Todd Wright Now

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 10

2012-01-13T19:49:00.005-05:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it. A man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the want of due knowledge, — all blab. Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an Iachimo be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? Confucius exclaimed, — "How can a man be concealed! How can a man be concealed!"

On the other hand, the hero fears not, that, if he withhold the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it, — himself, — and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace, and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident. Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described as saying, I AM.

The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and great.
If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee, its lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light, and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common men are apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances, because the substance is not.

We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of magnitude. We call the poet inactive, because he is not a president, a merchant, or a porter. We adore an institution, and do not see that it is founded on a thought which we have. But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says, — `Thus hast thou done, but it were better thus.' And all our after years, like menials, serve and wait on this, and, according to their ability, execute its will. This revisal or correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, reaches through our lifetime. The object of the man, the aim of these moments, is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without obstruction, so that, on what point soever of his doing your eye falls, it shall report truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and the ray does not traverse; there are no thorough lights: but the eye of the beholder is puzzled, detecting many unlike tendencies, and a life not yet at one.

Why should we make it a point with our false modesty to disparage that man we are, and that form of being assigned to us? A good man is contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world of this hour, than the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, `He acted, and thou sittest still.' I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busybodies and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both.

I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here certainly shows me that the soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not assume the post? Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies and vain modesty, and imagine my being here impertinent? less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer being there? and that the soul did not know its own needs? Besides, without any reasoning on the matter, I have no discontent. The good soul nourishes me, and unlocks new magazines of power and enjoyment to me every day. I will not meanly decline the immensity of good, because I have heard that it has come to others in another shape.

Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? 'T is a trick of the senses, — no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself to be any thing, unless it have an outside badge, — some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, or a high office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action to testify that it is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To think is to act.

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding into the scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history, before I have justified myself to my benefactors? How dare I read Washington's campaigns, when I have not answered the letters of my own correspondents? Is not that a just objection to much of our reading? It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbours. It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting, —

"He knew not what to say, and so he swore."

I may say it of our preposterous use of books, — He knew not what to do, and so he read. I can think of nothing to fill my time with, and I find the Life of Brant. It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to Brant, or to General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time should be as good as their time, — my facts, my net of relations, as good as theirs, or either of theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that other idlers, if they choose, may compare my texture with the texture of these and find it identical with the best.

This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Pericles, this under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of the fact of an identical nature. Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player. The poet uses the names of Caesar, of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius; the painter uses the conventional story of the Virgin Mary, of Paul, of Peter. He does not, therefore, defer to the nature of these accidental men, of these stock heroes. If the poet write a true drama, then he is Caesar, and not the player of Caesar; then the selfsame strain of thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self-sufficing, dauntless, which on the waves of its love and hope can uplift all that is reckoned solid and precious in the world, — palaces, gardens, money, navies, kingdoms, — marking its own incomparable worth by the slight it casts on these gauds of men, — these all are his, and by the power of these he rouses the nations. Let a man believe in God, and not in names and places and persons. Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human life, and all people will get mops and brooms; until, lo! suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in some other form, and done some other deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living nature.

We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and tinfoil that measure the accumulations of the subtle element. We know the authentic effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises.

A New Review for The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder on Amazon

2012-01-13T19:34:00.001-05:00

Shopper writes:

From the first page of The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder I was hooked. I took the book on vacation to have something to read while I was gone but I couldn't put it down and finished it before reaching Greensboro, NC. Mr. Wright takes the theories behind self help books and brings them all together to develop an excellent murder mystery. I enjoyed the evolvement of the characters, how the detectives develop a tie between the individual books and the murder. Wright's knowledge of the self help books he uses as a basis for the novel is extremely detailed and intriguing. I find myself compelled to pick up a self help book. A must ready for anyone who has doubt of how to live in the here and now or if you just want to enjoy a good book.

Thanks, Shopper!

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 9

2011-11-06T11:53:00.004-05:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. But now, every thing he did, even to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, and is called an institution.

These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the genius of nature; they show the direction of the stream. But the stream is blood; every drop is alive. Truth has not single victories; all things are its organs, — not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. The laws of disease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws of health. Our philosophy is affirmative, and readily accepts the testimony of negative facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By a divine necessity, every fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony.

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses character. If you act, you show character; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it. You think, because you have spoken nothing when others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret societies, on the college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expected with curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence answers very loud. You have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-men have learned that you cannot help them; for, oracles speak. Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice?

Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dissimulation. Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. Faces never lie, it is said. No man need be deceived, who will study the changes of expression. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy and sometimes asquint.

I have heard an experienced counsellor say, that he never feared the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not believe in his heart that his client ought to have a verdict. If he does not believe it, his unbelief will appear to the jury, despite all his protestations, and will become their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artist was when he made it. That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often. It was this conviction which Swedenborg expressed, when he described a group of persons in the spiritual world endeavouring in vain to articulate a proposition which they did not believe; but they could not, though they twisted and folded their lips even to indignation.

