Jump to content

The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle. Anyone read it?


Guest Paul92

Recommended Posts

Guest Paul92

I'm sure many of you on these forums have perused a number of self help books before. You've probably come across the 'Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle. In which, as I read it, Tolle 'westernises' Buddhism.

There are 2 key parts to it.

1) Breaking the cycle of rumination by living in the 'now'. I can say with confidence, it works. It's not easy, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. The other day, I went almost a full day without thinking about the past. It might prove very handy to some people on here. I can't explain it like the man himself, so perhaps YouTube him. Anyone who has trouble breaking 'cycles', I think it could help. It's absolutely simple, too.

2) Diminishing your ego.

According to Mr Tolle, and Buddhists, you are not who you think you are. Ultimately, you are being controlled by your ego, which at its core is evil and self-centred. Your ego creates a life story that you live by. Everything you hate, and everything you enjoy, is your ego. Everything you do and identify with, is your ego, apparently. All you have ever done is construct a narrative that you project to the outside world

Now, having found the first part of the 'Power is Now' quite useful in breaking the cycle of rumination, I thought I'd get involved in the second part. I wanted to dissolve my 'ego', this second brain, that isn't me that is ruining my life, and ensuring that I live as a slave in eternal pain and suffering. 

However, be warned, this involves separating yourself from everything you've ever know. Every single feeling, thought, emotion you have ever felt, is not you, apparently. He says, quite clearly, you are not your mind.

I think people seem to underestimate how scary this thought it. You are not your mind. You have two minds. One is the ego, the other is the real you. The real you is happy, no matter what. Any hint of sadness, is not you.

The real you is filled with bliss living on a park bench, because you have the 'now'. There is no point listening to music. There is no point watching movies. There is no point engaging in hobbies. There is no point in socialising with friends who are run by their ego. There is no point in doing anything. Because nothing will compare to the bliss of the 'now'. I find this so scary. Especially considering I was someone who took great comfort in the little things in my life, watching movies, playing games, playing my guitar, socialising with friends etc. 

Your identity is false. Your name, your race, your family, it isn't real, according to Tolle. If you see suffering in the world, it shouldn't matter to you, because you have the now. So when I'm studying my MA, to try and make a difference in the world, apparently it doesn't matter.

Weirdly, I sort of can see the point. But is scary at the same time. And all I think is well, if nothing matters, then why don't I just end my life right now? Tolle would say, if you did, the world will keep on turning. My emotions are irrelevant. Emotions are not real, just a fabrication, a consequence of what we have been taught?

 

For instance, Tolle says he enjoys walks in nature where he feels his real self. But isn't that his ego? Who says nature is beautiful? Isn't that something we have just labelled, as what is beautiful and what isn't? 

Thank you Mr Tolle for alerting me to that fact that everything is utterly, utterly pointless.

 

Just absolutely terrified right now. I want my old life back, even if I was walking around in ignorance. Had anyone read the Power of Now? 

 

Edited by Paul92
Link to comment

I haven't read the book nor am I familiar with the author. Personally, I find 'living in the now' to be helpful with anxiety – though I find it very very challenging. I obsess over the past and feelings and thoughts, too. 

However – and again I haven't read the book – from your post, it sounds like you're going a step further and approaching something akin to nihilism. In my experience, it's not a very helpful way to view reality. Viewing everything as not real or pointless is a fast route to depression in my experience. 

Link to comment
Guest Paul92
17 minutes ago, Publius said:

I haven't read the book nor am I familiar with the author. Personally, I find 'living in the now' to be helpful with anxiety – though I find it very very challenging. I obsess over the past and feelings and thoughts, too. 

However – and again I haven't read the book – from your post, it sounds like you're going a step further and approaching something akin to nihilism. In my experience, it's not a very helpful way to view reality. Viewing everything as not real or pointless is a fast route to depression in my experience. 

 

Hi Publius,

It absolutely is like nihilism. 

Maybe my interpretation is wrong. But I have always considered myself relatively intelligent and ept at critical thinking. 

