Does anyone on here read Eckhart Tolle?

[73543_1494798777]

Going deeper and deeper I find that many things he writes about are meant literally.

 

The main themes he writes about:

 

1.) You are not your mind - You are not the voice in your head, but the awareness of that voice

-Most people on here are probably quite aware of this. But it radically changed my world. By just "watching" your thoughts it seems to cause Qi to arise in your head. It gives you space around the thoughts and they decrease in their ability to affect you.

 

2.) The "Painbody" is an energetic entity which lives inside you and occasionally rises up and becomes you

-This is crazy. Contracted life energy bundles together and becomes semi-autonomous through compulsive thinking. It exists in a personal and collective form. All personal "painbodies" if you trace them back lead to a collective form.. which is one SCARY MOFO! Ive experienced it with a bunch of people at work and we were all scared shitless. Such a deep deep feeling of dread and pain. Tolle says its ultimately an illusion. Ive seen that it is dissolvable.

 

3.) The "Now" is all that there is - time is an illusion

-Ive had glimpses. But it is difficult to reside in this state of realization. It is easy to get drawn into reactive mind patterns which block this.

 

 

Not trying to push this guy. But it helped me. The whole message is basically: Say YES to the present moment, REGARDLESS of what it contains. Anytime you say No, youve f#$*ed up and psychically polluted the planet a bit more. Always say yes to the pain. Incredible what that does.

[Warrior Body Buddha Mind]

Read and listened to his information, nothing new to buddhist and daoist thoughts as well christian information on love etc.

 

But he does bring it to light for some that have lost the path....other than that I cant stand his voice as it just makes me want to turn it off.

 

Sifu Garry

[Birch]

Read it. Bit too New Agey for me.

Also can't stand his voice. But good if he's getting people to zap themselves.

I guess I'm not sure about the terminology he uses. Sounds like he had some kind of awakening but I wonder when that awakening leads to book-writing and appearing on Oprah:-)

 

I guess he's there with Chopra and co. IMO they're the saccharine of spiritual thought and practice:-)

[Cameron]

I saw him in person a few years ago in LA.

 

Nice teacher. For that style of teaching I think Adyashanti is the best. Anyway I would reccommend checking him out also if you like Tolle's stuff.

 

Personally, I find Tolle boring but can see how he would be a great teacher for people.

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Spiritual exercise for -K- and Sifu Garry:

 

Listen to Tolle tapes until his voice no longer bothers you and you will be enlightened*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*not really, but you will have accomplished some degree of something, I'm not sure what, though.

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

'Tolle' is word-play and escapist fantasy.. an adventure in manipulating people's imaginations..

 

The contract you signed in the 'past' is due in x number of equal payments into the future.. 'Time' is very real, and you only have a limited amount of it in the physical existence, so experience Life fully, unconditionally and with uninhibited gusto.. not, pretending you're enlightened or that your imagination is a suitable substitute for the magnificence of the physical experience..

 

Be well..

Edited November 29, 2011 by TzuJanLi

[Birch]

Spiritual exercise for -K- and Sifu Garry:

 

Listen to Tolle tapes until his voice no longer bothers you and you will be enlightened*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*not really, but you will have accomplished some degree of something, I'm not sure what, though.

 

Hmm, no :-)

Edited November 30, 2011 by -K-

[Aetherous]

Stopping thought and entering "the now" is a good exercise. He didn't come up with it, but he made it quite popular.

 

Now if the Oprah watchers only followed his advice and practiced, our Earth could finally enter the 5th dimension.

[Tsunami_MAPUA]

Yes. It's like a drug trip without the withdrawal symptoms.

 

However, I moved on to Taoist writers like Bruce Frantzis. At least in Tolle's books, he alludes to practices that could help, but it's not a full exposition of those practices. He does give though a nice picture of being in the now.

 

The practices that can help are either in Taoist, Buddhist, or other traditions depending on your taste. I'm going for the Taoist route.

[Seeker of Wisdom]

I read The Power of Now a while back. OK, but a bit light. Definitely not a complete path. Many important ideas and methods of cultivation are lacking.

 

Resting in the present is all well and good, but really that's just resting in the calm of the psyche. You won't break through to Tao that way. The exception could be someone who has achieved shamatha, and so is resting in the calm of the substrate consciousness, and continues probing in on present moment experience to the point of detaching from the substrate consciousness.

