I believe that today, more than ever, a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.
Henry Rollins
8/17/2009
7/22/2009
Mutiny of the Soul.
Mutiny of the soul -by Charles Eisenstein.
Depression, anxiety, and fatigue are an essential part of a process of metamorphosis that is unfolding on the planet today, and highly significant for the light they shed on the transition from an old world to a new.
When a growing fatigue or depression becomes serious, and we get a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or hypothyroid or low serotonin, we typically feel relief and alarm. Alarm: something is wrong with me. Relief: at least I know I'm not imagining things; now that I have a diagnosis, I can be cured, and life can go back to normal. But of course, a cure for these conditions is elusive.
The notion of a cure starts with the question, "What has gone wrong?" But there is another, radically different way of seeing fatigue and depression that starts by asking, "What is the body, in its perfect wisdom, responding to?" When would it be the wisest choice for someone to be unable to summon the energy to fully participate in life?
The answer is staring us in the face. When our soul-body is saying No to life, through fatigue or depression, the first thing to ask is, "Is life as I am living it the right life for me right now?" When the soul-body is saying No to participation in the world, the first thing to ask is, "Does the world as it is presented me merit my full participation?"
What if there is something so fundamentally wrong with the world, the lives, and the way of being offered us, that withdrawal is the only sane response? Withdrawal, followed by a reentry into a world, a life, and a way of being wholly different from the one left behind?
The unspoken goal of modern life seems to be to live as long and as comfortably as possible, to minimize risk and to maximize security. We see this priority in the educational system, which tries to train us to be "competitive" so that we can "make a living". We see it in the medical system, where the goal of prolonging life trumps any consideration of whether, sometimes, the time has come to die. We see it in our economic system, which assumes that all people are motivated by "rational self-interest", defined in terms of money, associated with security and survival. (And have you ever thought about the phrase "the cost of living"?) We are supposed to be practical, not idealistic; we are supposed to put work before play. Ask someone why she stays in a job she hates, and as often as not the answer is, "For the health insurance." In other words, we stay in jobs that leave us feeling dead in order to gain the assurance of staying alive. When we choose health insurance over passion, we are choosing survival over life.
On a deep level, which I call the soul level, we want none of that. We recognize that we are here on earth to enact a sacred purpose, and that most of the jobs on offer are beneath our dignity as human beings. But we might be too afraid to leave our jobs, our planned-out lives, our health insurance, or whatever other security and comfort we have received in exchange for our divine gifts. Deep down, we recognize this security and comfort as slaves' wages, and we yearn to be free.
So, the soul rebels. Afraid to make the conscious choice to step away from a slave's life, we make the choice unconsciously instead. We can no longer muster the energy to go through the motions. We enact this withdrawal from life through a variety of means. We might summon the Epstein-Barr virus into our bodies, or mononucleosis, or some other vector of chronic fatigue. We might shut down our thyroid or adrenal glands. We might shut down our production of serotonin in the brain. Other people take a different route, incinerating the excess life energy in the fires of addiction. Either way, we are in some way refusing to participate. We are shying away from ignoble complicity in a world gone wrong. We are refusing to contribute our divine gifts to the aggrandizement of that world.
That is why the conventional approach of fixing the problem so that we can return to normal life will not work. It might work temporarily, but the body will find other ways to resist. Raise serotonin levels with SSRIs, and the brain will prune some receptor sites, thinking in its wisdom, "Hey, I'm not supposed to feel good about the life I am living right now." In the end, there is always suicide, a common endpoint of the pharmaceutical regimes that seek to make us happy with something inimical to our very purpose and being. You can only force yourself to abide in wrongness so long. When the soul's rebellion is suppressed too long, it can explode outward in bloody revolution. Significantly, all of the school shootings in the last decade have involved people on anti-depression medication. All of them! For a jaw-dropping glimpse of the results of the pharmaceutical regime of control, scroll down this compilation of suicide/homicide cases involving SSRIs. I am not using "jaw-dropping" as a figure of speech. My jaw literally dropped open.
Back in the 1970s, dissidents in the Soviet Union were often hospitalized in mental institutions and given drugs similar to the ones used to treat depression today. The reasoning was that you had to be insane to be unhappy in the Socialist Workers' Utopia. When the people treating depression receive status and prestige from the very system that their patients are unhappy with, they are unlikely to affirm the basic validity of the patient's withdrawal from life. "The system has to be sound -- after all, it validates my professional status -- therefore the problem must be with you."
Unfortunately, "holistic" approaches are no different, as long as they deny the wisdom of the body's rebellion. When they do seem to work, usually that is because they coincide with some other shift. When someone goes out and gets help, or makes a radical switch of modalities, it works as a ritual communication to the unconscious mind of a genuine life change. Rituals have the power to make conscious decisions real to the unconscious. They can be part of taking back one's power.
I have met countless people of great compassion and sensitivity, people who would describe themselves as "conscious" or "spiritual", who have battled with CFS, depression, thyroid deficiency, and so on. These are people who have come to a transition point in their lives where they become physically incapable of living the old life in the old world. That is because, in fact, the world presented to us as normal and acceptable is anything but. It is a monstrosity. Ours is a planet in pain. If you need me to convince you of that, if you are unaware of the destruction of forests, oceans, wetlands, cultures, soil, health, beauty, dignity, and spirit that underlies the System we live in, then I have nothing to say to you. I only am speaking to you if you do believe that there is something deeply wrong with the way we are living on this planet.
A related syndrome comprises various "attention deficit" and anxiety "disorders" (forgive me, I cannot write down these words without the ironic quotation marks) which reflect an unconscious knowledge that something is wrong around here. Anxiety, like all emotions, has a proper function. Suppose you left a pot on the stove and you know you forgot something, you just can't remember what. You cannot rest at ease. Something is bothering you, something is wrong. Subliminally you smell smoke. You obsess: did I leave the water running? Did I forget to pay the mortgage? The anxiety keeps you awake and alert; it doesn't let you rest; it keeps your mind churning, worrying. This is good. This is what saves your life. Eventually you realize -- the house is on fire! -- and anxiety turns into panic, and action.
