Painbody Energy Field?

[Guest ZAC D.]

http://www.detoxifynow.com/et_pain_body.html

Sounds like sexed up spiritual woo woo to me.

Anyone here ever heard of this before?

[Jake]

I only read the first paragraph on the site. It reminded me of L. Ron Hubbard's nonsense.

[Guest ZAC D.]

My impression was it was more like the woo woo deepak chopra speaks only worse.

My other thought was Ignoring your feelings is never a good idea. Such a method didn't work for Seung Hui Cho. He brought acceptance to his old pain via a nine millimeter rampage at VA, Tech. This guy is saying not to even analyze why you are feeling what you are feeling just know it exists and there is nothing you can do about it but ignore it. Bullshit. One can't wish away or ignore emotions for long. Unless of course you want to be a sociopath.

I think that's what he was saying, it's so full of woo woo that it was hard to make rational sense out of it.

Edited August 14, 2010 by ZAC D.

[DavidOdden]

Here's a simple way to determine whether a claim should be dismissed without further consideration. Read the page and think carefully about what he says, specifically asking "Is that literally true; does it refer to anything?" and "Is that a sensible factual claim that anyone is aware of"? Every time you find the author saying something that can't be interpreted literally, or which is a substantial claim of fact without necessary evidence, raise a finger on one hand. By the time you have raised 5 fingers (let's call the thumb a finger), then go Google something else and ignore the lunatics.

So: "This accumulated pain...". A basic fact about English (admittedly not Tolle's native language) is that you can't start with a reference to "This X" without establishing what that referent is. What accumulated pain? 1 finger. Next, "is a negative energy field". Now there is such a thing as an electric field, the space surrounding charged particles, but not an "energy field", and therefore we cannot determine whether such a thing has a net positive or negative charge. 2 fingers. Next, "that occupies your body and mind". Notice the invalid mind / body dichotomy, and the false implication that this "energy field" is conscious (it is in the nature of the verb "occupy" that the occupier be conscious). 3 fingers. "If you look on it as an invisible entity in its own right, you are getting qu(i)te close to the truth". This is a classic bit of primacy of consciousness. Setting aside the gibberishness of "invisible entity in its own right", the act of deciding to believe something about an existent, without having a reason to believe that proposition, fails definitionally at "getting at the truth". The act of arbitrarily accepting a proposition does not constitute grasping reality, any more than random parrot squawking constitutes "speaking the truth". And obviously he does not mean "unseeable; visually transparent" when he says "invisible" -- he means "undetectable, in principle", meaning "non-existent". An existent (entity) that doesn't exist. That's 4. "It's the emotional pain body". And what is his evidence that this invisible non-existent is emotional? How do we know that it has any connection at all to emotion? Maybe it's simply because we haven't adjusted out aluminum foil hats properly.

Never read more that the first paragraph: it can be fatal to your faculty of reason.

[Guest ZAC D.]

Thanks for the tip and break down. That helped alot.

[Iudicious]

I usually don't trust essays that have that many (improperly done and improperly used) ellipsis in them.

[Mister A]

I've read Tolle's literature before and imho there is some sense hidden under the neo-mystical hokum, especially if you are familiar with existentialism and Eastern thought.

The Pain-Body is the accumulated frustation caused by the disparity between reality and the ego's expectations; the more unhealthy and irrational the ego, the wider the disparity. If this frustration is left to fester, there is the danger of identifying with the negative sentiment for various lengths of time. When this identification occurs, there is a strong tendency to reinforce it by placing yourself in self-defeating situations that accrue more negative sentiment (as a victim or aggressor, the goal is the same). This state is short-circuited and placed back into dormancy when you become conscious of the potential harm to yourself. But some people are so entrenched in the identification that any attempt to focus consciousness is disrupted by automatized evasion; a perfect example in fiction is James Taggart.