Is Eckhart Tolle a Seinfeld Fan?

If you read A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, the answer to this question seems clear. In a passage about how television induces a programmed unconsciousness, Eckhart hails the benefits of some offerings. Let's take a listen:

There are some programs that have been extremely helpful to many people; have changed their lives for the better, opened their heart, made them more conscious. Even some comedy shows, although they may be about nothing in particular, can be unintentionally spiritual by showing a caricature version of human folly and the ego. They teach us not to take anything too seriously, to approach life in a lighthearted way, and above all, they teach by making us laugh. Laughter is extraordinarily liberating as well as healing.

Seinfeld, the show famously about nothing? Eckhart says, "although they may be about nothing in particular"? Coincidence? "You better think again, Mojambo."

A Non-imist's Rebuttal to "5 Ways to Become an Optimist"

This article was originally published by Technorati on 18 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

You have your optimists; these are the-glass-is-half-full people. You have your pessimists; these are the-glass-is-half-empty people.

There should be a third category: "non-imists." These are the glass-is-as-it-is people.

A recent USNews.com article directs our attention to a study published in the journal, Psychological Science, extolling the health benefits of optimism--according to the journal, optimists have stronger immune systems--and then offers 5 ways to become one.

As a devout non-imist, I would like to attempt, in reverse order, a point-by-point rebuttal of these 5 ways. Here goes.

An Exercise for Experiencing the Joy of Being

You can sum up all the religious and spiritual teachings that have ever been by simply doing this. You can cut right to the heart of the matter.

Will you do it?

In A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, Eckhart Tolle recommends the following exercise:

Go to the hands directly. By this I mean become aware of the subtle feeling of aliveness inside them. It is there. You just have to go there with your attention to notice it. You may get a slight tingling sensation at first, then a feeling of energy or aliveness. If you hold your attention in your hands for a while, the sense of aliveness will intensify. . . . Then go to your feet, keep your attention there for a minute or so, and begin to feel your hands and feet at the same time. Then incorporate other parts of the body--legs, arms, abdomen, chest, and so on--into that feeling until you are aware of the inner body as a global sense of aliveness. (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, pp. 52-53; to see the entire excerpt, click here)

THIS IS JOY EXPERIENCED IN YOUR PHYSICAL BODY! This IS the joy of being!

Excerpt on Inner Body Awareness from A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

If you are not familiar with "inner body" awareness, close your eyes for a moment and find out if there is life inside your hands. Don't ask your mind. It will say, "I can't feel anything." Probably it will also say, "Give me something more interesting to think about." So instead of asking your mind, go to the hands directly. By this I mean become aware of the subtle feeling of aliveness inside them. It is there. You just have to go there with your attention to notice it. You may get a slight tingling sensation at first, then a feeling of energy or aliveness. If you hold your attention in your hands for a while, the sense of aliveness will intensify. Some people won't even have to close their eyes. They will be able to feel their "inner hands" at the same time as they read this. Then go to your feet, keep your attention there for a minute or so, and begin to feel your hands and feet at the same time. Then incorporate other parts of the body--legs, arms, abdomen, chest, and so on--into that feeling until you are aware of the inner body as a global sense of aliveness.

Father of Slain Marine a Modern-Day Job

This article was first published by Technorati on 15 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Albert Snyder, father of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder (pictured), a slain Marine whose 2006 funeral was picketed by members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, is a modern-day Job.

Like Snyder, the sons and daughters of the biblical Job were killed by a mighty wind. Like the biblical Job, Snyder has enjoyed the company of a set of "friends" who give him unwise counsel as to why travesty has befallen him.

In Snyder's case, these "friends" are a slightly deranged, thoroughly unconscious group of people who wish to advise him that his son's death came as the result of national tolerance of homosexuality. This message is not so much offensive as a shock to the collective faculty of logic, since the two are so utterly disconnected, especially while "Don't ask, don't tell" still holds sway.

Excerpt on Theology from Eckhart Tolle's Book, The Power of Now

When you say Being, are you talking about God? If you are, then why don't you say it?

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind the word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead."

Monetize Your Life: 6 Steps Toward Doing What you Love

The term "monetize" came to me in relation to the internet. A friend of mine involved in the creation of websites explained to me that internet entrepreneurs operate by coming up with ideas for websites, putting them out there and generating traffic on them. Only then do they look for ways to "monetize" them; that is, make money from them.

And thus the website reaches it's full, sustainable potential as a website in monetary terms. But what about people? How do they reach their full, sustainable potential as people?

Maybe there's a lesson here. Perhaps this is the way anybody trapped in a job that isn't their true calling can make a move to one that is--just start doing it! Figure out how to make money at it later.