So if you suffer from anxiety, maybe you don't have a "disorder" at all -- maybe the house is on fire. Anxiety is simply the emotion corresponding to "Something is dangerously wrong and I don't know what it is." That is only a disorder if there is in fact nothing dangerously wrong. "Nothing is wrong, just you" is the message that any therapy gives when it tries to fix you. I disagree with that message. The problem is not with you. You have very good reason to be anxious. Anxiety keeps part of your attention away from your tasks of polishing the silverware as the house burns down, of playing the violin as the Titanic sinks. Unfortunately, the wrongness you are tapping into might be beyond the cognizance of the psychiatrists who treat you, who then conclude that the problem must be your brain.
Similarly, Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, and my favorite, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) are only disorders if we believe that the things presented for our attention are worth paying attention to. We cannot admit, without calling into question the whole edifice of our school system, that it may be completely healthy for a ten-year-old boy to not sit still for six hours in a classroom learning about long division and Vasco de Gama. Perhaps the current generation of children, that some call the Indigos, simply have a lower tolerance for school's agenda of conformity, obedience, external motivation, right-and-wrong answers, the quantification of performance, rules and bells, report cards and grades and your permanent record. So we try to enforce their attention with stimulants, and subdue their heroic intuitive rebellion against the spirit-wrecking machine.
As I write about the "wrongness" against which we all rebel, I can hear some readers asking, "What about the metaphysical principle that it's 'all good'?" Just relax, I am told, nothing is wrong, all is part of the divine plan. You only perceive it as wrong because of your limited human perspective. All of this is only here for our own development. War: it gives people wonderful opportunities to make heroic choices and burn off bad karma. Life is wonderful, Charles, why do you have to make it wrong?
I am sorry, but usually such reasoning is just a sop to the conscience. If it is all good, then that is only because we perceive and experience it as terribly wrong. The perception of iniquity moves us to right it.
Nonetheless, it would be ignorant and fruitless to pass judgment upon those who do not see anything wrong, who, oblivious to the facts of destruction, think everything is basically fine. There is a natural awakening process, in which first we proceed full speed ahead participating in the world, believing in it, seeking to contribute to the Ascent of Humanity. Eventually, we encounter something that is undeniably wrong, perhaps a flagrant injustice or a serious health problem or a tragedy near at hand. Our first response is to think this is an isolated problem, remediable with some effort, within a system that is basically sound. But when we try to fix it, we discover deeper and deeper levels of wrongness. The rot spreads; we see that no injustice, no horror can stand in isolation. We see that the disappeared dissidents in South America, the child laborers in Pakistan, the clearcut forests of the Amazon, are all intimately linked together in a grotesque tapestry that includes every aspect of modern life. We realize that the problems are too big to fix. We are called to live in an entirely different way, starting with our most fundamental values and priorities.
All of us go through this process, repeatedly, in various realms of our lives; all parts of the process are right and necessary. The phase of full participation is a growth phase in which we develop gifts that will be applied very differently later. The phase of trying to fix, to endure, to soldier on with a life that isn't working is a maturation phase that develops qualities of patience and determination and strength. The phase of discovering the all-encompassing nature of the problem is usually a phase of despair, but it need not be. Properly, it is a phase of rest, of stillness, of withdrawal, of preparation for a push. The push is a birth-push. Crises in our lives converge and propel us into a new life, a new being that we hardly imagine could exist, except that we'd heard rumors of it, echoes, and maybe even caught a glimpse of it here and there, been granted through grace a brief preview.
If you are in the midst of this process, you need not suffer if you cooperate with it. I can offer you two things. First is self-trust. Trust your own urge to withdraw even when a million messages are telling you, "The world is fine, what's wrong with you? Get with the program." Trust your innate belief that you are here on earth for something magnificent, even when a thousand disappointments have told you you are ordinary. Trust your idealism, buried in your eternal child's heart, that says that a far more beautiful world than this is possible. Trust your impatience that says "good enough" is not good enough. Do not label your noble refusal to participate as laziness and do not medicalize it as an illness. Your heroic body has merely made a few sacrifices to serve your growth.
The second thing I can offer you is a map. The journey I have described is not always linear, and you may find yourself from time to time revisiting earlier territory. When you find the right life, when you find the right expression of your gifts, you will receive an unmistakable signal. You will feel excited and alive. Many people have preceded you on this journey, and many more will follow in times to come. Because the old world is falling apart, and the crises that initiate the journey are converging upon us. Soon many people will follow the paths we have pioneered. Each journey is unique, but all share the same basic dynamics I have described. When you have passed through it, and understood the necessity and rightness of each of its phases, you will be prepared to midwife others through it as well. Your condition, all the years of it, has prepared you for this. It has prepared you to ease the passage of those who will follow. Everything you have gone through, every bit of the despair, has been necessary to forge you into a healer and a guide. The need is great. The time is coming soon.
Depression, anxiety, and fatigue are an essential part of a process of metamorphosis that is unfolding on the planet today, and highly significant for the light they shed on the transition from an old world to a new.
When a growing fatigue or depression becomes serious, and we get a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or hypothyroid or low serotonin, we typically feel relief and alarm. Alarm: something is wrong with me. Relief: at least I know I'm not imagining things; now that I have a diagnosis, I can be cured, and life can go back to normal. But of course, a cure for these conditions is elusive.
The notion of a cure starts with the question, "What has gone wrong?" But there is another, radically different way of seeing fatigue and depression that starts by asking, "What is the body, in its perfect wisdom, responding to?" When would it be the wisest choice for someone to be unable to summon the energy to fully participate in life?
The answer is staring us in the face. When our soul-body is saying No to life, through fatigue or depression, the first thing to ask is, "Is life as I am living it the right life for me right now?" When the soul-body is saying No to participation in the world, the first thing to ask is, "Does the world as it is presented me merit my full participation?"
What if there is something so fundamentally wrong with the world, the lives, and the way of being offered us, that withdrawal is the only sane response? Withdrawal, followed by a reentry into a world, a life, and a way of being wholly different from the one left behind?