 

Going further, I do not agree that we are awareness. 'I am awareness' implies that I don't exist when I sleep, so who wakes up? Labelling any aspect of a person as 'I' doesn't make sense. I am composed of interacting processes, none of them 'I' 'me' or 'mine'. Identity is just a concept applied to a bunch of processes for practical reasons, it's something to be seen through in cultivation.

 

I think there's great value in Tolle's teaching. It's better than a lot of the fluff out there, but still in need of a good polish to be really useful.

 

I get the feeling that Tolle had some experience - maybe a facsimile of the jhana of infinite consciousness, maybe a satori, IDK - and mistook it for enlightenment.

[C T]

Tolle's writings cater well to the masses who are looking to re-ignite a certain feel-goodiness which, in most people, comes and goes, but also, where the hope is strong that this factor could, perhaps thru some formulae, become an increasingly stabilizing/mesmerizing feature in order to lift themselves out of the grinds of daily routines.

 

Judging from how popular his writings and talks are, i would say there are heaps of directionless people looking to cling onto any new director to lend direction to their life-script.

Edited September 15, 2013 by C T

[thelerner]

'Tolle' is word-play and escapist fantasy.. an adventure in manipulating people's imaginations..

 

The contract you signed in the 'past' is due in x number of equal payments into the future.. 'Time' is very real, and you only have a limited amount of it in the physical existence, so experience Life fully, unconditionally and with uninhibited gusto.. not, pretending you're enlightened or that your imagination is a suitable substitute for the magnificence of the physical experience..

 

Don't know if I fully agree with this, I find listening to a Tolle very mellowing, but I'm glad it was said.

 

course I find word-play and escapist fantasy relaxing too.

Edited September 16, 2013 by thelerner

[hydrogen]

Interesting. I'm turned off by his voice too.

 

Though he gives me hope too. I still can be a popular speaker dispite of my crappy accent.

[Tibetan_Ice]

I Love Eckart Tolle.

I have most of his books, DVD's, CD's and podcasts.

I love his sense of humor, his clarity, wisdom and calm.

 

I must admit, Eckart does not have a regimented practice routine and it was hard to find something to practice, but his book "Practicing the Power of Now" has very powerful practices which I think he 'borrowed' from ... Buddhism..

 

This next practice is one which I practiced for an hour a day for two months a few years ago. Towards the end I had to stop because I would go to bed at night and although my body went to sleep, my awareness remained alert throughout the night. I got tired of watching myself sleep, listening to myself snore, and watching the cloud of the mind have dreams. I had become a 'point of view', separate from the world of forms.. This practice even brought on huge kundalini eruptions by practicing samadhi on the feeling of the inner body.. I would compare it to Goenka's practices as described in "The Discourse Summaries"..

 

 

CONNECTING WITH THE INNER BODY

 

Please try it now. You may find it helpful to close your eyes for this practice. Later on, when “being in the body” has become natural and easy, this will no longer be necessary.

 

DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION INTO THE BODY.

Feel it from within. Is it alive? Is there life in your hands, arms, legs, and feet — in your abdomen, your chest?

 

Can you feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body and gives vibrant life to every organ and every cell? Can you feel it simultaneously in all parts of the body as a single field of energy?

 

Keep focusing on the feeling of your inner body for a few moments. Do not start to think about it. Feel it.

 

The more attention you give it, the clearer and stronger this feeling will become. It will feel as if every cell is becoming more alive, and if you have a strong visual sense, you may get an image of your body becoming luminous. Although such an image can help you temporarily, pay more attention to the feeling than to any image that may arise. An image, no matter how beautiful or powerful, is already defined in form, so there is less scope for penetrating more deeply.

 

GOING DEEPLY INTO THE BODY

 

To go even more deeply into the body, try the following meditation. Ten to fifteen minutes of clock time should be sufficient.

MAKE SURE FIRST THAT THERE ARE NO EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS such as telephones or people who are likely to interrupt you. Sit on a chair, but don't lean back. Keep the spine erect. Doing so will help you to stay alert. Alternatively, choose your own favorite position for meditation.

 

Make sure the body is relaxed. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Feel yourself breathing into the lower abdomen, as it were. Observe how it expands and contracts slightly with each in and out breath.

 

Then become aware of the entire inner energy field of the body. Don't think about it — feel it. By doing this, you reclaim consciousness from the mind. If you find it helpful, use the “light” visualization I just described.

