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Ego: Eckhart Tolle and Matthias Pӧhm Criticism

understanding your true self

By ElenaPublished 2 years ago 11 min read
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Let that E go

"An essential aspect of this awakening consists of transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequiste not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet." -Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher and self-help author of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, states that the nature of self is an illusion based on misinterpretations of all thought processes, interactions, and relationships. "What you usually refer to when you say 'I' is not who you are. By the monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of 'I' in your mind and whatever the 'I' has identified with" (Tolle 28). As a child grows up, they assume their given name represents who they are, which formulates a sense of "I" and expands into 'me, ''mine," and "myself." As we grow and gain life experience, the "I" becomes entangled with thoughts about gender, possessions, bodily awareness, sexuality, race, religion, and profession, which tricks the mind into believing a false sense of self. The mental construct of "I" perpetuates into identification with roles such as mother, father, brother, sister, etc., likes and dislikes, established opinions, and refers to the memory of past events to define the self as "me and my story" (Tolle 29).

Tolle mentions seventeenth-century philosopher Descartes’ answer to his question of absolute certainty, "I think, therefore I am" as standard human error of equating thinking with Being, the root of the ego. Nearly three hundred years later, famous philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre discovered that when you are aware you are thinking, the awareness that says "I am" is a part of a different dimension of consciousness (Tolle 55). As thinkers, we do not know we are thinking; it just happens. It is as if we are sleeping and unaware that we are dreaming. Many people still live like sleepwalkers, "trapped in old dysfunctional mindsets that continuously recreate the same nightmarish reality" (Tolle 55). The ego is conditioned by the past and strengthens itself through content and structure. Contents are conditions of the environment, upbringing, and surrounding culture. The use of "my" and "I" is the structure that enhances identity through association with objects and relationships (Toll 34).

The basic foundation for identification is to seek oneself in things and therefore lose yourself in some form. Forms include objects, bodies, and thoughts that arise in conscious awareness. Thought forms are identified as the voice in the head that never stops speaking, which causes suffering from each emotion that arises and comes and goes with each thought; this is the definition of being spiritually unconscious (Tolle 30). "When told that there is a voice in their head that never stops speaking, they say, "What voice?" or angrily deny it which of course is the voice, the thinker, the unobserved mind. It could almost be looked upon as an entity that has taken possession of them" (Tolle 30). The ego is easily misperceived because of its intimate and direct need to secure its self-worth through other people and accuse external factors of disrupting the peace, which produces a negative interpretation of the present moment.

Tolle states that there is no such thing as good or bad; these concepts were configured through the identification of thoughts such as, "Something is happening that should not be. Something in the past happened that should not have. Something you or I did, said, or failed to do is preventing me from being at peace right now. You should do this, and because you are not doing it, I resent you" (Tolle 114). The word “you” can be replaced with any person or thing that is causing negative feelings such as anger, anxiety, hatred, resentment, discontent, envy, jealousy, and so on. These emotions are self-created but are justified through humanity’s collective agreement of constant complaining and compulsive worry. "The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation of and the reaction to that situation" (Tolle 110). For example, when someone responds, "What a dreadful day" to the weather being cold, rainy, and windy, they react from their constant inner resistance, which produces the emotion that life is to be feared, dreaded, and challenging.

The ego hangs onto negativity because it believes negativity will produce the outcome it wants, finds suffering pleasurable to partake in, or believes suffering to have a useful purpose. When a person is identified with their opinion, their mental position merges into their identity to further invest in having a sense of self. This is the illusion at play; the ego is the unobserved mind that does not recognize the miscorrelation between mental positions and the basis of self. Tolle emphasizes practicing awareness of the present moment, through meditation, to identify moments of unconscious reactivity and allow egoic resistance to shrink (Tolle 111). To let go of identification with the mind means to no longer seek out trying to be somebody, then who you are beyond the mind emerges by itself.

Criticism of Tolle

The majority of Eckhart Tolle's criticism stems from his projection of being a self-proclaimed enlightened person. Tolle often confuses himself and his audience into believing his thoughts are truthful when he is still unlearning the conditioning of his own ego. Critic Matthias Pӧhm points out that on Tolle's website and Youtube videos, he sometimes abruptly closes his upper lip over his teeth when laughing. "One cannot help thinking that he is trying to hide misaligned teeth" (Pӧhm). Since Tolle is apparently "ego-free," he should not be self-conscious or ashamed of a physical "flaw" when there is nothing wrong with the commonality of misaligned teeth.

Pӧhm attacks Tolle for assuming that identification is a decision. Still, the truth is that no one can decide to no longer identify with thoughts as they are constantly interchanging. It would be as impossible as fighting the urge to eat food or drink water if one were dehydrated or starving. "It is not such that we would NOT believe a thought, but we would simply have a NEW thought, which replaces the old" (Pӧhm). Tolle believes that one only needs to free themselves from negative emotions, not positive ones, to experience liberation. The goal of transcending the ego is to demagnetize it and accept that there are no negative or positive circumstances, only ‘justified’ emotions from arising thoughts.