The unspoken goal of modern life seems to be to live as long and as comfortably as possible, to minimize risk and to maximize security. We see this priority in the educational system, which tries to train us to be "competitive" so that we can "make a living". We see it in the medical system, where the goal of prolonging life trumps any consideration of whether, sometimes, the time has come to die. We see it in our economic system, which assumes that all people are motivated by "rational self-interest", defined in terms of money, associated with security and survival. (And have you ever thought about the phrase "the cost of living"?) We are supposed to be practical, not idealistic; we are supposed to put work before play. Ask someone why she stays in a job she hates, and as often as not the answer is, "For the health insurance." In other words, we stay in jobs that leave us feeling dead in order to gain the assurance of staying alive. When we choose health insurance over passion, we are choosing survival over life.
On a deep level, which I call the soul level, we want none of that. We recognize that we are here on earth to enact a sacred purpose, and that most of the jobs on offer are beneath our dignity as human beings. But we might be too afraid to leave our jobs, our planned-out lives, our health insurance, or whatever other security and comfort we have received in exchange for our divine gifts. Deep down, we recognize this security and comfort as slaves' wages, and we yearn to be free.
So, the soul rebels. Afraid to make the conscious choice to step away from a slave's life, we make the choice unconsciously instead. We can no longer muster the energy to go through the motions. We enact this withdrawal from life through a variety of means. We might summon the Epstein-Barr virus into our bodies, or mononucleosis, or some other vector of chronic fatigue. We might shut down our thyroid or adrenal glands. We might shut down our production of serotonin in the brain. Other people take a different route, incinerating the excess life energy in the fires of addiction. Either way, we are in some way refusing to participate. We are shying away from ignoble complicity in a world gone wrong. We are refusing to contribute our divine gifts to the aggrandizement of that world.
That is why the conventional approach of fixing the problem so that we can return to normal life will not work. It might work temporarily, but the body will find other ways to resist. Raise serotonin levels with SSRIs, and the brain will prune some receptor sites, thinking in its wisdom, "Hey, I'm not supposed to feel good about the life I am living right now." In the end, there is always suicide, a common endpoint of the pharmaceutical regimes that seek to make us happy with something inimical to our very purpose and being. You can only force yourself to abide in wrongness so long. When the soul's rebellion is suppressed too long, it can explode outward in bloody revolution. Significantly, all of the school shootings in the last decade have involved people on anti-depression medication. All of them! For a jaw-dropping glimpse of the results of the pharmaceutical regime of control, scroll down this compilation of suicide/homicide cases involving SSRIs. I am not using "jaw-dropping" as a figure of speech. My jaw literally dropped open.
Back in the 1970s, dissidents in the Soviet Union were often hospitalized in mental institutions and given drugs similar to the ones used to treat depression today. The reasoning was that you had to be insane to be unhappy in the Socialist Workers' Utopia. When the people treating depression receive status and prestige from the very system that their patients are unhappy with, they are unlikely to affirm the basic validity of the patient's withdrawal from life. "The system has to be sound -- after all, it validates my professional status -- therefore the problem must be with you."
Unfortunately, "holistic" approaches are no different, as long as they deny the wisdom of the body's rebellion. When they do seem to work, usually that is because they coincide with some other shift. When someone goes out and gets help, or makes a radical switch of modalities, it works as a ritual communication to the unconscious mind of a genuine life change. Rituals have the power to make conscious decisions real to the unconscious. They can be part of taking back one's power.
I have met countless people of great compassion and sensitivity, people who would describe themselves as "conscious" or "spiritual", who have battled with CFS, depression, thyroid deficiency, and so on. These are people who have come to a transition point in their lives where they become physically incapable of living the old life in the old world. That is because, in fact, the world presented to us as normal and acceptable is anything but. It is a monstrosity. Ours is a planet in pain. If you need me to convince you of that, if you are unaware of the destruction of forests, oceans, wetlands, cultures, soil, health, beauty, dignity, and spirit that underlies the System we live in, then I have nothing to say to you. I only am speaking to you if you do believe that there is something deeply wrong with the way we are living on this planet.
A related syndrome comprises various "attention deficit" and anxiety "disorders" (forgive me, I cannot write down these words without the ironic quotation marks) which reflect an unconscious knowledge that something is wrong around here. Anxiety, like all emotions, has a proper function. Suppose you left a pot on the stove and you know you forgot something, you just can't remember what. You cannot rest at ease. Something is bothering you, something is wrong. Subliminally you smell smoke. You obsess: did I leave the water running? Did I forget to pay the mortgage? The anxiety keeps you awake and alert; it doesn't let you rest; it keeps your mind churning, worrying. This is good. This is what saves your life. Eventually you realize -- the house is on fire! -- and anxiety turns into panic, and action.
So if you suffer from anxiety, maybe you don't have a "disorder" at all -- maybe the house is on fire. Anxiety is simply the emotion corresponding to "Something is dangerously wrong and I don't know what it is." That is only a disorder if there is in fact nothing dangerously wrong. "Nothing is wrong, just you" is the message that any therapy gives when it tries to fix you. I disagree with that message. The problem is not with you. You have very good reason to be anxious. Anxiety keeps part of your attention away from your tasks of polishing the silverware as the house burns down, of playing the violin as the Titanic sinks. Unfortunately, the wrongness you are tapping into might be beyond the cognizance of the psychiatrists who treat you, who then conclude that the problem must be your brain.
Similarly, Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, and my favorite, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) are only disorders if we believe that the things presented for our attention are worth paying attention to. We cannot admit, without calling into question the whole edifice of our school system, that it may be completely healthy for a ten-year-old boy to not sit still for six hours in a classroom learning about long division and Vasco de Gama. Perhaps the current generation of children, that some call the Indigos, simply have a lower tolerance for school's agenda of conformity, obedience, external motivation, right-and-wrong answers, the quantification of performance, rules and bells, report cards and grades and your permanent record. So we try to enforce their attention with stimulants, and subdue their heroic intuitive rebellion against the spirit-wrecking machine.