The New Earth Economy - A Radical Approach to Money

I'm here to tell you about a little thing I like to call the New Earth Economy, or N.E.E. for short. The N.E.E. is named in honor of one of our favorite books here at Todd Wright Now, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61),by Eckhart Tolle. In that book, our good friend Eckhart expounds upon his vision for the evolution of us humans:

"'And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,' writes the biblical prophet. The foundation for a new earth is a new heaven--the awakened consciousness."

The N.E.E. is based on the principle expressed by Jesus: "Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be given to you. For with the same measure you measure it will be measured back to you." (WEB)

Now Jesus certainly never said, "Give, but don't sell." But the NEE is predicated on the idea that if you're going to be given so much as a result of giving, why bother to sell?

Moving Refrigerators with Marcus Aurelius and Eckhart Tolle

What is evil to thee does not subsist in the ruling principle of another; nor yet in any turning and mutation of thy corporeal covering. Where is it then? It is in that part of thee in which subsists the power of forming opinions about evils. Let this power then not form opinions, and all is well. And if that which is nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burnt, filled with matter and rottenness, nevertheless let the part which forms opinions about these things be quiet, that is, let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV No. 39

* * *

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 239–251

* * *

In Zen they say: "Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 121

* * *

Judge not, lest you be judged.

Jesus, The Holy Bible, Matthew 7: 1

* * * * *

Whenever one is called upon to move refrigerators for a friend (that isn't us in the picture), it is likely in that mode of awakened doing our good friend Eckhart Tolle calls "Acceptance." The other two are "Enjoyment" and "Enthusiasm" (see Monetize Your Life for a complete discussion.)

"Whatever you cannot enjoy doing," he writes in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61), "you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly."

The Pain-Body: What Is It?

The term, Pain-body was coined (as far as I know) by Eckhart Tolle in his first book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. He develops the idea much more fully in his second book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.

The pain-body is a complex of built up thought patterns and emotions that results from unprocessed or unacknowledged pain experienced in the past. (Tolle goes so far as to hypothesize that we can be born with a certain amount of pain, but we need not agree with this view for the concept to be of service to us.) It lies dormant for varying periods of time, depending on the person, and is triggered by certain stimuli.

The Pain-Body in the Workplace

If people could take a sick day from work for a pain-body attack, we would probably find much more malady in the general population than we currently realize.

Check out this training video script from the HR department of a future Fortune 500 company I uncovered (humor alert: this doesn't really exist):

Millionaire Gives Away Fortune, Keeps Next to Nothing

This article was originally published by Technorati on 11 February 2010. Well worth a second look. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder has decided to give away all of the $6.7 million fortune he amassed in the furniture business because he said it made him miserable.

"My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing," he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. "Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come."

Top Ten Signs You May Be Over-Identified With Your Team

The article that started it all . . .

This article was originally published by Technorati on 2 February 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

The AP has reported for years on a Minnesota farmer who has vowed he won't shave until the Vikings win the Super Bowl. 97-year-old Emmet Pearson's beard remains in place and 36-years long. He made the vow in 1974, the last time the Vikings made it to the big game.

While Mr. Pearson's stick-to-it-iveness is laudable--people these days don't keep vows like they used to--and funny, it points up the sort of identification with groups like sports teams that Eckhart Tolle in his seminal book on spirituality A New Earth says is one from the ego's playbook.

"One of the ways in which the ego attempts to escape the unsatisfactoriness of personal selfhood," Tolle writes, "is to enlarge and strengthen its sense of self by identifying with a group--a nation, political party, corporation, institution, sect, club, gang, football team."

Bingo! Isn't that Farmer Pearson in a nutshell? This list takes in a lot of us.

What sports teams accomplish or fail to accomplish really has nothing whatsoever to do with us. And yet we behave as if it does.

Here are ten signs you may be over-identifying with your team this Super Bowl:

In War of Words, Obama Essentially No Different

This article was originally published by Technorati on 4 April 2010.

He who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind, to paraphrase the Jewish prophet Hosea. What goes around comes around. Karma.

In a "puffy" interview airing today on CBS's Sunday Morning, President Obama decries what he calls the vitriolic tone in Washington. "I am concerned," he says while strolling to the White House basketball court to take on Clark Kellogg in a game of POTUS (a variant of HORSE) "about a political climate in which the other side is demonized."

Isn't this the same Barack Obama who as a U.S. Senator from Illinois commencing in 2004 stood by while his predecessor, George Bush, was mercilessly demonized by so many of Obama's own party?

