I am so glad to see this discussion of Tolle here ! I have been interested in objectivism, psychology, and eastern religions - Buddhism, yoga, zen etc . . . I have intellectual & emotional appreciations of how these benefit me.
I have been meditating & working at being objectively present since around 1980. I especially used what I learned from objectivism during my visits to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s ranch in Oregon during their world celebrations. (Very dear friends of mine at the time had gone thru a terrible car accident in which two of their friends with them died. My friends have been especially brilliant, courageous adventurous people before this accident, but to watch the miraculous transformation of them after they became sanyasins was very inspiring. They encouraged me to attend these celebrations at the ranch. So I watched and learned and grew in profound ways).
One of my motivations to learn was so that I could be a more sensitive, artistic architect with a greater understanding of human life.
I feel my strong grounding in objectivist philosophy helped me to explore my inner self. I did meet my fear body then and had the strength to accept this and discover life beyond. This opening helped me to understand the emotional repressions that so many of us carry around. This understanding helped me to appreciate how external repressions — politics work and gave me a greater appreciation of freedom, free will, and capitalism.
I was now able to capitalize on the vast energy available to me now that I wasn’t having to divert it into maintaining my own repressions. I felt lots of peace and love as a constant state of being now.
After these experiences I helped with an anarchist, objectivist, libertarian magazine called Nomos for a few years where I learned from many new friends. I became a reporter for Nomos, going to all the radical, fringe meetings I could with my friends. I also wrote articles and created some cartoons.
Going to these political meetings during the Clinton years and seeing so much fear and the political power struggles was deeply upsetting to me.
I had to distance myself from politics for my own health.
I then helped produce a series of programs on our community cable TV on alternative healing which introduced me to many new age healers. I again relied on my intuitions and objectivist background to help me sort out the hype from more genuine work — very difficult to do when dealing with these subtle doings.
So I learned more of yoga, qigong, ayurveda, and sound yoga. My understanding of being a human being has deepened with appreciations.
I have just read “The Power of Now” and “The New Earth” and find them both to be very wonderful.
They do threaten the egos & pain bodies but objectively we are much greater than these troublesome egos we carry around, so I find Tolle’s writing very helpful for my own growth.
I still have to think and make choices — use my volitional consciousness — he doesn’t deny this either. We do have brains that think, we have languages to think with — just not to let the thinking run on auto-pilot ego to keep us in a self defeating stressed out emotional - thought loop cycle that saps life energies.
Enjoying life thru the meditative conscious space that is beyond thought — that contains thought — also makes creativities more available. We then have access to more of what life can offer us.
I have a blog that develops more of my thoughts and political experiences on ipeace that may interest you also:
http://ipeace.ning.com/profile/NicholasTruske
