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!
http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf