Eckhart Tolle and Ego Part II: Extracts from "New Earth"

I don't usually go in for self-help books and those that could be categorized as "New Age". However, Eckart Tolle has offered some simple insights into the nature of the human condition that I'd like to share. 

Yes, he has been commercially successful and has been lauded by those I'd want to run a mile from on the spiritual stakes. And yes, you may think that this is well and truly the stuff of New Age distraction; putting one's self to sleep with "word salad" and cliches. But this would be far too harsh and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Granted, there are some problems with Eckhart Tolle's teachings. For instance, he often presents the thinking mind as the overall problem rather than the aspect of circular, useless thinking without awareness. He doesn't state the difference nearly enough so that the impression is that thinking per se is to be avoided and that you just have to "feel" and cultivate awareness from Joy, acceptance and enthusiasm. In the end this represents a vast simplification that amounts to the sin of omission.

He also places everything on the idea of the collective ego as the source of all ills. Well, maybe that's true but again, this amounts to a rather dangerous simplification. "The devil is in the details" after all. For example, I do think it is  essential to have a solid grounding in psychological principles regarding oneself, the family and society with special attention to psychopathology as it manifests in the world today. Otherwise, quite simply, your awareness can be led down pathways of illusion, deception and falsity without you ever knowing it. You  can't just suddenly leave a wholly subjective reality that we have been conditioned to accept just like that. It takes time and a lot of cold examination of the ego and it's wiley ways. As such Tolle vastly overstates the ease of leaving behind ego control and what Castaneda called: The "Predator's Mind". All these principles of ego awareness, cultivating happiness, learning how to release the past and know the "Power of now" are not much good if you are confronted with a psychopath or sub-categories of psychopathology. It has to be a parallel practice otherwise, putting it bluntly: you are simply lunch. 

Nevertheless, Eckhart Tolle's Book: New Earth is a valuable and rich contribution to attaining a more balanced and authentic communion with reality in our lives. It's especially good for those who have been brought "down to earth" somewhat and need to start simply and carefully and not jump straight into high esoteric principles. It's an excellent primer in that regard for those starting out or just emerging from years of dysfunction. Tolle's insights on the ego are especially useful in this context. It is largely on that subject that I'd like to include some extracts for you. I hope it proves useful. (These posts will be in several parts).

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"Ego takes everything personally.... Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts. Furthermore, it cannot tell the difference between an event and its reaction to that event. Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only through awareness - not through [ego-based] thinking - can you differentiate between fact and opinion. Only through awareness are you able to see: There is the situation and here is the anger I feel about it, and then realise there are other ways of approaching the situation, other ways of seeing and dealing with it. Only through awareness can you see the totality of the situation or person instead of adopting one limited perspective." [...]

"...the human ego in its collective aspect as 'us' against 'them' is even more insane than the 'me', the individual ego, although the mechanism is the same. By far the greater violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego. One can go as far as to say that on this planet 'normal' equals insane. What is it that lies at the root of this insanity? Complete identification with thought and emotion, tat is to say, ego." [...]

"Recognise the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, an insanity of thr human mind. When you recognise it for what it is, you no longer misperceive it as someone's identity. Once you see the ego for what it is, it becomes much easier to remain nonreactive towards it. You don't take it personally anymore." [...]

"What is commonly called 'falling in love' is in most cases an intensification of ego wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person or rather the image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever." [...]

"What does it mean to be confused? ....Is it possible to let go of the belief that you need to know who you are? In other words, can you cease looking to conceptual definitions to give you a sense of self? Can you cease looking to thought for an identity? When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly, it is gone. When you fuilly accept that you don't know; you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself."

If you are awake enough and aware enough, to be able to observe how you interact with other people you may detect subtle changes in your speech, attitude, and behavior depending on the person you are interacting with. ....Why is that? You are playing roles. You are not yourself, neither with the chairman nor with the janitor or the child. ....A range of conditioned patterns of behavior come into effect between two human beings that determine the nature of the interaction. Instead of human beings, conceptual mental images are interacting with each other. The more identified people are with their respective roles, the more inauthentic the relationships become. [...]

"Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego. - but not until you suffer consciously. [...] Suffering or negativity is often misperceived by the ego as pleasure beacuse up to a point the ego strengthens itself through it."

"In Zen they say: 'Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.' What does that mean? Let go of identification with your mind. Who you are beyond the mind then emerges by itself."

"...We need to differentiate between positive emotions that are ego-generated and deeper emotions that emanate from your natural state of connectedness with Being. Positive emotions generated by the ego already contain within themselves their opposite into which they can quickly turn. Here are some examples: What the ego calls love is possessiveness and addicted clinging tta can turn into hate within a second. Anticipation about an upcoming event, which is the ego's overevaluation of future, easily turn into its opposite - let down or disappointment - when the event is over or doesn't fulfil the ego's expectations. Praise and recognition make you feel alive and happy one day; being criticised or ignored make you dejected and unhappy the next. The pleasure of a wild party turns into bleakness and a hangover the next morning. There is not good without bad, no high without low.

Ego-generated emotions are derived from the mind's identification with external factors which are, of course, all unstable and liable to change at any moment. The deeper emotions are not really emotions at all but states of Being. Emotions exist within the realm of opposites. States of Being can be obscured but they have no opposite. They emanate from within you as the love, joy and peace that are aspects of your true nature.

Pain-Body

The pain-body is a semi-autonomous energy-form that lives within most human beings, an entity made up of emotion. It has its own primitive intelligence, not unlike a cunning animal, and its intelligence is directed primarily at survival. Like all life-forms it periodically needs to feed - to take in new energy - and the food it requires to replenish itself consists of energy that is compatible with its own, which is to say, energy that vibrates at a similar frequency. Any emotionally painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body. That's why it thrives on negative thinking as well as drama in relationships. The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness.

It may be shocking when you realise for the first time that there is something within you that periodically seeks emotional negativity, seeks unhappiness. You need even more awareness to see it in yourself than to recognise it in another person. Once the unhappiness has taken you over, not only do you not want an end to it, but you want ot make others just as miserable as you are in order to feed on their negative emotional reactions.

In most people the pain-body has a dormant and an active stage. When it is dormant, you easily forget that you carry a heavy dark cloud or a dormant volcanoe inside you, depending on the energy field of your particular pain-body. How long it remains dormant varies from person to person: a few eeks is the most common, but it can be a few days or months. In rare cases the pain-body can lie in hibernation for years before it gets triggered by some event.

pp. 58 - 144