A New Earth ~ Week 2

Well, it worked this time. Even at 84kbs, the webcast streamed here to Montana with no problems. No technical problems, that is. And, judging by a quick look at the MESSAGE BOARDS, few saw any other problems, either.

But I did.

At the end of the webcast, I found myself wondering (ah, yes -- I watched myself wondering...) why, in a house that holds books by the Dalai Lama, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, and many other teachers (I even have several Bibles, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon) -- why -- am I spending time and energy watching and reading and thinking about the thoughts of  a man who claims to have transcended ego?

Yes. He really did make this claim. From the transcript:

OPRAH WINFREY: But why do we have it, though? Why do we have an ego? We're all human. We all have one, right?

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  We all have one.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  You say yours -- last week, you said yours died. Does that mean you don't have one?

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  You said yours died in that moment where you wanted to kill yourself. I'm so miserable, I can't live with myself no longer.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  You said in that moment, your ego died.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Never came back? It died forever?

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes. When we say that it simply means -- it sounds like some great achievement (unintelligible) it's not.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Yeah.

ECKHART TOLLE:  All it means is I'm no longer identified with my thought processes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Mm-hmm.

ECKHART TOLLE: I know when thoughts happen. I know they are just thought. I don't look for myself in some opinions that I hold of myself. Some mental concept, including the concept that I am free of ego, I don't think in those terms. Because if I have this concept, I am free of ego, that would be ego again.

OPRAH WINFREY:  That would be ego again, yeah.

My, my. I wonder if anyone has told the Dalai Lama this? Perhaps he (the Dalai Lama) could retire.

A primary difference between the teachers mentioned above and Tolle is that Tolle claims this is all easy. All that is required is to become aware, and then ego will dissolve, and bad habits will fall away. Other teachers present a more difficult -- and, in my opinion, more realistic -- task: a process of practice and attention. A life-long process, a life-long practice, that calls on all our resources as human beings -- including our reason.

The Dalai Lama says: My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. Now this, I find challenging. This requires attention and effort on my part, and I'm often unsuccessful -- as this very post, no doubt, exemplifies.

Tolle hit another of my buttons in this webcast (not, mind you, that I think this is personal); he gave this advice to a woman who called in:

VICTORIA (AUDIENCE MEMBER): ... I was diagnosed over ten years ago with systemic Lupus and RA [Rheumatoid Arthritis]. And I've been a really active person. But two years ago I gave up my business. My health deteriorated . . . . it had actually become the most important part of who I perceived myself to be. How can I undo this identity, and how can I stay focused when I'm in excruciating pain from the illness to have the peace constantly and not just fleeing moments?

OPRAH WINFREY:  That's real.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  That's Real.

ECKHART TOLLE: Yes. Now, the most important thing has already happened, which is you have become aware, up to now, you have become identified with the idea that I am a sufferer of such and such an illness. So the illness had become thought forms in your head, and you had identified with these thought forms and took them to be who you are. And now, the most important thing, the question is still valid but realize that the most important thing has already happened, which is the awareness has arisen. So you have -- there is a space between you and your thought processes and the image of yourself as a sick person.

Now another thing, of course, in addition you can do is, for example, no longer talk about your illness to other people except when you visit your doctor. That doesn't -- then otherwise, when you talk about it to your friends, acquaintances, family members, the more you keep that process going.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Empower it.

ECKHART TOLLE:  Yes.

OPRAH WINFREY:  She empowers the disease.

ECKHART TOLLE:  That's right.

OPRAH WINFREY:  Yes.

. . . and this conversation continues awhile, with concepts like directing attention to well-being rather than dwelling in the illness. Now, there's certainly something to be said in favor of this. In the months following the onset of my illness (there I go, talking about it) I looked at websites and tried a support group, and soon concluded that, for me, this was a bit too much dwelling.

For a very long time, I didn't write about it online at all, until I began Abide to give myself a place, separate from here, to do just that. There is, after all, empowerment to be had in connecting with others who share your experience; a certain level of comprehension and even helpful advice that can't be found elsewhere.

And -- my stiff-upper-lip-I'm fine-ness earned me little beyond isolation. So forgive my skepticism about this particular advice. Everything in moderation...

There is another book that speaks to this, though it's about writing rather than talking: Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, by Louise DeSalvo.  DeSalvo's book is based on the research of James Pennebaker and others. She tells us:

Pennebaker's work on the relationship between suppressing our stories and illness, on the one hand, and telling our stories and increased health, on the other is well-respected and path-breaking in the field of psychology... In carefully controlled experiments [he] and his associates made the extremely important discovery that "writing can be an avenue to the interior place where . . .we can confront traumas and put them to rest -- and heal both body and mind." But not just any kind of writing. Only a certain kind of writing will help us heal.

Briefly:

Writing that describes traumatic or distressing events in detail and how we felt about those events then and feel about them now is the only kind of writing about trauma that clinically has been associated with improved health. Simply writing about innocuous subjects . . . or simply writing about traumatic events or venting our feelings about trauma without linking the two does not result in significant health or emotional benefits. In fact, in one experiment it was found that simply venting feelings might have made the writers somewhat sicker.

