There is a great schism dividing the personal-development movement. On the one hand there are gurus like Anthony Robbins who take a more mentalist approach, advocating all sorts of thought-based techniques like positive affirmations. On the other, there are people like Eckhart Tolle who tell us we should minimize our thoughts as much as possible, operating instead from a place of presence in the world here and now. And Tolle is really just a recent repopularization of very ancient ideas about attention and mindfulness, which have been around for millenia in Buddhism and other exotic meditative practices. According to Tolle and his predecessors, thoughts are the enemy, necessarily yanking us further from the present. Ecky even goes so far as to declare that thoughts are the source of all suffering. So how do we we reconcile these two sides?
CONSCIOUS VS. SUBCONSCIOUS THOUGHTS
The first distinction to make is that there are both conscious and subconscious thoughts. (I wrote a short article about the two, which you can read here) Most of the time when Eckhart speaks of "thoughts", he's implicitly referring to conscious ones. After all, without subconscious thoughts, we could not parse language, we could not navigate the world; we might even suffocate, or suffer total heart failure.
When we use positive affirmations, or self-hypnosis, or EFT, or NLP, or any of the other mental-based routes to self-development, we are using conscious thoughts, but conscious thoughts are not the ultimate target. The ultimate goal in all these methods is really to program subconscious thoughts. Work we do on our subconscious persists even if we enter a Buddhist trance where our conscious thoughts are deprived of all energy.
Thus, by combining the two movements, we can enjoy the benefits of both. Take time to train and strengthen the subconscious mind by using all the mentalism you can get your hands on, but then when your training is finished for the day, go present and live in the now.
THE COMPUTER ANALOGY
Your personal computer should display things on the monitor as seamlessly as possible. When you watch a movie online, you don't want to see diagnostic information scrolling on the side of the screen (except maybe occasionally during a "Terminator" movie;). When I play a videogame, the last thing I want is to be distracted by irrelevant popups. Typing this article right now, my computer should, as much as possible, play a transparent middleman between me and the readers who read me.
If I approach a stranger to try and start a conversation, and my mind is racing with all sorts of conscious analysis, I'm gonna be a sweaty, nervous wreck. That would be like listening to an MP3 and hearing a voice in the background constantly uttering things like "Loading codecs. Downloading stream. Decompressing data." Without that stuff, the music couldn't play, but that doesn't mean we have to hear about it.
On the other hand, when we want to upgrade the computer, there'll be a certain amount of inserting discs, downloading upgrades, watching progress bars fill up, watching logfiles scroll past, rebooting and reading changelogs. Without these things, we'll always be stuck with the same old software and hardware, the same old limits and constraints, the same old bugs and exploits.
BENEFIT FROM BOTH PHILOSOPHIES
While we actually live our lives, we should swallow the Tolle potion and live in the moment. Don't try not to think, since that's futile, but just passively observe whatever thoughts come up and don't dwell on them; this deprives them of energy and weakens them, freeing us to interact with the world directly, to stop analyzing and just do it, to stop evaluating everything and just enjoy the game of life. However, it's worthwhile to spend some time "upgrading" ourselves with positive affirmations and similar mentalist tricks. Just like you wouldn't try to watch a DVD while installing a new OS, don't make the mistake of trying to whip out hypnotic patterns while actually running around doing things. If I'm flirting with a hot girl and constantly thinking "I am confident and sexy" the whole time, she's probably gonna notice something's really weird about me.
To benefit from the more analytic self-development methods, set aside some time for them, preferably sometime when you're undistracted-- just like meditation. I like to take some time to write affirmations every now and then; it's actually relaxing. The benefits of affirmations (and hypnotism, EFT, etc.) are long-term and subconsious; it's all about reprogramming convictions and beliefs.
The here-and-now mystics talk about the difference between intellectual understanding and emotional understanding. Everyone knows, for example, that they're going to die, but most people don't emotionally know it. Much of the inner work done by Tibetan monks, the whole quest for enlightenment, boils down to converting intellectual knowing into emotional knowing. What the mentalists have discovered are ways of accelerating this process. The two differing schools-- East and West, roughly speaking-- can be combined, to the enhancement of both.
