Tolle's method is wrong
 

Hi,

I guess I found what's wrong with Eckhart Tolle's approach. He is suggesting the following:

"Become intensely conscious of the present moment."

This is not a good approach. Why? Because this is bad self-treatment. This is not love. The goal is not reaching the now, the goal is finding peace with oneself. Tolle's method gives more importance to the Now than the self. Consequently, it cannot work well.

The correct method is the following:

If I am not conscious of the present moment, this is normal. I have problems, I must solve them and my mind will naturally come back to the Now without effort.

When you do this, you are kind with yourself and you are naturally back to the now. You find peace with yourself and the now.

Look around and say:

"I cannot feel bliss, I cannot see and feel the wonders of life. This is normal because I have problems like everybody, fears and mental illusions, I am solving them slowly..."

This way you are in peace with yourself and with the now. Now is not an enemy anymore, something that you "must" achieve. You start loving the now, because you do not force yourself to love it. Consider the Now like a human. If you force yourself to love them, you cannot. We look at them, we say "I don't feel love, so what?" and we start to feel love. This is the same with the Now.

I am sorry Xan, This is not Tolle's method. Tolle's method is "forcing self to stay in the Now". It is not a good method.

if your depiction of what he says is right I can see why there is a problem. It implies effort.

I also think that to define goals is a problem in itself because different goals may require different ways to get to it.

The biggest obstacle for both approaches, as depicted, seems to be that they are based on thought.

From wikipedia:

The basic message of Tolle's book is that our mode of consciousness can be transformed. The key to becoming free of the egoic mind, with all its consequences, is to become deeply conscious of this present moment, or, as Tolle often calls it, "the Now."

From the Now book:

"In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions associated with the activity the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap, and so on. Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within."

This is bad self-treatment. This is exactly How I interpreted his book -> Forcing oneself to stay in the now, the get rid of this "ego".

The correct approach is:

"I don't care about the Now,
if my mind is not in the Now,
this is because I have problems
like everybody. I have solve these problems first.
I solve them slowly, without forcing myself. "

Magically, it works. We find peace with the Now. If it doesn't work, no problem. It may work later. The goal is not reaching the Now, the goal is finding peace with self. Now is the natural, secondary, result.

The fact that it is a best seller doesn't mean that the Tolle's book is correct. It only shows that the topic is interesting.

Yes I see bad self-treatment.

EDIT: Sorry I noticed that you find a problem with my method too. There may be better of course, but I think mine is better than Tolle's. Because there is no bad self-treatment in my method. If my mind is not in the now, this is normal, I have problems like everybody. This way we find peace with self and Now.

I don’t see this as correct either. I think you missed Tolle’s point. The point is that returning to the now (first) makes solving problem far easier. With ‘practice’ one stays in the now and does not find otherwise as ‘normal’.

FYI not a big Tolle fan.

Yes this is a very good remark, but I don't see how staying in the now solves the problem.

You could say, "if you do not fear and stay in the now, this will solve all your problems." But in this case, if I cannot stay in the now, this simply means that I have a trust problem. I have to solve this. Trying to stay in the now will not solve it. Each problem has a reason, we should find it and heal it.

I say that if our mind is not in the now, it is useless to force oneself. Instead we should solve the problems taking our attention away from the now. Now will and should come naturally without effort.

How to solve our trust problem? Trust means that everything will be all right. Is this correct in the first place? It is possible that we get exactly what we want, and we have unconscious wishes for suffering. In this case, we may attract it. So trusting is useless. The real solution is watching our unconscious wishes for suffering and clearing them. For example, if we choose to fear our boss and allow them to take decisions for us, they make take bad decisions for us. Although we trusted, our life may take unwanted directions. The problem here is not trust, the problem is our unconscious choice for fear. We should rather work on letting go our fears instead of trusting life. Trusting is useless. Instead of trusting, we should understand that we receive exactly what we want from the universe, and know what we want.

So it is not the power of Now, it is the power of letting go unconscious fears and mental illusions. We do this and we reach the now naturally. Now has no power, We have the power but we lost it because of mental illusions.

I think your excerpt from his book is Tolle's description of a way to practice - to help a person be more in the present moment, which, if you never try it, and succeed a few times, you won't necessarily see the benefit. I read TPON (The Power of Now) and A New Earth (ANE). I found ANE far better at explaining what Tolle's ideas are all about.