At the core of Tolle is that everything is a social construct. Everything from everything we physically see (aside from nature) and the labels we apply to it. Also, our morals. We think someone who kills another person is 'bad', because that is the social construction we have come to accept. But who says that is a bad action? It has scared me, but isn't there some truth in it, surely? Tolle says this is the root of all suffering, especially if you view yourself negatively. You are not living up to social 'norms' and ideas, and therefore, you are suffering. Rather than realising that these 'norms' are constructs, therefore illusions, and not really there.

Even things such as 'love', is a construct. 

I honestly feel dead inside. I sort of believe what he is saying. It's all an illusion. 

Link to comment

I don't view social constructs as any less real because they are man-made (and I do believe morality is a social construct, that has benefits for evolutionary reasons if nothing else). 

But either way, I am not convinced this line of thinking is helpful. You can spend a lifetime trying to find out if it's true, and get nowhere. I used to obsess over trying to find certainty where there are only ambiguities – is such and such a bad thing to do? – and used to poll everybody I knew. I never really got answers, but I've started to realise such quests drain our energy. Energy that we could be spending living our lives. 

Hope some of this makes sense. 

Edited by Publius
Link to comment
Guest Paul92
11 minutes ago, Publius said:

I don't view social constructs as any less real because they are man-made (and I do believe morality is a social construct, that has benefits for evolutionary reasons if nothing else). 

But either way, I am not convinced this line of thinking is helpful. You can spend a lifetime trying to find out if it's true, and get nowhere. I used to obsess over trying to find certainty where there are only ambiguities – is such and such a bad thing to do? – and used to poll everybody I knew. I never really got answers, but I've started to realise such quests drain our energy. Energy that we could be spending living our lives. 

Hope some of this makes sense. 

It does, buddy. All I've done for 4/5 days now is think and question all this stuff and I am absolutely drained. I've never been as anxious for a start. 

I just wish I'd never seen it. It's all about enlightenment and awakening, apparently. Well, where I am now, I can't help but think that ignorance, for me, was absolute bliss. 

It's just hard to come to terms with. I always thought of myself as someone who is caring, who would do anything to stop anyone suffering. However Tolle says that you don't need to stop people suffering. People can do it themselves, by simply accepting the situation. Even to the extreme. People being caught up in conflict find themselves 'suffering'. But suffering is a constructed emotion. They choose whether to suffer. Which, when you think logically, you can kind of understand. 

I just don't know if I want to live as an emotionless bot. But a part of my mind agrees that I guess, no matter what, there is no need to suffer. It is a mental choice.

I appreciate this might sound ludicrous. But my head has been royally shafted by all this.

Thanks for your replies again. It's good to have someone to talk to.

Link to comment

As somebody who has (and sometimes still does) spent almost every waking hour dwelling on questions, but getting nowhere, I can totally understand. 

Existential and philosophical problems can be fun to think about, but I've found that it's best to keep a level of separation when it comes to these kinds of things. I read a text recently by Bertrand Russell on the nature of reality – is anything real, or is it illusory perceptions of some sort. It was fascinating, but I knew from past experience I had to maintain an academic interest. That is, find the idea intriguing, but decide to live life accepting social constructs and human abstractions. To do otherwise, in my personal experience, is inviting endless rumination and misery. These are of course just my experiences. 

Link to comment
Guest Paul92
27 minutes ago, Publius said:

As somebody who has (and sometimes still does) spent almost every waking hour dwelling on questions, but getting nowhere, I can totally understand. 

Existential and philosophical problems can be fun to think about, but I've found that it's best to keep a level of separation when it comes to these kinds of things. I read a text recently by Bertrand Russell on the nature of reality – is anything real, or is it illusory perceptions of some sort. It was fascinating, but I knew from past experience I had to maintain an academic interest. That is, find the idea intriguing, but decide to live life accepting social constructs and human abstractions. To do otherwise, in my personal experience, is inviting endless rumination and misery. These are of course just my experiences. 

 

You see, reading that, it makes absolute sense, and I think sign me up! I just feel like I've already gone a bit too far. Everything that I see I'm questioning now. Will I be able to snap out of this? Have you ever gotten that far? How did you get out of it... could this be an OCD thing?

I like the idea of social constructs. Civilization, morals and everything. Just right now, I'm struggling to see the point in it all. 