 

When you can feel the inner body clearly as a single field of energy, let go, if possible, of any visual image and focus exclusively on the feeling. If you can, also drop any mental image you may still have of the physical body. All that is left then is an all-encompassing sense of presence or “beingness,” and the inner body is felt to be without a boundary.

 

Then take your attention even more deeply into that feeling. Become one with it. Merge with the energy field, so that there is no longer a perceived duality of the observer and the observed, of you and your body. The distinction between inner and outer also dissolves now, so there is no inner body anymore. By going deeply into the body, you have transcended the body.

 

Stay in this realm of pure Being for as long as feels comfortable; then become aware again of the physical body, your breathing and physical senses, and open your eyes. Look at your surroundings for a few minutes in a meditative way — that is, without labeling them mentally — and continue to feel the inner body as you do so.

 

Having access to that formless realm is truly liberating. It frees you from bondage to form and identification with form. We may call it the Unmanifested, the invisible Source of all things, the Being within all beings. It is a realm of deep stillness and peace, but also of joy and intense aliveness. Whenever you are present, you become “transparent” to some extent to the light, the pure consciousness that emanates from this Source. You also realize that the light is not separate from who you are but constitutes your very essence.

 

When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realizes its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested.

 

Then, when your consciousness comes back to the manifested world, you reassume the form identity that you temporarily relinquished. You have a name, a past, a life situation, a future. But in one essential respect, you are not the same person you were before: You will have glimpsed a reality within yourself that is not “of this world,” although it isn't separate from it, just as it isn't separate from you.

 

Tolle, Eckhart (2009-03-25). Practicing the Power of Now (Kindle Locations 483-519). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

 

 

The second practice that Eckhart mentions is also very powerful practice, and it is similar to what the Dzogchen practitioners refer to as 'fresh awareness'. It is the awareness that occurs when you first see an object, before the conceptual mind has time to grasp it, before the conceptual mind applies its labels.. This type of awareness is clean, clear, crisp and pure.

 

The practice consists of moving your line of sight every split second or so so that you are looking at a different scene every split second. The mind has no time to label or grasp. Once I did this practice as I walked in the woods, shifting focus every 1/2 second. Well, about 20 minutes after stopping the practice, I suddenly found myself looking at the outer world like it was a dream. My consciousness had receeded into an area about 5 feet behind the body and it felt like I was sleep walking or something..

 

Personally, I found his talks about the pain body a bit of a chore as I prefer practices, not self-psychology, but I still rate Eckart Tolle as someone worth listening to.

 

I am grateful that Eckhart took the time to share his knowledge with the rest of the world.

 

TI

Edited September 17, 2013 by Tibetan_Ice

[daojones]

I read the power of now and enjoyed it. Well, to be truthful I read about half of it in short doses, as I got kind of bored reading large chunks at a time. Continuing with the theme of truthfulness, I actually liked it a lot. I only read it because I was bored and that was the book that was around, but I found a lot of what he said to be helpful to me. I found a lot of the observations he wrote about rang true for myself and helped me to improve my overall happiness.

That being said, before reading it I had lumped him in with the saccharine spiritual fancies of the masses. Which, may or may not be true - I've really only read half of his most famous book, so I can't judge.

 

In conclusion, I really liked about half of the Power of Now - which is all I have read thus far. When I feel the need for a dose of the now and can't meditate I will go back. Reading this book is a great reminder for me of how to be. And again, I thought he wrote accurately about the goings on of the mind of modern human beings.

Edited September 17, 2013 by daojones

[Infinity]

I read the 'Power Of Now" thought it was mostly very very good. Very well written, he obviously has a clear perspective or could not express things so clearly. After I read it I swore I would try and read it once a year to remind me of it's clear no nonsense logic, a year is not up yet.

 

His basic technique is to be present and feel ourselves and thus be ourselves and go beyond the mind. And at the end of the day there are no roads that lead to here, there is only being here. I agree with the method.

 

This could easily be applied to Zhan Zhuang. Breath feel, let go and be...

Edited September 30, 2013 by NowHere ∞

[thelerner]

Zencast is long running worthwhile podcast to listen to. Zencast 48 is Surrender to the Now, it features an Eckhart Tolle lecture accompanied with biaural sounds in the background. Free, relaxing and trippy or very annoying depending on your mood.

 

Zencast has some excellent series on Dhammapda, going chapter by chapter, as well a 7 week Mindfulness meditation course Zencast 147-152, Intro to Meditation Zencast 249 -254 etc.,

Edited September 30, 2013 by thelerner