I hate self-help books. They tend to be trite, condescending, and full of a hideous lie: Self-transformation is easy if you’d only swallow your ego and follow me. They are all variations of that theme. I don’t think I’ve read a self-help book since my mother left them on the coffee table during the 1970s.
Recently, however, a friend of mine, Mike, said Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now helped him a lot. Mike is no stereotype of a self-help book addict. He is working on his black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Out of respect to him, I gave The Power of Now a try. I found the book unpleasant to read, redundant, full of new age clichés that I used to hear while working in a wine store in Berkeley in the 1980s and very little of the book offered anything new or practical.
Also, I was skeptical of Tolle’s personal account of his own religious experience, which he claims compelled him to write his best-selling book. In the typical motif of a great religious leader, Tolle was down in the dumps, had lost his taste for life, had thoughts of suicide and then unexpectedly while in his home his body and mind burned with the presence of a Spiritual Power so great that he wept tears of joy for months and was content to not work or barely eat, living the life of a blissed-out homeless person. Over time, he articulated what had happened to him, studying the world’s religions, and the synthesis of the study bore fruit in The Power of Now.
Reading his personal account struck me as the work of an effective fiction writer, but I don’t claim to know Tolle’s heart. He may be telling the truth.
In any event, his life as a homeless person overflowing with spiritual joy seems to be his credential: Millions of people hunger for his experience: The loss of ego and joyful presence in the now.
Tolle does a good job of describing the human animal’s hardwiring for misery and unhappiness and I agree with all his points: We are lost in a recurring loop of thoughts about our past and future. We live too much in our heads. Our self-destructive thoughts are born from our ego: We think of grandiosity, self-pity, spite, and other signs of emotional retardation. The solution? We need to stand back and watch ourselves when we think these thoughts and not identity our self with these thoughts. How do we do it? The more we become the Watcher of our Mind, the less these thoughts occur.
I tried this technique and found myself watching myself watching myself watch myself. It was like getting lost in a hall of mirrors.
Elsewhere in the book Tolle says we should stop our egotistical thoughts. How? By dropping them. He writes, “If you have a hot piece of coal in your hands, you simply drop it.” The ego is the same thing.
See how easy it is?
Thousands, perhaps millions, have attested to the power of this book to change their lives. It didn’t work for me. Of course Tolle and his acolytes would pity me and say my ego won my personal battle, with me coming out as the loser.
My prejudice towards self-help books remains unchanged. A good remedy for these books is the now out-of-print I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional by Wendy Kaminer.
Final Thoughts
I suspect my friendship with Mike will survive. My attitude is this: “If it works, more power to you, bro.”
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