in time exists except for right now. When things happened in the past, it's the form the present moment took at the time and it's long gone now. When things you were looking forward to in the future happen, they happen in the here and now taking the form of the present moment. No other moment exists. Any other moment you refer to as past or future are just concepts that are either no longer reality or have yet to manifest.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

Your past is always accessible. You can think about the past whenever you like. It is with you. Every moment, you will always have a past. That past is always changing; more information is being added at the very least. You can also reprogram to use insights in the present to change your understanding of the past. But there is a pure symmetry between empirical reality and our emotional apparatus. Every "choice" our unconscious body makes is in response to a change in the environment. So in that way our past is with us as long as we are living. It tells us when things are familiar, and what to expect. Our body accumulates "stuff" from the environment. The emotional apparatus is communication of what is going on in our environment and how it effects the body. It is like sense data in that way, as if you were putting your fingers in fresh water to check the temperature, to see if it is fit for swimming. The emotions are chemical processes, so in that sense they are unconscious, and a functioning of the body, not conscious thought.

 

But the crux of philosophy and RTR which is based on philosophy in my opinion, is the focus on the difference between subjective emotions and empirical reality. It is the epistemology of the self, the metaphysics of conscious existence, which necessitates that any unconscious existence is just a manifesting event in empirical reality, which you potentially can become aware of. Emotions are brought up in RTR, but not to dominate the conversation, but as potentially useful information for the other person.

 

In conversations, the focus of RTR is not necessarily to be present, but it is to be empirical. Technically, in any conversation you are present. When someone is spitting up emotional volatility like you said, they are refusing to engage in empirical examination, and instead would rather try to dominate to have their expectations of reality met. Reality didn't work out the way they wanted it to, and instead of realizing that and admitting their mistake, they use other people as an excuse. They are responding directly to misfirings in the brain to direct them off course, and their anger will propel themselves into this maddened state of reality deflection where everything is everyone else's fault.