Over the past couple of years, I have been committed to learning about ideas which focus on cultivating and enriching spiritual enlightenment and liberation for a health focused and purpose-led life (perhaps this came to the forefront of my mind because of the pandemic causing existential considerations of what matters to people and systems). For me, this exploration came in the serendipitous encounter of Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth in my neighborhood’s Little Free Library book stand. I went on to read his first bestseller The Power of Now, which ultimately led me into reading and blogging about an entire spectrum of New Age writers including Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, Masaru Emoto, and then Deepak Chopra and my journey into studying Ayurveda as in depth as possible as a novice to a complex topic that includes thousands of years of tradition from India.
Overall, many of these New Age writers had me in an intellectual grip without a doubt…I felt a sort of spiritual transformation reading these books, which is not a small thing to say. I began meditating quite often and learned different ways of meditating. I think meditation is a tool to unlock subconscious thoughts and believe it’s a tool that should be taught earlier in our lives than later. It affected my approach to how I thought about what matters – how we approach each and every day and how our attitudes shape our micro and macro experience in the world is what defines our human experience. However, this is not to say that it transformed my personality. If anything, it affirmed what I already had set forth with creating: a world of rosiness and softness as a vehicle for navigating complex information. My New Age studies became an opportunity to journey into understanding the “self” vs. the “Self.” The work of egoic detachment never stops, and in my opinion, is a rather fruitless endeavor over time. From the ideas Eckhart Tolle presents around “presence” and “nowness” as the only state of our lives to be concerned with, I have found there to be some essential faults with his teachings when put into practice. Ultimately, those lived experiences led me to two truths that I can separate and examine: The first truth is that there is a universal oneness of source energy we are all a part of. This is technically separate from ideological concepts around God, but can be merged together with God dependent on your cultural ideological conception of God. I am a Roman Catholic and have found inner peace through my Christocentric journey. I also support the peaceful existence of alternative religious doctrine which adheres to a peaceful reciprocity of this goodwill. In my opinion, we are all part of a “source energy” that we all collectively belong to and theology complements that journey to optimal health and spiritual wellbeing. The source energy that brings us to this life also takes us from this life (it is up to you how you comprehend the idea of God as an entity separate or part of oneself, we are bonded through a source energy in any event).
The second truth we can explore is that our experiences shape us as individuals: culture, ideology, social norms and we should do our best to develop our individuality. These things do shape us into who we are – it’s too much to ask of ourselves to abandon all of what comprises us as individuals to focus on awakening as a collective as Eckhart Tolle asserts through his teachings. The real importance of individuation necessitates physical survival – the ego survives for a reason. We are composed of all those “things” (gender, culture, religion) which Tolle tells us to negate ourselves from to have spiritual enlightenment as a collective. This is truly nonsense in practice. His discussion points around disconnection from the “thinking mind” and ego become too abstract to truly find purposeful action within. We all live and navigate within highly complex systems. Tolle’s ideas around liberation from the ego are too disconnected from real life and how societies operate. As a result of this deep reflection for myself, I have begun to embrace and study Carl Jung’s interpretations around the “shadow self” and how doing “shadow work” is how one can truly find their life’s purpose. His connection to mandalas and Eastern Thought are especially important tools for these reflections.
Jung connected to ideas from Buddhism and believed in respecting and including the whole of an individual’s experience, including their “shadow” aspects. In my opinion, the Jungian shadow is what will unlock liberation and maintain individuality for each of us. In Eckhart Tolle’s view, the meaning of life is through a negation of the ego (individualism) and attaching oneself to a universal collective source energy as being a form of endless joy… his ideas around separation from the ego brings the nirvana of universal source energy as our entrance into conceiving infinity (given the science of black holes in the universe – infinity definitely exists). However, just because infinity exists does not mean humanity survives through a furthered attachment to universal source energy, nor do cultures survive this way. Humanity survives through connection between individuals who create life and further generate individuality this way. Individuation is our liberation. The ego is too hard to detach from as human beings and there are biological reasons for this. The ego will not be the demise of humanity – the ego will enable our survival. Tolle states how collective consciousness is part of the next phase of human evolution. I highly doubt we will have the ability to culturally dissociate that much, especially during a time in the world where cultural separations became glaringly apparent. I do connect to the ideas Tolle presents related to the importance of our present moment and do think he presents tools which empower people to overcome challenges and hardships through a focus on what you can do to take positive action in the moment. Beyond that, I see individuality and connections to other individuals as the answer to our liberation and not collective consciousness as liberation.
I believe that the real inner truth we can find within ourselves is that humanity will survive longer when we focus on ourselves as individuals. We find peace in the boundary separations of our individuation by respecting individuality as our core truth.
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