As I write about the "wrongness" against which we all rebel, I can hear some readers asking, "What about the metaphysical principle that it's 'all good'?" Just relax, I am told, nothing is wrong, all is part of the divine plan. You only perceive it as wrong because of your limited human perspective. All of this is only here for our own development. War: it gives people wonderful opportunities to make heroic choices and burn off bad karma. Life is wonderful, Charles, why do you have to make it wrong?
I am sorry, but usually such reasoning is just a sop to the conscience. If it is all good, then that is only because we perceive and experience it as terribly wrong. The perception of iniquity moves us to right it.
Nonetheless, it would be ignorant and fruitless to pass judgment upon those who do not see anything wrong, who, oblivious to the facts of destruction, think everything is basically fine. There is a natural awakening process, in which first we proceed full speed ahead participating in the world, believing in it, seeking to contribute to the Ascent of Humanity. Eventually, we encounter something that is undeniably wrong, perhaps a flagrant injustice or a serious health problem or a tragedy near at hand. Our first response is to think this is an isolated problem, remediable with some effort, within a system that is basically sound. But when we try to fix it, we discover deeper and deeper levels of wrongness. The rot spreads; we see that no injustice, no horror can stand in isolation. We see that the disappeared dissidents in South America, the child laborers in Pakistan, the clearcut forests of the Amazon, are all intimately linked together in a grotesque tapestry that includes every aspect of modern life. We realize that the problems are too big to fix. We are called to live in an entirely different way, starting with our most fundamental values and priorities.
All of us go through this process, repeatedly, in various realms of our lives; all parts of the process are right and necessary. The phase of full participation is a growth phase in which we develop gifts that will be applied very differently later. The phase of trying to fix, to endure, to soldier on with a life that isn't working is a maturation phase that develops qualities of patience and determination and strength. The phase of discovering the all-encompassing nature of the problem is usually a phase of despair, but it need not be. Properly, it is a phase of rest, of stillness, of withdrawal, of preparation for a push. The push is a birth-push. Crises in our lives converge and propel us into a new life, a new being that we hardly imagine could exist, except that we'd heard rumors of it, echoes, and maybe even caught a glimpse of it here and there, been granted through grace a brief preview.
If you are in the midst of this process, you need not suffer if you cooperate with it. I can offer you two things. First is self-trust. Trust your own urge to withdraw even when a million messages are telling you, "The world is fine, what's wrong with you? Get with the program." Trust your innate belief that you are here on earth for something magnificent, even when a thousand disappointments have told you you are ordinary. Trust your idealism, buried in your eternal child's heart, that says that a far more beautiful world than this is possible. Trust your impatience that says "good enough" is not good enough. Do not label your noble refusal to participate as laziness and do not medicalize it as an illness. Your heroic body has merely made a few sacrifices to serve your growth.
The second thing I can offer you is a map. The journey I have described is not always linear, and you may find yourself from time to time revisiting earlier territory. When you find the right life, when you find the right expression of your gifts, you will receive an unmistakable signal. You will feel excited and alive. Many people have preceded you on this journey, and many more will follow in times to come. Because the old world is falling apart, and the crises that initiate the journey are converging upon us. Soon many people will follow the paths we have pioneered. Each journey is unique, but all share the same basic dynamics I have described. When you have passed through it, and understood the necessity and rightness of each of its phases, you will be prepared to midwife others through it as well. Your condition, all the years of it, has prepared you for this. It has prepared you to ease the passage of those who will follow. Everything you have gone through, every bit of the despair, has been necessary to forge you into a healer and a guide. The need is great. The time is coming soon.
4/13/2009
Why the Now is bliss (courtesy-theage.com.au)
For the best part of two years in the early 1980s a man in his mid-30s would sit on a park bench in Russell Square, central London, and in a state of deep bliss watch the world go by.
When winter crept in, Eckhart Tolle, a German-born linguist who had once been thought to hold great academic promise, would retreat into the University of London Library nearby and pore over esoteric books. And word spread among students that this man was no ordinary drifter but a modern mystic who had undergone an extraordinary inner transformation.
A man, indeed, who was spiritually enlightened.
Twenty years later, Eckhart Tolle (pronounced Toll-ee) says that while “there are shifts in intensity”, he remains in the same state of “bliss and peace”.
He no longer sits on a park bench but lives in a high-rise in Vancouver and teaches others how to attain enlightenment, among them Gillian Anderson of The X Files; Cher, who says he “has changed my life”; and Meg Ryan, who introduced Oprah Winfrey to Tolle’s first book, The Power of Now: A Spiritual Guide to Enlightenment.
Last year, Winfrey chose the book for her Favourite Things show, saying she had read it eight times and keeps it on her bedside table. Sales skyrocketed: The Power of Now — with an original print run of 3000 — became No. 1 on Amazon.com and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, selling more than one million copies in North America. Released in Australia in 2000, it was still on the top 10 list this year, and has been translated into more than two dozen languages.
Tolle’s second book, Stillness Speaks, was released here earlier this month and publisher Hodder Headline says both books are selling well..
When I first met Tolle — a slight man with soft, grey-blue eyes and a goatee beard — he by no means exuded charisma. Rather, the air of a shy professor. He spoke with a faint German accent, his conversation frequently punctuated by staccato laughs so fierce as to make his shoulders shake. Nothing, it seemed, was to be taken too seriously — least of all his international success.
The essence of his teachings, he says, is that the present moment is the most meaningful in life. By aligning with “the now”, he says, “you are also aligned with life itself. You experience coincidences.
“Suddenly just the right thing happens at the right moment. Or you become more intuitive, more creative. Many deep insights and realisations come out of being present.”
Written in a question and answer format, The Power of Now explores perennial spiritual problems: how to overcome the feeling of separation, the meaning of surrender, how to avoid pain. It requires the reader to let go of preconceived ideas and focus less on what he or she does and more on being.
Tolle asks the reader “not to stop thinking, but to step out of being completely entangled in the stream of thinking”. This, he believes, “is the the real meaning of spirituality. People still think spirituality is having certain belief systems — in God or angels — but ‘spiritual’ means to be able to step beyond the conceptual reality in your head. In other words, accessing the dimension of stillness within yourself.”