A man passes for that he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so. If a man know that he can do any thing, — that he can do it better than any one else, — he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped. In every troop of boys that whoop and run in each yard and square, a new-comer is as well and accurately weighed in the course of a few days, and stamped with his right number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, speed, and temper. A stranger comes from a distant school, with better dress, with trinkets in his pockets, with airs and pretensions: an older boy says to himself, `It 's of no use; we shall find him out to-morrow.' `What has he done?' is the divine question which searches men, and transpierces every false reputation. A fop may sit in any chair of the world, nor be distinguished for his hour from Homer and Washington; but there need never be any doubt concerning the respective ability of human beings. Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.

As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness as there is, so much reverence it commands. All the devils respect virtue. The high, the generous, the self-devoted sect will always instruct and command mankind. Never was a sincere word utterly lost. Never a magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for that he is worth. What he is engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in letters of light. Concealment avails him nothing; boasting nothing. There is confession in the glances of our eyes; in our smiles; in salutations; and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. Men know not why they do not trust him; but they do not trust him. His vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in his cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of the head, and writes O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king.

Daily Tolle #7

2011-11-06T11:37:00.002-05:00

This quote encapsulates well what both The Power of Now and A New Earthare all about:

"Most of the thousands of letters and emails that have been sent to me from all over the world are from ordinary men and women, but there are also letters from Buddhist monks and Christian nuns, from people in prison or facing a life-threatening illness or imminent death. Psychotherapists have written to say that they recommend the book to their patients or incorporate the teachings in their practice. Many of those letters and emails mention a lessening or even a complete disappearance of suffering and problem-making in people's lives as a result of reading The Power of Now and putting the teachings into practice in everyday life. There is frequent mention of the amazing and beneficial effects of inner-body awareness, the sense of freedom that comes from letting go of self-identification with one's personal history and life-situation, and a newfound inner peace that arises as one learns to relinquish mental/emotional resistance to the "suchness" of the present moment."

Eckhart Tolle, Author's Preface to the Paperback Version of The Power of Now

Read the entire book: The Power of Now - The Entire Book

Daily Tolle Number 6

2011-10-11T10:20:00.000-04:00

"Avoid watching [TV] programs and commercials that assault you with a rapid succession of images that change every two or three seconds or less. Excessive TV watching and those programs in particular are largely responsible for attention deficit disorder, a mental dysfunction now affecting millions of children worldwide. A short attention span makes all your perceptions and relationships shallow and unsatisfying. Whatever you do, whatever action you perform in that state, lacks quality, because quality requires attention.

"Frequent and prolonged TV watching not only makes you unconscious, it also induces passivity and drains you of energy. Therefore, rather than watching at random, choose the programs you want to see. Whenever you remember to do so, feel the aliveness inside your body as you watch. Alternatively, be aware of your breathing from time to time. Look away from the screen at regular intervals so that it does not completely take possession of your visual sense. Don't turn up the volume any higher than necessary so that the TV doesn't overwhelm you on the auditory level. Use the mute button during commercials. Make sure you don't go to sleep immediately after switching off the set or, even worse, fall asleep with the set still on."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth , pp. 232-3

This advice also works well for computer use.

You might also like: The Power of Now - The Entire Book

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 8

2011-10-10T10:37:00.001-04:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathematically measurable by its depth of thought. How much water does it draw? If it awaken you to think, if it lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; if the pages instruct you not, they will die like flies in the hour. The way to speak and write what shall not go out of fashion is, to speak and write sincerely. The argument which has not power to reach my own practice, I may well doubt, will fail to reach yours. But take Sidney's maxim: - "Look in thy heart, and write." He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from his ear, and not from his heart, should know that he has lost as much as he seems to have gained, and when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and half the people say, 'What poetry! what genius!' it still needs fuel to make fire. That only profits which is profitable. Life alone can impart life; and though we should burst, we can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last. Gilt edges, vellum, and morocco, and presentation-copies to all the libraries, will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole's Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollok may endure for a night, but Moses and Homer stand for ever. There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato: - never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them in his hand. "No book," said Bentley, "was ever written down by any but itself." The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. "Do not trouble yourself too much about the light on your statue," said Michel Angelo to the young sculptor; "the light of the public square will test its value."

These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of the genius of nature; they show the direction of the stream. But the stream is blood; every drop is alive. Truth has not single victories; all things are its organs, - not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. The laws of disease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the laws of health. Our philosophy is affirmative, and readily accepts the testimony of negative facts, as every shadow points to the sun. By a divine necessity, every fact in nature is constrained to offer its testimony.

Response to Atheist Op-Ed About Miracles

2011-10-05T18:37:00.001-04:00

Professed atheist posted an op-ed piece to the Lexington Herald-Leader today called Miracle: Just a puzzle science has not solved.

I posted the following response, to which a not-so-cleverly-disguised Richard Dawkins, himself (Hawkins? Rhymes with Dawkins? Come on, Richard, we know it was you!) posted the below rebuttals.*

Mr. Dawkins will be speaking at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond to day and tomorrow.

