Good, Evil and Eckhart Tolle

[Shen]

Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now
While I must admit I have only read portions of this book, I have been debating some of it with a few people recently. I was surprised to receive a Tolle quote in my email from C, yesterday, as this has come up several times.

I've always had the sense that Tolle misses the mark. It's as if he is trapped inside a narrow band of ideas that take him beyond where many are able to go, but also keep him from seeing the entirity of the ideas he is just touching on.

Tolle is fairly easy to read, which is probably one reason so many have found his books. Unlike many spiritual philosophers, he is able to say what he means in terms that make sense to most of us.

Sitting on the beach, this morning, a model of what I'm trying to say about Tolle and his writings came to me. This is what I wrote when I got home:

Imagine a globe. The poles are black and white (or good and evil, or God and the devil, or whatever you like). They are one dimensional points.

Now imagine a longitudinal line all the way around the globe. It passes through both poles. This is where Eckhart Tolle is. It is gray - darker near the black pole and lighter near the white pole. It has infinitely more possibilities than what exists on the poles, but it is still only a two-dimensional line.

Beyond this longitudinal line is the rest of the globe. All the colors and distinct flavors in every variation exist in the rest of the globe - tainted by black towards one side, and brightened by white towards the other - with every imaginable shade in between. The white pole is always there. The closer one is to it, the more divine guidance (or Spirit or “higher-self wisdom”) we feel, accept and include in our lives. Living in this world, on this plane, should include all of the globe. The gray line is necessary, but it is not everything.

Beyond this globe of reality is the unknowable universe.

The most most important part:

The blackness at one pole is NOTHING. It is the absence of anything.

The whiteness is ALL THINGS. It is eternity and all things infinite.

It isn’t that a devil or evil force is pulling you towards the blackness. Instead, it is a turning away that causes "evil". When we find ourselves on the dark side, it is because we have turned away from the light, ingoring it's brightness and sometimes moving so far from it that it becomes hard to even see it or find it.

I also believe that we can sometimmes be dragged towards that darker part of the world by the actions of others. There are those of us who have never seen the lighter side, who have never know of it's existance, or who deny it because so much of their existance has been on the dark side of this globe.

Being abused as a child definitely pulls us to that dark side before we even have a chance to know there is anything else. We doubt the divine guidance because those who were here to guide us have betrayed that trust and inhibited our ability to believe in goodness or light.

One could say this is the devil - the pull of evil - but I say no. It is still not a pull towards something. It is as if we were turned away from the pull towards the white pole before we were allowed to know of it's existance. Dwelling in this darkness is existing with nothing, and that accounts for the despair, the loneliness, the sense of disconnection.

At the moment this rings true to me. I would love to hear what others think.

[IleneW]

Hi Shen ----

An interesting thread. . . . . .

Tolle doesn't speak to me, so I'm probably not the best to reply.

In addition, though I'm not saying that there's no such thing as evil
I tend to not connect discussions of abuse with good/evil terminology.
In my conceptual framework, function and dysfunction are+ contingent on
health or injury.

It's not that I won't wax philosophical. My first degree was in philosphy.
But these days I focus on the bio-psychology of behavioral patterns.

That's my perspective.

[workinprogress]

the dark & the light i can relate to a bit. in the gospel of john it says...."the light shines in the darkness, & the darkness comprehends it not". jn 1:5
i do believe that in the absence of light, that that is where the darkness comes from.
i also believe that when you turn on the light, it 'overcomes' the darkness.
(where does the darkness go as soon as you turn on the light in a pitch black room ?)

the 'trust' issue is also a very very big deal for me. it seems that in order to trust, it requires a certain amount of 'faith'. but when that faith has been violated in the past, it seems as if my heart will not allow myself to trust. & its as a closed door, or worse yet, unable to feel anything at all.

[IleneW]

Hi workinprogress ----

You wrote:

when that faith has been violated in the past, it seems as if my heart will not allow myself to trust. & its as a closed door


I totally agree! In my opinion, that's your healthy life force
protecting you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As we proceed through life, and experience different things along the way,
if we ignore what's happened and our feelings around it, we are not respecting
our life as it's playing out. Aren't we meant to learn as we live, and to grow,
as we learn???

When someone has violated something we possess, whether it's our body, our
spirit, our trust or our fatih ----- to proceed into the future with disregard for
that violation ----- is to be disrespectful to ourself.

Thank you for that observation.

[CreativeWoman]

Hi workinprogress ----

You wrote:

when that faith has been violated in the past, it seems as if my heart will not allow myself to trust. & its as a closed door


I totally agree! In my opinion, that's your healthy life force
protecting you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As we proceed through life, and experience different things along the way,
if we ignore what's happened and our feelings around it, we are not respecting
our life as it's playing out. Aren't we meant to learn as we live, and to grow,
as we learn???

When someone has violated something we possess, whether it's our body, our
spirit, our trust or our fatih ----- to proceed into the future with disregard for
that violation ----- is to be disrespectful to ourself.

Thank you for that observation.

So, in other words, it's healthy to not trust again? That person who violated us, or not trust anyone else again either? Then, further down the path of healing/recovery, re-learning to trust is possible and healthy? I'm not sure where I am, as far as trust goes.

I"ll read the original post and comment on that when I do, btw.

[IleneW]

CW asked ----

So, in other words, it's healthy to not trust again? That person who violated us, or not trust anyone else again either? Then, further down the path of healing/recovery, re-learning to trust is possible and healthy?