Does he consider himself enlightened? “Well, one could say that,” he says, and pauses. “But that leads to delusion. When one says I’m enlightened or you are enlightened, that enlightenment is a personal achievement or possession or some kind of attainment.”
He feels his way cautiously. “There is simply a state of peace, clarity and aliveness.”
It wasn’t always so. Brought up near Cologne in Germany as Ulrich Tolle, he had a miserable childhood, largely because his parents constantly argued. “Even aged 10 or 11 I was trying to figure out ways I could commit suicide.”
Refusing to go to school, he was taught at home and learnt several languages, as well as studying philosophy and astronomy. At 19, he moved to London where he worked in a language school teaching businessmen.
But “suffering from depression, anxiety and fear”, he started “searching for answers to life”. Believing these lay in philosophy and literature, he took evening classes, and then went on to King’s College, London. He was 27. “For a moment I thought, ‘I’ve finally made it’. And then after a few weeks I got depressed again.”
One night shortly after his 29th birthday, Tolle says he was in a state of suicidal despair. “I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And this question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved.”
He pauses and reflects. “The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness”, just observing and watching.” He laughs lightly. “I had no explanation for this.”
In his mid-30s he lost interest in research and abandoned academia, drifting for two years, staying with friends or occasionally in a Buddhist monastery, sitting on park benches and sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath. His family thought him “irresponsible, even insane”.
It was, though, after this “lost” period that people — former Cambridge students, those he met by chance, friends — started to ask Tolle questions about his beliefs.
More students gravitated towards Tolle over the next five years, and he moved to Glastonbury — the nexus of “alternative living”. In 1993, he arrived in Vancouver. It was there that he wrote the first question in The Power: What is enlightenment?
“I wrote an answer,” he says. “And then a stream of writing happened, which was very empowered, very different from the casual writing I had done before.” It was published in 1997 and has since been described as a “seminal work with a vibrational energy”.
When talking with Tolle, I neither experienced a great sense of awe nor had any momentous revelations. But, as I was leaving, he caught me off guard, and hugged me. It was as though I had been squeezed by a huge force that, nonetheless, trembled like a feather in the wind.
I walked out, and my mind fell quiet. For some reason, I could feel tears in my eyes. Suddenly, everything on that ordinary Kensington Street and in the cafe where I stopped to collect myself, seemed intensely beautiful. I also have no explanation for this. Tolle is now in the limelight. His appearance hasn’t changed much — since “the shift”, he says, he has aged slowly — but his life has.
When I spoke to him last month, he played down the pressures: “I’m not like some gurus who never meet anyone who is not a devotee.” But, he adds, “I do sometimes wear sunglasses when I go out”.
Tolle is keen to emphasise his ordinariness: he says he enjoys simple pleasures — a walk on the beach, shopping in the supermarket, sitting quietly.
He says he doesn’t pay much attention to money, although he jokes that he “should pay more”. He has used his new-found wealth to buy a flat, which overlooks wild parkland, and a car. He says that while he has no intention of setting up an ashram or centre, “it could develop organically”. Still, he has no plans to create an empire or “a heavy commercial structure”.
Munro Magruder, assistant publisher at New World Library, the American publisher that picked up the American rights for Tolle in 1999, says: “The last big best-seller we had was The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra … One of those laws is to practise detachment, but Chopra doesn’t. He is very involved in the business.
(But) Eckhart truly practises detachment. “He’s never asked how many copies of his book we’ve sold, nor enquired about the marketing campaign. He couldn’t care less. He’s only interested in being a teacher, and people resonate with that. He’s the genuine article.”
- Telegraph Magazine
When winter crept in, Eckhart Tolle, a German-born linguist who had once been thought to hold great academic promise, would retreat into the University of London Library nearby and pore over esoteric books. And word spread among students that this man was no ordinary drifter but a modern mystic who had undergone an extraordinary inner transformation.
A man, indeed, who was spiritually enlightened.
Twenty years later, Eckhart Tolle (pronounced Toll-ee) says that while “there are shifts in intensity”, he remains in the same state of “bliss and peace”.
He no longer sits on a park bench but lives in a high-rise in Vancouver and teaches others how to attain enlightenment, among them Gillian Anderson of The X Files; Cher, who says he “has changed my life”; and Meg Ryan, who introduced Oprah Winfrey to Tolle’s first book, The Power of Now: A Spiritual Guide to Enlightenment.
Last year, Winfrey chose the book for her Favourite Things show, saying she had read it eight times and keeps it on her bedside table. Sales skyrocketed: The Power of Now — with an original print run of 3000 — became No. 1 on Amazon.com and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, selling more than one million copies in North America. Released in Australia in 2000, it was still on the top 10 list this year, and has been translated into more than two dozen languages.
Tolle’s second book, Stillness Speaks, was released here earlier this month and publisher Hodder Headline says both books are selling well..
When I first met Tolle — a slight man with soft, grey-blue eyes and a goatee beard — he by no means exuded charisma. Rather, the air of a shy professor. He spoke with a faint German accent, his conversation frequently punctuated by staccato laughs so fierce as to make his shoulders shake. Nothing, it seemed, was to be taken too seriously — least of all his international success.
The essence of his teachings, he says, is that the present moment is the most meaningful in life. By aligning with “the now”, he says, “you are also aligned with life itself. You experience coincidences.
“Suddenly just the right thing happens at the right moment. Or you become more intuitive, more creative. Many deep insights and realisations come out of being present.”
Written in a question and answer format, The Power of Now explores perennial spiritual problems: how to overcome the feeling of separation, the meaning of surrender, how to avoid pain. It requires the reader to let go of preconceived ideas and focus less on what he or she does and more on being.
Tolle asks the reader “not to stop thinking, but to step out of being completely entangled in the stream of thinking”. This, he believes, “is the the real meaning of spirituality. People still think spirituality is having certain belief systems — in God or angels — but ‘spiritual’ means to be able to step beyond the conceptual reality in your head. In other words, accessing the dimension of stillness within yourself.”