Me:

Existence itself is supernatural and something that science will never be able to explain until it changes its antiquated philosophical framework. Where did the universe come from and why did it arise? What was there before it arose? Science is but a tiny sliver of Consciousness (God), which many have experienced through direct contact with reality, but which science lacks the philosophical tools to comprehend. So all this eyewitness testimony is simply ignored. A good book on the subject is The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder, which I just happen to have written.

Fellows like Dawkins live entirely in their minds, and so have never experienced reality directly. To him, science and the material world is all there is. If he could shut down that voice in his head for a minute and live life through his body (i.e. his own little slice of this reality we share) he might be quite surprised what (and some might say Who, with a capital W) he would find there.

Aaron Hawkins:

Well I feel that eyewitness testimony is not enough to prove anything. If you were to go around believing everything that people said they saw, then you would have to believe in bigfoot, werewolves, vampires, and aliens just to name a few of the things that now exist just because someone said they saw it. This is not enough evidence to base a decision on. You have to look at motives and understand reasons that people say what they say. Am I calling them liars? No, there are many explanations and maybe they did see what they said they saw, but by no means does this hold enough weight to call it proof of existence.

As for the later part of your post that isn't plugging your book, you say that Dawkins has closed himself off to the reality that would show proof of existence. While I may agree with you that he is science based and as such leaves no credibility to superstition, mysticism, or metaphysics. You base your ideas on the same line of thought, only reversed. Perhaps if you shut the "good" book and started living in the real world you would see his views. Not that I am literally trying to get you to do so, it just shows that your argument gets us no where.

Me:

Sorry for plugging my book, but it's precisely about this issue. And I agree with you on both your points.

As to your first point, I agree that eye witness testimony isn't enough in itself. We don't have to take anyone's word for it. Everyone has his/her own body--this is what it's there for, I'm suggesting. Shut off the voice in the head and take your awareness into your body for a few moments. Hold it there. Feel your feet, your hands and all the rest from the inside, so to speak. What does this do for you? What do you find? What is reality actually like? You can know this for yourself. It's not theoretical and doesn't seem to be particularly profound, so most people won't even bother to try it. But it holds the key, I would suggest, to a deeper understanding.

As to your second point, what I'm trying to suggest is that Dawkins view is a faith too, just as any view of reality must be, because we are inside that reality. His faith is in a neutral cause-and-effect based what-you-see-is-what-you-get reality. My personal opinion is that this view doesn't hold water because of the "first cause" problem that it has. But as you point out, my view is a faith (opinion) just as his is.

Aaron Hawkins:

I understand that meditation is a great tool (especially in psychology) for relaxation and that it is used as a religious tool for inspiration and awareness, but I'm not to sure where you are going with this response. From my understanding of meditation, the key is to clear your mind, while useful for personal growth and relaxation I fail to understand how this would bring us closer to God. Perhaps this is my own misconception on how meditation works. Prof. Nash makes the logical step towards Buddhism from your post but even there while it does lead to personal insight, the goal of Buddhist meditation is not to find God it is to work towards totally clearing your mind of any real thought (neither perception or non perception). You start by focusing on specifics, elements, ideas and thoughts but the final jahanas is the goal of this type of meditation and that is to be released from everything.

Finally, yes both are faith based ways of thinking of the world. Obviously I see where we are going, a priori and a postiriori arguments for God, and how we know what we know. Perhaps we should also jump into how we can know the true nature of God, as all of this seems to be a recap of Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion. I find it hard to accept the ontological argument, based on the fact that we can not know the attributes of God, the only one who truly would know those attributes would be God himself, I believe then that the only way the arguement would work would be if God was trying to prove his own existence to himself.

I tend to side with Dawkins although I don't agree with everything he says, the difference between religious faith and faith in science is that science tends to be testable over and over again. Does this give us cause? No, but the results can be tested and we can see there is a connection over and over again.

Me:

My own view is that this exercise I have suggested is not a tool exactly. It's more of an experiment to get people to feel what direct contact with reality is. It's to get people to feel what it is "to be" as opposed to "to think" and "to do," with the end result of getting people to understand that this is where we need to park ourselves, so to speak, all the time, using thinking and doing as tools, then reverting back to "being" when the tools have performed their functions. (What you have suggested the exercise is about, and how most people live I think, is the opposite of this at best and perhaps most don't live in their bodies at all.)

How might this bring us closer to God? As Jung said, "God is reality." And as Paul said, "In him we live, move and have our being," a (p)restatement that God is reality.All the other--Hume and so forth--is rationality about the nature of reality (or God, as you prefer), while the exercise is meant to put one in direct contact with reality, the ultimate testability. It's an exhortation to get out of the head and into the body, our own individual slice of reality.

Photo credit: Kentucky.com

*[Disclaimer: Come to find out, Aaron Hawkins is a real person who lives in Georgetown, Kentucky. Go figure!]