Question [1]: It's healthy to not trust again?

Answer [2]: No. Not trusting at all is as ineffective and unhealthy
as trusting anyone and everyone.

Question [2]: it's healthy to not trust that person who violated us, again?

Answer [2]: If someone has violated us in the past, it is healthy to incorporate what we've learned about this person and adjust our interaction with them to reflect the fact that they've been violative in the past. If we don't incorporate what we've experienced about interacting with this person, and don't adjust our trust-meter to reflect what's happened with this person in the past ----- it's highly probable that if this person continues true to his or her previous pattern, they will violate us again in the future.

Question [3]: Then, further down the path of healing/recovery, re-learning to trust is possible and
healthy?

Answer [3]: I believe that re-learning appropriate trust is not only possible, but happens along the path of healing and recovery ---- not necessary all that far away in some distant "recovered" future. As we proceed forward, incorporating experience and making choices with increasing success, our confidence in our ability to be more clear about people grows. As it grows, we learn the most important thing about trust, of all. We learn that we can trust ourself, and actually do best ---- when we trust OURSELF.

[CreativeWoman]

Oh, ok, I see--thank you for clarifying my misunderstanding, Ilene.

I don't trust my abuser, never will again. THAT'S healthy.

Slowly I do trust others, but I know there are a lot of creeps out there, so I trust reluctantly and VERY slowly. I don't date yet, and don't see that in the forseable future, given all the issues within my family of 3 right now...I'm overwhelmed with mothering, at this point!!!

Perhaps having more to do with my own hurts and difficulties and feeling ineffective (though no one else could do my job better, I believe) as the mother of my son, I am currently struggling with self-esteem issues that I never felt the depths of before...this kind of thing, in this way at least, is new to me. Sometimes I doubt my ability to keep up with all of it and handle it all, and that is taking quite a toll on my feelings about myself in general. I think I trust myself in some ways, but trusting myself relating to other relationships (romantic?) is so non-existent at this point--not a factor right now, really.

I know you say healing is not linear...I'm traversing a curving path, lol!

ps-I hope I've not strayed too far from the original purpose of this thread--I will read and respond to the original, later.

[Shen]

It's not a problem CW. I'm glad to read all the conversation. I do hope you will respond to the original if you have time.
All of this talk of trust is hitting home with me right now - I have a trust issue in my own life I'm trying to resolve.

[tryingtorecover]

I like your idea Shen about the globe as regards Tolle’s thinking, personally I have not read the book but I did see a Video promoting it which I found very interesting. The issue that I have with what he says is when he talks about wants and needs.

In the Video Tolle basically argues that in the end the pursuit of what we want or what we need is futile and in a metaphysical sense he is probably right, when I go to the grave what I wanted or needed or what I may have acquired in my life will be of no consequence.

However in the world we live in we clearly have needs the need to breath oxygen and the need to drink water are fundamental we ‘need’ them to survive on top of this other needs are equally important for our mental hope. And when it comes to want again we need to pay attention to what we want because if we have no idea of what we want in life then we will never feel fulfilled in whatever we do and we will be susceptible to the whims of others some of whom may abuse us.

This I think Shen is where your globe comes in, if we look at the top of the globe for a moment we see a white dot the pureness of being in the moment if you like where want and need are irrelevant as we move out towards the colors wants and needs start to creep in as does the whole of human experience, what makes life interesting you could say. What Tolle is describing in effect is increasing intensity of pure want and need down the pole as the pole moves from white (absence of need or want) to black (being completely driven by needs and wants).

The way I look at ‘being in the moment’ as Tolle describes it (the white dot in the globe analogy) is maybe a place we can aspire to go to in meditation, in the state of pure love for ourselves and others. In everyday life however needs and wants are a normal part of existence we should endeavor to meet our needs and determine what we want and head in that direction.

The problem I think arises when our fulfilling our needs and acquiring what we want becomes obsessive, that we cannot wait that we have to have it now, that we become afraid of losing what we have. In my opinion co-dependence arises from obsessing about not getting our needs met it is all about that worry of losing what we have, abandonment is a key issue here. Abusive behavior arises from people obsessively perusing what they want regardless of how it might conflict with the needs and wants of others (crossing boundaries).

Hopefully you will be able to follow my mental leap here but I think that the issue of trust mirrors what I have said about needs and wants. In this case the white dot, calm center if you like is complete trust of self and another and moving away from this point we have an increasing lack of trust of others and ourselves. Again in the real world trust will often be related to contexts that we are in and Tolles grey pole this time represents just an increasing general lack of trust.

In the context of a relationship let us say an intimate relationship we must start from a position of willingness to trust but preparedness for our trust to be misplaced. The key thing here is to trust ourselves and trust our instinct about others. Then over time by both gradually opening up to each other and both parties trusting their own feelings about each other the two people eventually spiral in towards the white dot which represents complete trust.

In my own case if I had always trusted my instincts, myself, I would never have been abused because I always had apprehension right from the start. My error was in overlooking my fears as a result of the obsessive need I felt to be in a relationship in order to give my life meaning, typical compliant co-dependent behavior.

[Shen]

Wow,

Thank you for your really thoughtful and intriguing reply to this post. I had pretty much given up on it, but this is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for.

It's a lot to think about. I want to process your input and then I will post a real reply.

~S