Does he consider himself enlightened? “Well, one could say that,” he says, and pauses. “But that leads to delusion. When one says I’m enlightened or you are enlightened, that enlightenment is a personal achievement or possession or some kind of attainment.”
He feels his way cautiously. “There is simply a state of peace, clarity and aliveness.”
It wasn’t always so. Brought up near Cologne in Germany as Ulrich Tolle, he had a miserable childhood, largely because his parents constantly argued. “Even aged 10 or 11 I was trying to figure out ways I could commit suicide.”
Refusing to go to school, he was taught at home and learnt several languages, as well as studying philosophy and astronomy. At 19, he moved to London where he worked in a language school teaching businessmen.
But “suffering from depression, anxiety and fear”, he started “searching for answers to life”. Believing these lay in philosophy and literature, he took evening classes, and then went on to King’s College, London. He was 27. “For a moment I thought, ‘I’ve finally made it’. And then after a few weeks I got depressed again.”
One night shortly after his 29th birthday, Tolle says he was in a state of suicidal despair. “I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And this question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved.”
He pauses and reflects. “The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness”, just observing and watching.” He laughs lightly. “I had no explanation for this.”
In his mid-30s he lost interest in research and abandoned academia, drifting for two years, staying with friends or occasionally in a Buddhist monastery, sitting on park benches and sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath. His family thought him “irresponsible, even insane”.
It was, though, after this “lost” period that people — former Cambridge students, those he met by chance, friends — started to ask Tolle questions about his beliefs.
More students gravitated towards Tolle over the next five years, and he moved to Glastonbury — the nexus of “alternative living”. In 1993, he arrived in Vancouver. It was there that he wrote the first question in The Power: What is enlightenment?
“I wrote an answer,” he says. “And then a stream of writing happened, which was very empowered, very different from the casual writing I had done before.” It was published in 1997 and has since been described as a “seminal work with a vibrational energy”.
When talking with Tolle, I neither experienced a great sense of awe nor had any momentous revelations. But, as I was leaving, he caught me off guard, and hugged me. It was as though I had been squeezed by a huge force that, nonetheless, trembled like a feather in the wind.
I walked out, and my mind fell quiet. For some reason, I could feel tears in my eyes. Suddenly, everything on that ordinary Kensington Street and in the cafe where I stopped to collect myself, seemed intensely beautiful. I also have no explanation for this. Tolle is now in the limelight. His appearance hasn’t changed much — since “the shift”, he says, he has aged slowly — but his life has.
When I spoke to him last month, he played down the pressures: “I’m not like some gurus who never meet anyone who is not a devotee.” But, he adds, “I do sometimes wear sunglasses when I go out”.
Tolle is keen to emphasise his ordinariness: he says he enjoys simple pleasures — a walk on the beach, shopping in the supermarket, sitting quietly.
He says he doesn’t pay much attention to money, although he jokes that he “should pay more”. He has used his new-found wealth to buy a flat, which overlooks wild parkland, and a car. He says that while he has no intention of setting up an ashram or centre, “it could develop organically”. Still, he has no plans to create an empire or “a heavy commercial structure”.
Munro Magruder, assistant publisher at New World Library, the American publisher that picked up the American rights for Tolle in 1999, says: “The last big best-seller we had was The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra … One of those laws is to practise detachment, but Chopra doesn’t. He is very involved in the business.
(But) Eckhart truly practises detachment. “He’s never asked how many copies of his book we’ve sold, nor enquired about the marketing campaign. He couldn’t care less. He’s only interested in being a teacher, and people resonate with that. He’s the genuine article.”
- Telegraph Magazine
12/21/2008
A 28-year Old Lie. (By Charles Eisenstein)
April 27, 2007
The New York Times reports today that M.I.T. admissions dean Marilee Jones has resigned after admitting she fabricated her educational résumé. Apparently, she did not even have an undergraduate degree. M.I.T. is, according to Chancellor Philip Clay, "taking a big lesson from this experience," in which it made little effort to check her credentials. Hmm. There is a big lesson here all right, but I think it is almost the opposite of what Dr. Clay thinks it is.
Reading the article, what stands out is that Ms. Jones was obviously doing an outstanding job. The recipient of M.I.T.'s highest honor for administrators, "The M.I.T. Excellence Award for Leading Change," she was a major force in the movement to reduce the pressure on high school students. She was very accessible, well-known and well-liked by the students; as the NYT put it, "widely admired, almost revered, for her humor, outspokenness and common sense."
Yet, if she had been honest about her educational background (or lack thereof), there is no way she would ever have risen to the position of Dean. Why? After all, her own accomplishments prove that a degree is not necessary to do a great job. The reason that no university would make a degree-less person Dean is that to do so would undermine one of the key ideological pillars of the university system. It goes something like this: "University education prepares people to be effective in their vocations. A university diploma demonstrates that someone is capable of handling positions of responsibility." It is because of these widely held beliefs that a college education is considered a "good investment" in the future.
I have little problem with Ms. Jones' supposed lack of integrity. I think the lack of integrity is in the system she engaged. Her own story demonstrates its unsoundness. She did what she had to do to thrive in a system that is fundamentally unfair. I see no lack of integrity; in fact I commend her for her courage. She has had a positive impact on thousands of young people, and she could not have done that if she'd been honest about her background.
Now I suppose someone is going to say, "She should have completed her degree; then she could have accomplished all she did with integrity." I disagree. I see little integrity in wasting years on an unnecessary education that you pursue merely to acquire a qualification that the powers-that-be demand. The kind of person who does that is not the kind of person predisposed to "humor, outspokenness, and common sense." Outspokenness is usually a liability in the degree game, which also tends to deaden humor and replace common sense with institutional values. That's the real reason why a degree "qualifies" you for a position of authority. A degree certifies that you will play along with the game.
Ms. Jones is being fired because she did not play along with the academic game; in fact she flouted one of its most basic rules. She is living proof of the vacuity of some of its basic assumptions.