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 7

2011-10-03T09:10:00.001-04:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, which adjust the relation of all persons to each other, by the mathematical measure of their havings and beings? Gertrude is enamoured of Guy; how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners! to live with him were life indeed, and no purchase is too great; and heaven and earth are moved to that end. Well, Gertrude has Guy; but what now avails how high, how aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners, if his heart and aims are in the senate, in the theatre, and in the billiard-room, and she has no aims, no conversation, that can enchant her graceful lord?

He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but nature. The most wonderful talents, the most meritorious exertions, really avail very little with us; but nearness or likeness of nature, - how beautiful is the ease of its victory! Persons approach us famous for their beauty, for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their charms and gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the company, with very imperfect result. To be sure, it would be ungrateful in us not to praise them loudly. Then, when all is done, a person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, instead of another having come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed; it is a sort of joyful solitude. We foolishly think in our days of sin, that we must court friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. The scholar forgets himself, and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the world, to deserve the smile of beauty, and follows some giddy girl, not yet taught by religious passion to know the noble woman with all that is serene, oracular, and beautiful in her soul. Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others' eyes.

He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation, that a man may have that allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you see your work produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the stars.

The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may teach by doing, and not otherwise. If he can communicate himself, he can teach, but not by words. He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. But your propositions run out of one ear as they ran in at the other. We see it advertised that Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the Fourth of July, and Mr. Hand before the Mechanics' Association, and we do not go thither, because we know that these gentlemen will not communicate their own character and experience to the company. If we had reason to expect such a confidence, we should go through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick would be carried in litters. But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.

A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. We have yet to learn, that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 8

Daily Tolle #5

2011-09-28T09:55:00.002-04:00

"Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe. Through it, consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in form. Inner nonresistance to form--whatever is or happens--is a denial of the absolute reality of form. Resistance makes the world and the things of the world appear more real, more solid, and more lasting than they are, including your own form identity, the ego. It endows the world and the ego with a heaviness and an absolute importance that makes you take yourself and the world very seriously. The play of form is then misperceived as a struggle for survival, and when that is your perception, it becomes your reality."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, pp.208-9

You might also like: The Power of Now - The Entire Book

Do You Believe in Magic? Comments on a Psychology Today Article

2011-09-24T12:56:00.000-04:00

About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine brought this Psychology Today article (Do You Believe in Magic? : Eckhart Tolle, the Dalai Lama, and the Future of Psychotherapy) to my attention and I posted a couple of comments. I'm not sure why--maybe PT reposted the article--but new comments began showing up in my email in the last week or so, and I was moved again to respond to some of the responses posted by the author of the original article, a psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen A. Diamond. I thought you might enjoy reading the exchange:

Your Comments on Tolle

Submitted by Todd Wright on March 16, 2010 - 10:01am.

Dear Dr. Diamond,
Spoken like a true Aristotelian.

But perhaps you should read Tolle's books before you comment on them. And if you could refrain from ad hominem attacks on people (even gurus) that would be lovely.

Also, the colorful language you use to subtly slur ideas you don't agree with is probably counter-productive, if your goal is an honest discussion. Probably better to present their ideas objectively and then tell us where you disagree.

Interesting stuff about Jung and the Dalai Lama though. Thanks!

Todd

Reply to Todd

Submitted by Dr. Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. on March 16, 2010 - 10:34am.

You are welcome for those things you found interesting. But tell me/us: What is your take on this topic?

Do you believe in magic

Submitted by Todd Wright on March 16, 2010 - 12:02pm.

I disagree with Dr. Diamond's position that enlightenment and awakening needs to stay out of the hands of the unwashed masses, that psychiatrists are the only people who have any hope of understanding these things. The article is quite bigoted in this regard.

Tolle's points are simple and represent our natural state, as opposed to the fretful, worrisome existence Dr. Diamond seems to hold inside himself, and to cherish for that matter.

Joy is our natural state. The world is governed by The Good.

BREAK BREAK BREAK - What follows is another more recent strand:

Reply to Tara

Submitted by Dr. Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. on September 22, 2011 - 4:25pm.