Anna Paquin's Bisexuality Is Revealing

This article was originally published by Technorati on 2 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Anna Paquin, winner at age 11 of the Best Supporting Actress award at the 1994 Oscars, now 27 and staring in True Blood, revealed yesterday she's bisexual in a public service announcement for Cyndi Lauper's "Give a Damn" campaign against sexual-orientation discrimination.

Let's see, she's been in Hollywood since age 11? Perhaps more interesting news would have been that she's straight.

It defies credulity to suggest that such women are the object of discrimination. Based on an abundance of movies, sitcoms, men's magazines, women's magazines, teen magazine's, talk shows, websites, porn sites, and idle male conversation, civilizations from other galaxies have long since decided that such women rule our world.

Indeed, men on every planet from here to Andromeda are high-fiving Paquin's True Blood co-star and fiancee Stephen Moyer on what should shape up to be a very happy coupling.

Awakened Consciousness Not a Backseat Driver

Let's put it this way: the job of your consciousness--the consciousness that you are--is to sit back and enjoy the ride. Don't interfere, don't be a backseat driver. Just relax and watch the scenery.

Jiddu Krishnamurti put it a slightly different way, but he meant the same thing. In A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, Eckhart Tolle tells the story of Krishnamurti's revelation of his "secret." It was simple. He said, "I don't mind what happens."

Who is "I" in this statement? Krishnamurti's consciousness. Consciousness that does not mind what's going on is free to sit back relax--inner peace--without interfering with The Good that runs the universe, all that is, including us.

Conscious Backgammon

Our good friend Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose,tells us:"A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego when it happens without attempting to restore it." (p.215)

This spiritual practice I force upon myself almost everyday (as if driving in Naples isn't enough to diminish my ego).

I start off every writing day playing backgammon against my computer. Computers are generally good at what they do and most games I take a drubbing, and that's painful to what's left of my ego.

Eckhart also tells us that enlightened doing is not attached to outcomes, and I would like to be in a position to tell you that I see each game through to the end, win or lose, and that I concede graciously when a point of inevitability is reached. But generally, the truth is, I shut down the game and start up a new one and keep doing this until I finally win. Hey, what can I tell you? That's my writing process.

But here's the thing, I'm pretty sure the computer cheats. Let's look at the facts.

Put Being Before Doing in Job Search

A version of this article was originally published by Technorati on 30 March 2010.

According to Yahoo! hotjobs, nine occupations are still hiring, even in this recessionary period: Truck Mechanic, Physical Therapist, Special Ed. Teachers, Environmental Engineers, Healthcare, Nursing, Finance and Banking, Veterinary Techs, and Wind Energy Techs.

Investipedia.com's Bobbi Dempsey, the article's author, took her data from a wide variety of sources--including a couple of job search engines (Monster.com and Simply Hired), a nursing college, and an interview with Jeff Cohen, author of The Complete Idiots Guide to Recession-Proof Careers--to give people valuable leads in the search for their next job.

Now, juxtapose this bright, helpful information with a recent very gloomy forecast (also posted on Yahoo!, by the way) from Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI). Of the current employment picture, Achuthan says, "Forty percent of the unemployed are long-term unemployed. They've been unemployed for six months or longer."

These jobs, Achuthan says, are either "associated with the bubble that burst" or are in manufacturing. "So, those people are displaced. The recovery is happening. It’s very real, but the economy doesn’t want their skills for one reason or another."

According to Achuthan, they are permanently unemployable. He predicts a resultant elevated rate of unemployment for the foreseeable future. "[Unemployment] was down around four or five percent," he says. "Forget that! Forget it!"

Black Marriage Day A Celebration of Suffering

This article was originally published by Technorati on 26 March 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Black Marriage Day is the 28th of March. What to wear? What to wear? Though I'm neither black nor married (with no prospects even), I'm pretty excited about it.

Some 300 communities across the country will celebrate the joys of marriage with various events, such as vow renewal ceremonies, marriage workshops, black tie galas and the premier of two marriage-related movies, You Saved Me and Why Did I Get Married Too?.

See the trailers . . .

Tolle on Don't Ask Don't Tell

The New York Times, among other sources, is reporting that General Colin Powell has finally come out . . . in support of the Obama administrations proposal to end the 17-year ban on military service by openly gay men and women, that is; the policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Citing a change in societal circumstance, Powell has reversed his position from way back when as the sitting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to side with the present one, Admiral Mike Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

In times like these I always wonder what Oprah's favorite spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle might have to say on the subject. It seems clear that Tolle would be in favor of removing Don't Ask Don't Tell but his reasoning might surprise you. Indeed, his support may be a double-edged sword for the gay community.