In her public statements upon resignation, Ms. Jones made every effort to appear contrite. No doubt she is feeling a painful humiliation. But I wonder if, deep down, there is still a spark of protest within her that believes she did nothing wrong. If you ever read this, Marilee Jones, I hope it awakens within you the knowledge that you possess a kind of integrity that is deeper than merely following the rules. You said, unconsciously perhaps, "No, I will not participate in that silly charade." There is no dishonor in gaming a corrupt system in order to achieve the beautiful results you achieved. Don't capitulate. Instead, let this experience radicalize you, so that you can teach others to create their own lives too, and not live out the programmed lives to which our schooling conditions us.
The New York Times reports today that M.I.T. admissions dean Marilee Jones has resigned after admitting she fabricated her educational résumé. Apparently, she did not even have an undergraduate degree. M.I.T. is, according to Chancellor Philip Clay, "taking a big lesson from this experience," in which it made little effort to check her credentials. Hmm. There is a big lesson here all right, but I think it is almost the opposite of what Dr. Clay thinks it is.
Reading the article, what stands out is that Ms. Jones was obviously doing an outstanding job. The recipient of M.I.T.'s highest honor for administrators, "The M.I.T. Excellence Award for Leading Change," she was a major force in the movement to reduce the pressure on high school students. She was very accessible, well-known and well-liked by the students; as the NYT put it, "widely admired, almost revered, for her humor, outspokenness and common sense."
Yet, if she had been honest about her educational background (or lack thereof), there is no way she would ever have risen to the position of Dean. Why? After all, her own accomplishments prove that a degree is not necessary to do a great job. The reason that no university would make a degree-less person Dean is that to do so would undermine one of the key ideological pillars of the university system. It goes something like this: "University education prepares people to be effective in their vocations. A university diploma demonstrates that someone is capable of handling positions of responsibility." It is because of these widely held beliefs that a college education is considered a "good investment" in the future.
I have little problem with Ms. Jones' supposed lack of integrity. I think the lack of integrity is in the system she engaged. Her own story demonstrates its unsoundness. She did what she had to do to thrive in a system that is fundamentally unfair. I see no lack of integrity; in fact I commend her for her courage. She has had a positive impact on thousands of young people, and she could not have done that if she'd been honest about her background.
Now I suppose someone is going to say, "She should have completed her degree; then she could have accomplished all she did with integrity." I disagree. I see little integrity in wasting years on an unnecessary education that you pursue merely to acquire a qualification that the powers-that-be demand. The kind of person who does that is not the kind of person predisposed to "humor, outspokenness, and common sense." Outspokenness is usually a liability in the degree game, which also tends to deaden humor and replace common sense with institutional values. That's the real reason why a degree "qualifies" you for a position of authority. A degree certifies that you will play along with the game.
Ms. Jones is being fired because she did not play along with the academic game; in fact she flouted one of its most basic rules. She is living proof of the vacuity of some of its basic assumptions.
In her public statements upon resignation, Ms. Jones made every effort to appear contrite. No doubt she is feeling a painful humiliation. But I wonder if, deep down, there is still a spark of protest within her that believes she did nothing wrong. If you ever read this, Marilee Jones, I hope it awakens within you the knowledge that you possess a kind of integrity that is deeper than merely following the rules. You said, unconsciously perhaps, "No, I will not participate in that silly charade." There is no dishonor in gaming a corrupt system in order to achieve the beautiful results you achieved. Don't capitulate. Instead, let this experience radicalize you, so that you can teach others to create their own lives too, and not live out the programmed lives to which our schooling conditions us.
11/16/2008
The Republic of South Africa's measures against terrorism,with emphasis on public safety in Urban areas.
Terrorism is a prevalent world trend and it is continuing to spread its wild entrapments in every corner of the globe possible. It is ludicrous- the common man knowing the truth about the hideous acts of terrorism and the state, expecting him to carry on his everyday life without much angst. The Republic of South Africa makes every attempt to understand its people and provide them with every safety measure,that ensures a cordial and healthy environment. In this regard, The Republic of South Africa has shown keen and sincere interest by being active in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) during 2004-2005, which sought to promote the development of sustainable cities in Africa. The Republic of South Africa is known to house the greatest number of urban communities in the African Continent. It is therefore extremely important that we focus on our urban communities-their safety, development of infrastructure and communications; that are essential for us to continue our survival efficiently, as a thriving nation. The Government of South Africa, between January 31st - 4th of February 2005, hosted AMCHUD (The African Ministerial Conference on housing and urban development) which was jointly convened by UN-HABITAT and The African Union, in Durban. South Africa’s devoted interest in urban development and housing in Africa, fetched her the chairmanship. The initiatives that were brought to light via the above mentioned conference were provided with unrelenting support from The South African Government, UN-HABITAT and The African Union. Since Urban Communities across the world are the most affected during an occasion of bombing and the terrorists consider urban sites as the ripest for terrorist attacks, The republic of South Africa seeks to develop her infrastructure and the ambience of her civil society that guarantees her people not only realistic and uncomplicated infrastructure but also that which provides for public scrutiny and security at all times. Some of the ongoing ventures include the measures taken by the National Department of transport. The National Department of Transport has developed the Road to safety strategy, which seeks to promote and ensure safety on the roads; the NDoT has also developed programmes such as the ‘Arrive Alive programme’, ‘the Shova-Kalula programme’,’The Access Roads Development programme’, and ‘the National pedestrian business plan for hazardous locations’. In 1998,the NDoT launched ‘Moving South Africa :Towards a Transport strategy for 2020’- the purpose of this project being, the growth of a strategy for ensuring that the transportation system of South Africa meets the needs of the country in the 21st century, and that it would add to the nation’s growth and economic evolution.
Prevention is still the top logic of counter terrorism, and in this regard, the Republic of South Africa seeks to enact new anti-terrorism legislation, take stringent measures against assets used for criminal purposes, strengthen territorial control and request international cooperation.