Thanks for your comments on this topic. Let me try to clarify my position here briefly. I am happy to hear that you found your way to "Heaven" via traversing "Hell," and I congratulate you on your courage, endurance and perseverance. It would seem that you share this arduous journey through depression and despair to spirituality with Mr. Tolle himself. But I do not hold that hitting "rock bottom" is the only spiritual pathway. What I do say is that we need to distinguish between authentic spirituality and what I call pseudospirituality. The latter is an ego-driven, narcissistic pretense, a mere mistaken caricature of what we in Western culture conceive to be spirituality. Today's nominal New Age or more traditional spiritual leaders, teachers or gurus are susceptible to such grandiose inflation. (See my prior post on the messiah-complex, for example.) Overly moralistic, arrogant, rigid, dogmatic religious or spiritual teachers who deny their own daimonic impulsions--hence, inevitably and destructively falling prey to them--exemplify Nietzsche's assertion that when daimonic emotions such as anger, rage or resentment are chronically repressed, they manifest indirectly in spiritual pretentiousness. Authentic spirituality is not about becoming a "bliss ninny" of the sort you describe. Such individuals, due in part to their youth and inexperience, tend to be naive or "pseudo-innocent." (Not that simply getting older necessarily changes such naivete, which is part of the New Age problem.) It is easy to call oneself "spiritual" or even "religious" when denying or avoiding the daimonic and the reality of evil. Such pseudospirituality can be used to deny one's own psychological "devils and demons" and the power they--and the unconscious in general--exert in our lives. It is only when life confronts us with tragedy and challenge, originating externally or internally, that authentic spirituality can truly be spoken of and tested, as, for example, in the case of the biblical Job. Most postmodern spiritual dilettantes dare not deal with the dark, destructive, shadowy side of themselves or others. They deny and reject this "low," "unspiritual" aspect of humanity, focusing instead only on the "high" or "good." But as a wise rabbi once noted, so few experience God today because most are unwilling to stoop low enough to encounter God. Or, as C.G. Jung once said, "God is reality itself." So, again, so much of our conversation here is predicated on how we define what spirituality truly is. For me, spirituality entails the capacity to see life as it is--wholly, including the existential realities of evil, suffering and the daimonic--and to love life nonetheless. Indeed, I would define secular spirituality as a capacity to love the daimonic. For anyone interested, I have written on this subject fairly extensively in my book Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic, as well as in chapters I contributed to the books Meeting the Shadow, and Spirituality and Psychological Health, as well numerous articles both here at PT and elsewhere.

"God is reality itself"

Submitted by Todd Wright on September 22, 2011 - 5:26pm.

My friend, this isn't it. It's not through how well you define this stuff or whether it includes the daimonic or the demonic or whatever. It's not in conceptualization at all. It's the opposite of that. God is reality, so if you want to get in touch with reality, leave the concepts behind and focus on reality. What is your reality? Your reality is your body. Your body is your antenna to reality (God). Turn off your mind for a moment and feel your body from the inside. Close your eyes and become aware of your hands. After a while, they will begin to tingle. Do the same for your feet, your legs, torso, head and everything else. That's you BEING. Not thinking, not doing but being. Do that as often as you can and you'll know everything you need to know, no more conceptualization or definition required. Reality (God) teaches us everything we need to know in this way. Rationality is the distraction that keeps us from connecting with reality (God).
Most people can't bring themselves to do this little exercise, not even as an experiment, because it doesn't seem high minded enough (and because their egos won't let them) but in fact it is revolutionary.

Reply to Todd

Submitted by Dr. Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. on September 22, 2011 - 6:40pm.

Thanks for your fine comment. Of course, you are right: Spirituality is fundamentally not an intellectual, rational or conceptual matter, but rather an experience. You are very aptly describing what we call in existential psychology a phenomenological approach to reality: dropping (as much as possible) preconceptions and focusing on what is as it is. The mindfulness exercise you recommend is a very good one for getting in touch with our subjective BEING. Meditation is another way of doing so, as is Yoga or Tai Chi. And you are right that many people resist such experiential practices, not only because they are too "high minded," as you put it, but because they are fearful of what they might discover about themselves. But where we disagree is that there is something "revolutionary" about such practices: Meditation, yoga, Tai Chi have been around for thousands of years!! There is certainly nothing new here, though it may be newly discovered by each individual and generation. During the 1960's, psychiatrist Fritz Perls made extensive use of such awareness exercises in his Gestalt Therapy. However, such practices are not a substitute for psychotherapy, though can complement it terrifically. I think you oversimplify matters by devaluing and excluding the intellect, rationality, and psychological analysis and integration. In my experience, both are vitally important. Finally, whereas I agree about spirituality being experiential, it is also attitudinal: Spirituality includes the attitude one takes toward life and reality, which can be informed philosophically, psychologically or by spiritual training and experience. In fact, conceptualization, intellectual insight, philosophy, theology etc. are traditionally integral parts of spiritual training. While such rationalism can certainly get in the way of spiritual experience, we need to be able to conceptually communicate and articulate such experiences with each other as best we can, despite their inherent ineffability. Otherwise, this conversation could not take place! And Tolle could not write his books!

One Last Rebuttal

Submitted by Todd Wright [Not yet posted]

[I didn't save this post and Dr. Diamond has not yet posted it. If he does, I will update this post.]

A Second Last Rebuttal

[Submitted by Todd Wright [Not yet posted]

You write of this "mindfulness exercise" as if it is something that you do, and then you return to the normal world of thought. This is backwards. The point of this exercise is to connect you to the real world, with the purpose of getting you to feel the benefits of staying there, moving back into the realm of thought only when necessary. Using thought, in other words, only as a tool, then reverting back to being as your normal state. This solves the problems of the mind. It's simple. But people in your profession want to pretend that it's much more complicated, virtually incomprehensible without your help, in order to create a market for your particular brand of voodoo. And by and large, people have bought into that very successful marketing campaign.