Writing as a Way of Healing then goes on to lay out a program and process to work toward this goal. Please note that experimental evidence guides us toward behavior that is more specific, and somewhat contradicts, Tolle's advice.

Finally, the issue I've mentioned before as my most serious concern about New Age thinking. This is a quote from Tolle's book:

One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

Would Tolle say this to the children of Iraq? To the people of Darfur?

One fears he might.

And, of course, we know no such thing. One may believe it, if one likes -- though it can easily lead to victim-blaming, and, often, self-blame for circumstances beyond our control. This idea, which means to emphasize one's power over our own responses to the world (and even that is seriously in doubt after recent research indicating we are much less in control of ourselves than we think) ends up, in the hands of New Age magical thinkers, placing responsibility where it does not belong.

Does this concern outweigh, for me, the potential benefits of thousands of people noticing -- surely not for the first time? -- that our minds are full of thoughts, and that we need not believe that thinking makes it so? (Wait -- that's the opposite of... OK, now I'm confused.) Thom Rutledge says all this much more clearly in The Antidote -- go read that.

So, am I done with A New Earth? Maybe. Maybe not. I may have more to say about this, which may require that I keep up.

Or not.

UPDATED TO ADD this truly amazing video. Now, this is my kind of teacher!

Comments

[Mary Scriver]

Sharon, sorta like you, I just watched a Netflix movie, a documentary, on Carlos Castanada who had a lot of these same kinds of ideas, though I gather he scorned New Agers -- at least the ones that weren't allied with him. The thought that sticks with me is that one man said as he read through the pop lit of those years about self-governance, spirituality, healing, being free, and all that stuff, he could identify passages that -- shortly after they were published -- showed up in Castanada's work. He was skimming and synthesizing, then putting it through a very strong and energized personality which was an especially effective delivery system for women. Sorta like Mary Baker Eddy inventing Christian Science. And others have done the same.

It's not BAD but as they said in this documentary (which was equally split between the idea that he was magic and could fly -- and the idea that he was a big ol' phony) it begins to verge on the placebo effect or maybe hypnotism.

I think it's like diet. We each have to take careful note of ourselves, try a range of things, keep what works, shrug off what doesn't. Forget the dictatorships and the transient regimes.

But the other thing that REALLY sticks with me from this program, is the emphasis on the idea that one CANNOT be afraid of death. We all die. Some die lucky ways and some do not. But we all die. Accept that, act without fear of it, live each day with clarity and heart. That's the secret.

I believe this. One doesn't ordinarily say it.

Prairie Mary

[SB]

Hi, Mary -- I know Castanada only second-hand, so cannot speak re his authenticity, or lack thereof (though most second-hand opinion I've read doubts him) -- but I entirely agree with "take what you like and leave the rest."

Usually.

But sometimes, "the rest" is not neutral. I think.

However, part of my difficulty may lie in the fact (I don't *think* I'm in denial about this) that I have never feared death. Raised by grandparents and their friends, perhaps I escaped the idea that it could be avoided somehow.

And, my single close encounter left me feeling quite at peace. No "life flashing before my eyes", no sudden regrets, just -- well, my, I guess this is it. OK.

But then, I've always been a bit weird...

[Niki]

Thanks for sharing this video. It is one I will keep and share.

[Mary Scriver]

Well, a near-death experience and a real brain are pretty high standards for teaching ! I read about this woman and wondered what it felt like from the inside. It's one of my real worries, to be in mental troubles incapacitating enough to not be able to make decisions. I suppose I'm afraid of being trapped.

A female minister friend told about being in a nearly lethal car crash, thrown out onto the road. She could not move, but her main sensation was of enormous comfort and the pleasant warmth of the asphalt. She could hear the people around her trying to help her and was grateful for their kindness and their care in the way they touched her. It might have been a matter of endorphins, which flood the system right after trauma.

If a mild electromagnetic current is passed through the temples, the person will be prompted to have a transcendent experience. Maybe voices or bells like Joan of Arc. We know what drugs can do.

Consciousness and the management of it are the professions of people like hypnotists or actors or even writers. We know that memory is encoded through sensations and that the evocation of certain sounds, or smells, or turns of the ankle on a path can bring a former moment flooding back along with the emotion of that moment. This does not work out happily for Iraqi combat veterans.

They say that if you look right, look left, look right again, look left again, it has the effect on most people of putting the two halves of the brain in closer communication, to the benefit of memory.

All this material greatly interests me but I'm not inclined to grant it supernatural status.

Prairie Mary

[Anne]

Hi Sharon, That video is making its way around the internet pretty fast, third place I've seen it now. Pretty amazing and provocative. I found your blog through Ageless Project and I like the way you write, the way you think, and I like your poems. Thank you.

[lodro]

The Dalai Lama would describe enlightenment similarly I think. I have the suspicion that Tolle borrowed the common "enlightened mind" terminology, then convinced himself it was true for him.