My Dad has read the book I'm talking about. He swears by it. It's stopped him ruminating and he talks about dissolving the ego and how basically everything is a social construct that we have created ourselves. Then he's spoken to me about how we don't need material possessions. Yet, when I visited him the other day, he was showing me a new watch he'd bought. He already owns many other watches. So obviously it's not gripped him in the same way, but he can chose the parts he likes to help him in bad times. Why can't I do the same?

Link to comment
Guest Paul92
45 minutes ago, Lost_in_a_Dark_Maze said:

It doesn't sound much like what I've heard of Buddhism.

Try telling a starving child blown to pieces by war that they are choosing to suffer and their suffering doesn't matter! (That comment was aimed at the author of your book, not at you.)

I don't think the book is helping you.

 

Absolutely! I can see that. But his response would be, accept the situation, they are choosing to suffer. Suffering is a thought, an emotion, which is man-made. Which, I have to admit, I sort of believed. If someone runs me over and I lose my legs, I have 2 choices. 1) Suffer 2) Accept and move on. Do I have a right to suffer, though?  

I don't think suffering is a construct though, is it? We are animals, that have evolved through millions of years. You don't chose to be anxious or suffer. Do you? These emotions are preprogrammed, a part of our limbic brain that we do not control, as a mechanism to keep us safe and to alert us that something is wrong? We need to be safe, in order to carry on our basic goal of survival and ultimately, procreate.

This stuff has realised screwed my head up and I'm questioning everything. I was so much happier in my life of ignorance and unconsciousness, as they would say.

I just wondered if anyone else on here had been through anything similar, in questioning everything...

 

Link to comment

Sorry, Paul. My reply wasn't very helpful.

I have had times when I question everything, and it is very scary. I think it was this obsession that led me to choose to study philosophy for A Level. I didn't get very far as I had to drop out due to illness, but I remember the first lecture when she said to us that it was fun to explore the questions, but that it wasn't healthy to live that way. Tell me about it, I thought!

It is easy to get drawn into such a way of thinking, especially when we have OCD.

Edited by Lost_in_a_Dark_Maze
Link to comment
3 hours ago, Paul92 said:

 

You see, reading that, it makes absolute sense, and I think sign me up! I just feel like I've already gone a bit too far. Everything that I see I'm questioning now. Will I be able to snap out of this? Have you ever gotten that far? How did you get out of it... could this be an OCD thing?

I like the idea of social constructs. Civilization, morals and everything. Just right now, I'm struggling to see the point in it all. 

My Dad has read the book I'm talking about. He swears by it. It's stopped him ruminating and he talks about dissolving the ego and how basically everything is a social construct that we have created ourselves. Then he's spoken to me about how we don't need material possessions. Yet, when I visited him the other day, he was showing me a new watch he'd bought. He already owns many other watches. So obviously it's not gripped him in the same way, but he can chose the parts he likes to help him in bad times. Why can't I do the same?

Could it be an OCD thing? Ruminating about the unanswerable and fretting over it is definitely very possibly OCD. 

Curiosity and questioning is okay, and with metaphysical matters it can be a lot of fun, too. But definitely keep it academic is my advice. I think avoiding is not a good strategy but engaging less and focussing on things that mean things to you in life would be better for you. 

Link to comment

I think philosophy can very easily become rumination fuel. I'm finally understanding after years of rumination what it means when therapists say that people with ocd have a probably with accepting uncertainty and having black and white thinking. The reality is that after thousands of years of studying us humans haven't been able to find answers to all our questions, so uncertainty is a fact of life.

I like the sentiment behind the serenity prayer 'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.'

I think with ocd we often try to take control and change/prevent/solve everything we are scared of - ie perform compulsions, so we only engage with the 'courage to change the thing I can' part of the prayer. The opposite extreme is to accept that we can't control anything in life so we should just accept that bad things happen and stop trying and stop suffering  - kind of the Eckhart Tolle way, so only engaging with the first part of the prayer - but I think this is a mistake and equally an ocd type black and white response. I think it is equally black and white thinking to say everything humans experience is a social construct - some of what we are is social constructed, but biology also exists. 

I think CBT aims to give us the 'wisdom to know the difference' between problems which need action and problems which need acceptance, then when we have identified which problems need acceptance we can use mindfulness (living in the now) to deal with them, but unless you are a buddhist monk constantly living in the now is a bad idea! 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...