Daily Tolle #4

2011-09-22T10:25:00.003-04:00

"The deeper interconnectedness of all things and events implies that the mental labels of 'good' and 'bad' are ultimately illusory. They always imply a limited perspective and so are true only relatively and temporarily. This is illustrated in the story of a wise man who won an expensive car in a lottery. His family and friends were very happy for him and came to celebrate. 'Isn't it great!' they said. 'You are so lucky.' The man smiled and said, 'Maybe.' For a few weeks he enjoyed driving the car. Then one day a drunken driver smashed into his new car at an intersection and he ended up in the hospital, with multiple injuries. His family and friends came to see him and said, 'That was really unfortunate.' Again the man smiled and said, 'Maybe.' While he was still in the hospital, one night there was a landslide and his house fell into the sea. Again his friends came the next day and said, 'Weren't you lucky to have been here in hospital.' Again he said, 'Maybe.'"

A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle, pp. 196-7.

You might also like: The Power of Now - The Entire Book

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 6

2011-09-21T16:07:00.000-04:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser, - the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.

Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. "Earth fills her lap with splendors" not her own. The vale of Tempe, Tivoli, and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as good earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting!

People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the trees; as it is not observed that the keepers of Roman galleries, or the valets of painters, have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are wiser men than others. There are graces in the demeanour of a polished and noble person, which are lost upon the eye of a churl. These are like the stars whose light has not yet reached us.

He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel of our waking knowledge. The visions of the night bear some proportion to the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see our evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps, the traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand is terrific. "My children," said an old man to his boys scared by a figure in the dark entry, "my children, you will never see any thing worse than yourselves." As in dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid events of the world, every man sees himself in colossal, without knowing that it is himself. The good, compared to the evil which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. Every quality of his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of his heart in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, west, north, or south; or, an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And why not? He cleaves to one person, and avoids another, according to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking himself in his associates, and moreover in his trade, and habits, and gestures, and meats, and drinks; and comes at last to be faithfully represented by every view you take of his circumstances.

He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire, but what we are? You have observed a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands, and read your eyes out; you will never find what I find. If any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is Englished, as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews' tongue. It is with a good book as it is with good company. Introduce a base person among gentlemen; it is all to no purpose; he is not their fellow. Every society protects itself. The company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, though his body is in the room.

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 7

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 5

2011-09-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes. If you pour water into a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to say, I will pour it only into this or that; - it will find its level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your doctrine, without being able to show how they follow. Show us an arc of the curve, and a good mathematician will find out the whole figure. We are always reasoning from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect intelligence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book, but time and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, "They are published and not published."

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, and he shall be never the wiser, - the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. God screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.

Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. "Earth fills her lap with splendors" not her own. The vale of Tempe, Tivoli, and Rome are earth and water, rocks and sky. There are as good earth and water in a thousand places, yet how unaffecting!

People are not the better for the sun and moon, the horizon and the trees; as it is not observed that the keepers of Roman galleries, or the valets of painters, have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are wiser men than others. There are graces in the demeanour of a polished and noble person, which are lost upon the eye of a churl. These are like the stars whose light has not yet reached us.

He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel of our waking knowledge. The visions of the night bear some proportion to the visions of the day. Hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see our evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps, the traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand is terrific. "My children," said an old man to his boys scared by a figure in the dark entry, "my children, you will never see any thing worse than yourselves." As in dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid events of the world, every man sees himself in colossal, without knowing that it is himself. The good, compared to the evil which he sees, is as his own good to his own evil. Every quality of his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of his heart in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, west, north, or south; or, an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And why not? He cleaves to one person, and avoids another, according to their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking himself in his associates, and moreover in his trade, and habits, and gestures, and meats, and drinks; and comes at last to be faithfully represented by every view you take of his circumstances.

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 6

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 4

2011-09-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men, and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. We think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. In our estimates, let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make habitually a new estimate, - that is elevation.

What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid, but that which is in his nature, and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite productiveness.

He may have his own. A man's genius, the quality that differences him from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch drift-wood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain, because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons, as worthy, go by it, to whom I give no regard. It is enough that these particulars speak to me. A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and genius, the man has the highest right. Everywhere he may take what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor can he take any thing else, though all doors were open, nor can all the force of men hinder him from taking so much. It is vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will tell itself. That mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion over us. To the thoughts of that state of mind he has a right. All the secrets of that state of mind he can compel. This is a law which statesmen use in practice. All the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free-masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.

Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood. Yet a man may come to find that the strongest of defences and of ties, - that he has been understood; and he who has received an opinion may come to find it the most inconvenient of bonds.

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 5

Daily Tolle #3

2011-09-13T12:31:00.003-04:00

"A person with a strong, active pain-body has a particular energy emanation that other people perceive as extremely unpleasant. When they meet such a person, some people will immediately want to remove themselves or reduce interaction with him or her to a minimum. They feel repulsed by the person's energy field. Others will feel a wave of aggression toward the person, and they will be rude or attack him or her verbally and in some cases, even physically. This means there is something within them that resonates with the other person's pain-body. What they react to so strongly is also in them. It is their own pain-body."