FURTHER READING
How to Take Control of Life
Daily Affirmations
Conscious and Subconscious Mind
The Pain Body
CONSCIOUS VS. SUBCONSCIOUS THOUGHTS
The first distinction to make is that there are both conscious and subconscious thoughts. (I wrote a short article about the two, which you can read here) Most of the time when Eckhart speaks of "thoughts", he's implicitly referring to conscious ones. After all, without subconscious thoughts, we could not parse language, we could not navigate the world; we might even suffocate, or suffer total heart failure.
When we use positive affirmations, or self-hypnosis, or EFT, or NLP, or any of the other mental-based routes to self-development, we are using conscious thoughts, but conscious thoughts are not the ultimate target. The ultimate goal in all these methods is really to program subconscious thoughts. Work we do on our subconscious persists even if we enter a Buddhist trance where our conscious thoughts are deprived of all energy.
Thus, by combining the two movements, we can enjoy the benefits of both. Take time to train and strengthen the subconscious mind by using all the mentalism you can get your hands on, but then when your training is finished for the day, go present and live in the now.
THE COMPUTER ANALOGY
Your personal computer should display things on the monitor as seamlessly as possible. When you watch a movie online, you don't want to see diagnostic information scrolling on the side of the screen (except maybe occasionally during a "Terminator" movie;). When I play a videogame, the last thing I want is to be distracted by irrelevant popups. Typing this article right now, my computer should, as much as possible, play a transparent middleman between me and the readers who read me.
If I approach a stranger to try and start a conversation, and my mind is racing with all sorts of conscious analysis, I'm gonna be a sweaty, nervous wreck. That would be like listening to an MP3 and hearing a voice in the background constantly uttering things like "Loading codecs. Downloading stream. Decompressing data." Without that stuff, the music couldn't play, but that doesn't mean we have to hear about it.
On the other hand, when we want to upgrade the computer, there'll be a certain amount of inserting discs, downloading upgrades, watching progress bars fill up, watching logfiles scroll past, rebooting and reading changelogs. Without these things, we'll always be stuck with the same old software and hardware, the same old limits and constraints, the same old bugs and exploits.
BENEFIT FROM BOTH PHILOSOPHIES
While we actually live our lives, we should swallow the Tolle potion and live in the moment. Don't try not to think, since that's futile, but just passively observe whatever thoughts come up and don't dwell on them; this deprives them of energy and weakens them, freeing us to interact with the world directly, to stop analyzing and just do it, to stop evaluating everything and just enjoy the game of life. However, it's worthwhile to spend some time "upgrading" ourselves with positive affirmations and similar mentalist tricks. Just like you wouldn't try to watch a DVD while installing a new OS, don't make the mistake of trying to whip out hypnotic patterns while actually running around doing things. If I'm flirting with a hot girl and constantly thinking "I am confident and sexy" the whole time, she's probably gonna notice something's really weird about me.
To benefit from the more analytic self-development methods, set aside some time for them, preferably sometime when you're undistracted-- just like meditation. I like to take some time to write affirmations every now and then; it's actually relaxing. The benefits of affirmations (and hypnotism, EFT, etc.) are long-term and subconsious; it's all about reprogramming convictions and beliefs.
The here-and-now mystics talk about the difference between intellectual understanding and emotional understanding. Everyone knows, for example, that they're going to die, but most people don't emotionally know it. Much of the inner work done by Tibetan monks, the whole quest for enlightenment, boils down to converting intellectual knowing into emotional knowing. What the mentalists have discovered are ways of accelerating this process. The two differing schools-- East and West, roughly speaking-- can be combined, to the enhancement of both.
FURTHER READING
How to Take Control of Life
Daily Affirmations
Conscious and Subconscious Mind
The Pain Body
Posts
2 comments:
I find that energy psychology (which includes EFT, CLEAR, TAT, TFT, NLP, and others) removes the core of the problem that prevents us from being in the now. The more we clear, the less we are run by our past and the more able we are to be present. Energy psychologies heal depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, PTSD, phobias and an overly active mind.
I don't really see these as 'opposing' schools of thought. I think they are both a part of the same goal, and they can be used together to achieve enlightenment or even a little more happiness. I don't think Tolle would disagree with using affirmations. Ideally, affirmations wouldn't come from the mind that he argues against. We can use affirmations while still remaining in the Now. I think the best way to reconcile both methods is to simply have an idea of what we want in our lives while still remaining open to the fact that we can't control the outcome.
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