An important stance The Republic of South Africa has taken is to encourage people across the globe to respect human rights, as the fundamental basis, for the fight against terrorism. We believe in the ideals of harmony and universal brotherhood. This is evident in South Africa playing a key role as a mediator, in the African conflicts over the last decade, such as in Burundi, The democratic republic of Congo, The Comoros, and Zimbabwe. In the recent years, The South African National defence force has become a major peace keeping force in Africa, and has been involved in Operations in Lesotho, The democratic republic of Congo and Burundi, amongst others. It has also actively participated as a part of multi-national UN peace-keeping forces. Our dedication to a peace filled world,with universal messages of impartiality and diversity has been ancient. South Africa is proud to be one of the founding members of the United Nations, and having, its then Prime minister Jan Smuts, contribute to the preamble of its Constitution
Prevention is still the top logic of counter terrorism, and in this regard, the Republic of South Africa seeks to enact new anti-terrorism legislation, take stringent measures against assets used for criminal purposes, strengthen territorial control and request international cooperation.
An important stance The Republic of South Africa has taken is to encourage people across the globe to respect human rights, as the fundamental basis, for the fight against terrorism. We believe in the ideals of harmony and universal brotherhood. This is evident in South Africa playing a key role as a mediator, in the African conflicts over the last decade, such as in Burundi, The democratic republic of Congo, The Comoros, and Zimbabwe. In the recent years, The South African National defence force has become a major peace keeping force in Africa, and has been involved in Operations in Lesotho, The democratic republic of Congo and Burundi, amongst others. It has also actively participated as a part of multi-national UN peace-keeping forces. Our dedication to a peace filled world,with universal messages of impartiality and diversity has been ancient. South Africa is proud to be one of the founding members of the United Nations, and having, its then Prime minister Jan Smuts, contribute to the preamble of its Constitution
11/13/2008
Building Accountability within the UNO
"Every day we are reminded of the need for a strengthened United Nations, as we face a growing array of new challenges, including humanitarian crises, human rights violations, armed conflicts and important health and environmental concerns. Seldom has the United Nations been called upon to do so much for so many. I am determined to breathe new life and inject renewed confidence into a strengthened United Nations firmly anchored in the twenty-first century, and which is effective, efficient, coherent and accountable."
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
As the secretary general himself is well aware of the enormity and importance of strengthening the UN on the foundation of sincere accountability, the member nations and the functioning councils of the UN ought to second him. Possessing the integrity and credibility in being able to be answerable to each and every member of the civil society must become the mantra of every local government. It is at home, that we learn values of responsibility, authenticity and honesty. The qualities that do not come from the roots will seldom be reliable or steadfast. It is only when people are governed under an authority that makes every effort to remain consistent with its transparency, people can dream of a creditable and worthy government. And only nations with such governments, can be held accountable for and trusted by the international society.
For achieving a peaceful, secure and sustainable world, the accountability between the competitive member states is essential, for it cannot be achieved overnight and is a multi-year mission. For this to be implemented, the confidentiality between certain potent states and their sources, pertaining to their activities, which are of great impact to the rest of the world, must be made transparent and accessible to the other nations.
Inter-state ties should be acutely affected by cordiality and cooperation in a manner which, the habitual blame game eventually ceases between the member nations.
This has the potentiality of promises for better future ties between the member nations too. The accountability must stem its growth from ground level so as to sustain a strong escalation. The initiation must start with the individuals being accountable to their fellow beings; individuals to their local authority; one local authority to the other, these local authorities uniting and being liable to their centre, and this in due course leading to the member nations being liable to each other.
This establishes an infallible authenticity of each and every member nation of the UNO. It is also important that the UNO provides for full cooperation to its member nations in achieving legitimacy at an international echelon.
The mode of approach instigated by a member state along with its regional organizations should be a multi-tasking one, which enables the challenges at different levels to succeed proficiently and the interest of different sectors to be met suitably.
The model of establishing and building accountability does not end at the doors of the member nations. It should transcend to the functioning councils and organs of the United Nations. An Organization in which all the members are held accountable for upholding their responsibilities will be a noticeably strong one. The working organs and councils of the United Nations must implement greater transparency and ingenuousness in decision-making by involving the civil society in the work of the Organization as cohorts and regulators.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
As the secretary general himself is well aware of the enormity and importance of strengthening the UN on the foundation of sincere accountability, the member nations and the functioning councils of the UN ought to second him. Possessing the integrity and credibility in being able to be answerable to each and every member of the civil society must become the mantra of every local government. It is at home, that we learn values of responsibility, authenticity and honesty. The qualities that do not come from the roots will seldom be reliable or steadfast. It is only when people are governed under an authority that makes every effort to remain consistent with its transparency, people can dream of a creditable and worthy government. And only nations with such governments, can be held accountable for and trusted by the international society.
For achieving a peaceful, secure and sustainable world, the accountability between the competitive member states is essential, for it cannot be achieved overnight and is a multi-year mission. For this to be implemented, the confidentiality between certain potent states and their sources, pertaining to their activities, which are of great impact to the rest of the world, must be made transparent and accessible to the other nations.
Inter-state ties should be acutely affected by cordiality and cooperation in a manner which, the habitual blame game eventually ceases between the member nations.
This has the potentiality of promises for better future ties between the member nations too. The accountability must stem its growth from ground level so as to sustain a strong escalation. The initiation must start with the individuals being accountable to their fellow beings; individuals to their local authority; one local authority to the other, these local authorities uniting and being liable to their centre, and this in due course leading to the member nations being liable to each other.
This establishes an infallible authenticity of each and every member nation of the UNO. It is also important that the UNO provides for full cooperation to its member nations in achieving legitimacy at an international echelon.
The mode of approach instigated by a member state along with its regional organizations should be a multi-tasking one, which enables the challenges at different levels to succeed proficiently and the interest of different sectors to be met suitably.
The model of establishing and building accountability does not end at the doors of the member nations. It should transcend to the functioning councils and organs of the United Nations. An Organization in which all the members are held accountable for upholding their responsibilities will be a noticeably strong one. The working organs and councils of the United Nations must implement greater transparency and ingenuousness in decision-making by involving the civil society in the work of the Organization as cohorts and regulators.
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