-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth , p. 174

See also The Power of Now - The Entire Book

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 3

2011-09-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out, and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made. We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that middle point, whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-pedler. There is no permanent wise man, except in the figment of the Stoics. We side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and the robber; but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be again, not in the low circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul.

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love, - a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action, and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun.

I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech by which I would distinguish what is commonly called choice among men, and which is a partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a whole act of the man. But that which I call right or goodness is the choice of my constitution; and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution; and the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds, that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade? Has he not a calling in his character.

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward "signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men," is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein.

By doing his work, he makes the need felt which he can supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work, he unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and character make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims.

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 4

Another Review The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder on Amazon

2011-09-12T11:34:00.002-04:00

Another Review The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder on Amazon, this one from Tom Thompson, of Southern Pines, North Carolina. Tom gave it 5 stars and wrote:

"Great book! I enjoyed it very much. Not at all what I expected. Nice review of the self-improvement literature intermixed with a murder mystery complete with detectives, suspects, and Catholic priest. The author really goes into some depth with the whole Aristotelian model vs. wisdom/in- tuition. Highly recommended for those wishing to explore this area more deeply and from a new angle."

Thanks, Tom!

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 2

2011-09-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

Start at the beginning: Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations, that our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. We interfere with the optimism of nature; for, whenever we get this vantage-ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to discern that we are begirt with laws which execute themselves.

The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, 'So hot? my little Sir.'

We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle, and have things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers. And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.

If we look wider, things are all alike; laws, and letters, and creeds, and modes of living, seem a travestie of truth. Our society is encumbered by ponderous machinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which the Romans built over hill and dale, and which are superseded by the discovery of the law that water rises to the level of its source. It is a Chinese wall which any nimble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing army, not so good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly appointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings are found to answer just as well.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking of man and all animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing, and so forth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever.

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 3

The Power of Now is in the Public Domain

2011-09-09T12:57:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to report that Eckhart Tolle has seen fit to allow his seminal book, The Power of Now, to slip into the pubic domain, which means it's now free. I've posted it in its entirety to my Pages section (right). Let me know if you find this format helpful.

Please take a few moments to take a look at it. Click once or twice on each page to enlarge the print to your liking. A page or two each day while seated at your desk between tasks or clients is guaranteed to change your life.

Daily Tolle #2

2011-09-09T10:38:00.000-04:00

"'At this moment, this is what you feel,' I said. 'There is nothing you can do about the fact that at this moment this is what you feel. Now, instead of wanting this moment to be different from the way it is, which adds more pain to the pain that is already there, is it possible for you to completely accept that this is what you feel right now?'" [Italics original]

-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth , p. 165

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 1

2011-09-08T16:06:00.000-04:00

SPIRITUAL LAWS

The living Heaven thy prayers respect,
House at once and architect,
Quarrying man's rejected hours,
Builds therewith eternal towers;
Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil;
Forging, through swart arms of Offence,
The silver seat of Innocence.

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old house, the foolish person, - however neglected in the passing, - have a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul will not know either deformity or pain. If, in the hours of clear reason, we should speak the severest truth, we should say, that we had never made a sacrifice. In these hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for exaggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.

The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his. No man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him do and say what strictly belongs to him, and, though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man, - never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies. It is quite another thing that he should be able to give account of his faith, and expound to another the theory of his self-union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet, without this self-knowledge, there may be a sylvan strength and integrity in that which he is. "A few strong instincts and a few plain rules" suffice us.

My will never gave the images in my mind the rank they now take. The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School. What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it.

In like manner, our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our will. People represent virtue as a struggle, and take to themselves great airs upon their attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed, when a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not better who strives with temptation. But there is no merit in the matter. Either God is there, or he is not there. We love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him. Timoleon's victories are the best victories; which ran and flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch said. When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel, and say, 'Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his native devils.'

Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in all practical life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe to it. We impute deep-laid, far-sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon; but the best of their power was in nature, not in them. Men of an extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, 'Not unto us, not unto us.' According to the faith of their times, they have built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were the visible conductors seemed to the eye their deed. Did the wires generate the galvanism? It is even true that there was less in them on which they could reflect, than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth and hollow. That which externally seemed will and immovableness was willingness and self-annihilation. Could Shakspeare give a theory of Shakspeare? Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey to others any insight into his methods? If he could communicate that secret, it would instantly lose its exaggerated value, blending with the daylight and the vital energy the power to stand and to go.

Read Some Emerson - Spiritual Laws, Part 2

Daily Tolle #1

2011-09-04T10:20:00.001-04:00

"If there are other people around, preferably your partner or a close family member, the pain-body will attempt to provoke them--push their buttons, as the expression goes--so it can feed on the ensuing drama. Pain-bodies love intimate relationships and families because that is where they get most of their food. It is hard to resist another person's pain-body that is determined to draw you into a reaction. Instinctively, it knows your weakest, most vulnerable points. If it doesn't succeed the first time, it will try again and again It is raw emotion looking for more emotion. The other person's pain-body wants to awaken yours so that both pain-bodies can mutually energize each other."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 148

Bumping into God - Part 1

2011-08-31T12:54:00.001-04:00

You know that feeling you get when you first fall in love? You might feel it all over your body or it might be localized in your heart or even your teeth. It's a feeling of pure joy in the very cells and molecules of your physical being.