"Every thought about a neutral event is a lie, the goal is to believe NO thought...put NO labels...have NO comments on anything" (Pӧhm). The point of liberation is to understand that both negative and positive thoughts have nothing to do with consciousness, the "I" that is aware of unfolding events. The ego is the manufacturer of the labels we unconsciously stick on things, people, and every happening that occurs. Through words and mental impressions, humanity has diluted the miraculousness of life into restrictive and limiting concepts of how life is "supposed to be lived."

Pӧhm faults Tolle for selling learned, borrowed, and imagined knowledge of conceptual ideas to his audience. His confidence in his dogmatic beliefs contradicts his argument that one should not pay attention to or identify with their thoughts. In an example of observing fighting ducks, Tolle claims the flapping of their wings releases surplus energy that would have otherwise been trapped in their bodies. "Tolle's daily life is not thoughtless. His brain produces comments to what is (ducks flapping their wings). He believes his thoughts immediately and identifies with them (thinks they are real)" (Pӧhm).

Tolle justifies the meaning of an occurrence by establishing a concept, idea, or supposition as a proclaimed fact and sells it as higher truth. One of his many beliefs is that because earth is undergoing a cosmic awakening into a completely different level of consciousness, he is certain it is happening elsewhere in the universe. "Whether there is an awakening in the entire universe, is again just an assumption...Tolle has a number of beliefs that he declares facts...not higher knowledge that lead to awakening...at most it leads to the ego enhancing thought to be someone special" (Pӧhm). The assumption that human beings are collectively a part of an awakening process is misleading. It can cause mass egoic tensions over whether a person is more spiritually significant because they are more "woke."

Tolle further contradicts himself through his opinionated evaluations of the universe's creations, such as "beautiful" or "terrible" concrete architecture. By stating his views of what he defines as acceptable or unacceptable, Tolle radically identifies with the voice in his head and believes that he is the thinker. Pӧhm confirms that everything is of equal value; there is nothing more or less. "Is one snowflake compared to any other snowflake more inspired by God or less? This is the same with the evaluation of human work… seen from the Absolute, everything has the same value, only human assessment renders it to something diverging" (Pӧhm). There cannot be something divinely inspired without a counterpart. Neither exists. All evaluations, labels, and assessments are human-mind made and cannot constitute as higher truth.

Pӧhm's suggests that Tolle's proposal of methods of how to live without ego is false due to Tolle's own relapses in identification. Pӧhm exemplifies Tolle's choice of Photoshopping his publication photos as a clear indication he still cares about his outer form yet has nothing to do with his true self. Pӧhm comments on Tolle's choice to marry as reiterating his fear of the future. "In a marriage an object-love is transformed into a conceptual relationship" (Pӧhm). The theory in question is, "Why marry if I am no longer concerned about abrupt life changes?" Pӧhm argues his analysis of marriage has all to do with fear but does not provide direct evidence of his own claims. Tolle's choice of marriage could have been of personal choice.

In conclusion, Pӧhm declares that humanity is living in a dream where nothing really exists, not the tree, the front door, the art, or the people. "We live in a video game where the video game characters think they are real" (Pӧhm). Humans are absorbed by their evolution of projections to justify their endless cycle of suffering. Our collective goal is to decondition ourselves from the constant resistance of the present moment.

Personal Experience

Before reading A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, I was curious why humanity is constantly fighting against itself and why we react to minor "inconveniences." Since I was a child, I was puzzled by the normalcy of toxic habitual patterns, family traditions, the chase for money, and negativity that fueled the repetitive insanity of society. After reading A New Earth, I understood the answer to all of our "problems" lies within the complex phenomenon of the ego, the unconscious motivation to recycle unresolved trauma. The ego explains every category of human insanity, from physical violence to Beastiality and everything in-between. The ego is the voice in your head that complains about a toilet seat being too cold, prefers a booth over a table, and is the boiling impatience from sitting in congested traffic. There are millions of examples of how the ego possesses us to resist what the present moment offers and continues to strengthen itself by playing the role of a victim. Tolle's best explanation for understanding the ego is, "separate the event from the interpretation of the event from the reaction to the event." In broader words, the present moment of a happening is neutral. The mind interprets a situation into something that should or should not be, then the ego builds upon that interpretation through mental resistance and emotional reactivity from not getting what it wants. This is the basic equation for all miscommunications and disagreements.

From personal experience, I can justify that it is possible to transcend ego identification. Meditation is the best way to practice awareness of the ego. One can observe their stream of spontaneous thoughts of wonder or worry about the past or future while sitting in the timeless present. Throughout the day, I practice observing my thoughts of preference for one thing or another. I watch my mental and verbal dialogue and reflect on why "I" choose to act or speak while reiterating that I am aware of the "I" that functions in societal reality. In the beginning, it was hard to understand the concept of "I am aware of being aware" because I was very identified with being the thinker. I reacted emotionally and truly believed the "I" that wanted excessive things, craved drugs, and viewed everyone as an "other." Noticing the ego requires diligent practice and consistent patience to formulate the understanding that the true self is the awareness of experience, but over time, one can decrease reactivity to unexpected situations, short-tempered individuals, and become the master of their mind instead of its servant. By dissolving the ego, one can astronomically improve their day-to-day perspective, empathy, humility, and overall gratitude and appreciation for life.

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About the Creator

Elena

Confused with the practice of trying too hard and trying just enough to get by. I've rattled myself with a drug-ill brain that clouds my ability to express with words and tongue.

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