You might feel this feeling of physical joy at other times too, like when you see a baby or think about your children. Whenever that happens, don't miss it! Something profound has taken place. That's salvation. You've bumped into God.

I come back again and again to this quote from Albert Einstein, because so many people recognize and respect what the man had to say: "The most important question a person can ask is, 'Is the Universe a friendly place?'" Some question the authenticity of this quotation, but for our purposes that's ok. It's a good question (and probably true), whomever might have asked it. It's in those aforementioned moments of pure physical joy that we know, and can continually know, that the universe is indeed a friendly place.

Let's first look at the alternatives. The universe could be a hostile place. Some people perceive it that way. Through the filter of early conditioning, their minds process things that happen to them and come to the conclusion--or judgment--that the universe is out to get them, that is to say, is hostile to them.

Most people, though, have been conditioned by the predominate worldview to conclude--i.e. judge--that the universe is simply a completely neutral place, indifferently governed by the law of causality. Cold cause and effect determines all that has been, is and will be. The universe isn't friendly, it isn't hostile, it's just neutral.

But when we fall in love or look at our children, we KNOW this isn't true. No mental processing--judgment--is required to make this determination. It happens in the very cells of our physical form. And we can prove this fact to ourselves again and again--continually, even. We can reproduce this feeling simply by shutting down our minds, quieting ourselves and feeling our bodies from the inside. This is precisely what they're for. They're antennae for picking up the frequency (positive, neutral or negative; friendly, neutral, hostile) of the universe.

Your body is your own little slice of physical reality, right? Feel what it feels like without the interference of your mind, without judgment. Feel your feet and your hands, your torso, your neck and hands. Hold your awareness there. After a few moments of concentration, your body begins to tingle. Hold your awareness there for a while and it begins to feel almost painfully . . . good! Pleasant. Physically joyful, just as if you have fallen in love. It's the same feeling as when you look at a baby. Reality isn't unpleasant at all. In fact, it isn't even neutral. It's positively joyful! This feeling has been called the "joy of being." (See "An Exercise for Experiencing the Joy of Being" for more details.)

And we need not believe anything. Everyone can experience this for themselves. That's what the body is made for.

This positive experience that results upon direct contact with reality has been labeled "God" by many. This experience generally gets personified and conceptualized (i.e. judged) and castles of theology of many varieties have been erected in its honor. But those are completely unnecessary, as this direct contact with this positive universal frequency is sufficient in and of itself to guide and direct your life.

To be sure, you may also experience negativity when you go into your body in this way. You may experience a great deal of it, in fact. But if you can manage to still yourself, to still you mind long enough, you will realize that this negativity--whether it be physical or mental/emotional--plays against a background of constant positivity, like burning stars against a velvet backdrop of peaceful nothingness.

Find this background joy that is always there, cleave to it, and it will show you the way out of your pain.

See also The Joy of Being, Explained

Photo credit: EnjoyPoint

One More Review of The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder

2011-08-28T23:15:00.000-04:00

My request to you is this: If you've read The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder, please go to its page on Amazon and write a review. If you haven't read it, please get a copy and do so as soon as possible! Everybody's talking, you don't want to be left out! Scott gave it 5 stars and wrote:

The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder was a recommendation to me from a colleague, and I ended up reading and enjoying it in just three sittings. The personalities that were developed really spoke to me -- they became as famailar as friends by the end of the read. Even the injected references to well-known and respected volumes in the "self-help" genre -- Covey, Hill, Nirenberg, Persig and others -- provided me with additional insights that I had never considered before. What a rare combination -- a fictional work that provided a 'value-added' quantity for everyday events through the teachings of the self-help masters. And, as with any respectable mystery novel....I certainly did NOT see the ending coming....

Thanks, Scott!

New Reviews for The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder

2011-08-20T13:14:00.001-04:00

If you've read The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder, please go to its page on Amazon and write a review. If you haven't read it, please get a copy and do so as soon as possible! Everybody's talking, you don't want to be left out! Keith gave it 5 stars and wrote:

"The Bible is the first self-help book" was my favorite idea that came from this well written concise, little nugget of a book. Getting all of the ideas from all of the most popular self-help books rolled into one exciting murder mystery was a great idea and Mr. Wright has an uncanny way of explaining all of the different concepts that I have had trouble understanding. I highly recommend that everyone read this book to enjoy a happier, more satisfied life. A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Angie gave it 5 stars and wrote:

I love a good "who done it" and have found great solace in many of the writings highlighted in The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder. Wright's thoughtful book brings both genres together in an enlightening and entertaining page turner. I was happily intrigued by the unique character development and thought provoking exerpts which lead me to consider the possibility that, we are what we read. 5 Stars and I can't wait for the next one!

Thanks Keith and Angie!