Echkart Tolle and the "Power" of "Now"

Matt: You there?
Luis Valenzuela: yup. BUt will be off in a sec. Gotta do phone calls.
Matt: Oh. Ok. Leave me if you must. :(
Luis Valenzuela: Awwww. Poor Matt. OPen a Dickens novel. That should keep your mind busy.
Luis Valenzuela: :)
Matt: My mind is busy--maybe that's part of the prolem--. Ha!
Matt: problem
Luis Valenzuela: OK, you need that Eckhart Tolle meditation therapy dude from Germany... or was it Austria.
Luis Valenzuela: He's into the live-in-the-here-and-now philosophy.
Matt: Don't know--. Looked at it only very, very briefly.
Matt: I don't trust that stuff. Do you?
Luis Valenzuela: Not much. It's a way of institutionalizing conformity on a grand scale. Be suspicious of people backed by Oprah.
Luis Valenzuela: hahaha
Matt: Yeah. Sounds right by me, brutha--.
Matt: You know what Oprah can do with herself--. :|
Luis Valenzuela: There is a valid anti-stress element to it. But the "accept the way things are" element is highly suspicious.
Matt: I'd say so. :)
Luis Valenzuela: Don't look toward the past and don't get anxious about the future seems a kind of mind control that leads to an occult form of nihilism. Aspirations get tossed into the toilet. If aspirations are collective then there is no change.
Luis Valenzuela: Of course, his advice ain't part of corporate culture or government. Sounds dangerous.
Matt: Hmmm...that's a big one, though I largely agree. However, as you said, there is a valid element. Anxiety is clearly "inapropriate" per a decent lifestyle. This sensation can be debilitating. Forgetting one's fears of the future can relieve some of it, I think--. Wouldn't you say?
Luis Valenzuela: Yes. However, collective oblivion seems scary. Can lead to renewed fascism in high tech format
Matt: Uh oh!
Matt: :)
Luis Valenzuela: And this dude is making LOADS of cash off this philosophy. Ten million books sold.
Luis Valenzuela: IN the US
Luis Valenzuela: haa
Luis Valenzuela: Backed by a media whore.
Matt: Yeah. Proof of the correctness of his "philosophy," I suppose.
Matt: Success is often seen as proof-in-itself.
Luis Valenzuela: Ya think U.S. soldiers in, say, Afghanistan should meditate and not think about the future?
Luis Valenzuela: hahaha
Matt:  Most likely they don't have time to. However, warriors have long had traditions that involve focusing and concentrating the mind, as i"m sure you know.
Matt: For example, martial music.
Luis Valenzuela: So, his manner of thinking seem contextually specific: civil society and its inherent anxieties. DON'T GET ANXIOUS, DON'T COMPLAIN. JUST LIVE IN THE AWARENESS OF NOW.
Luis Valenzuela: AH yeah, martial music.
Matt: Also the discipline of an army is a form of meditation, perhaps. It lends rhythm and reliability to life, which is characteristic of daily, "pre-scheduled" meditation.
Luis Valenzuela: Similarities to religion. Jimmy Swaggart and fuckerz like that.
Matt: But do you see my last point?
Luis Valenzuela: Of course he's not anxious. Not because he follows his own philosophy but because he's got millions in the bank and can tell most people to fuck off. Get the gimmick?
Luis Valenzuela: Yes. I get your last point. But that's just training ...for a violent future in combat.
Matt: Yes, but without, they would be unlikely to prevail.
Matt: it
Luis Valenzuela: If he were sent to prison on some charge, I bet he'd be anxious about being forced to give inmates blow jobs.
Luis Valenzuela: Well, this is a kind of "training" of course.
Matt: Of course there are qualifications and conditionals (sic). There always are. Not that i'm defending his book.
Luis Valenzuela: And soldiers are anxious all the time at any rate and they come back fucked up as usual.
Luis Valenzuela: All I'm saying is that there a kind of result that obtains with this kind of thinking.
Matt: True, but that's no reason as an individual to simply resign oneself to the anxiety. That in itself is programmatic.
Matt: Of course there is.
Matt: A result.
Luis Valenzuela: Brave New World comes to mind.
Luis Valenzuela: Prophetic little novel.
Luis Valenzuela: I don't mean to seem a conspiracy theorist in spirit.
Matt: But that result has as much to do with mass media, mass hysteria, mass psychology and mass economics as it does with this kind of thinking in and of itself.
Luis Valenzuela: YEs,
Matt: In other words, there is more at play than the philosophy in itself.
Luis Valenzuela: and his thinking is a "natural" mechanism for dealing with daily life.
Matt: philosophy
Luis Valenzuela: It's a "happy pill".
Luis Valenzuela: Without the drugs.
Matt: It's a form of simplification perhaps, that beckons one back to pre-temporal times.
Matt: When Time did not exist pervasively as it does today.
Matt: At least as a mechanized concept.
Matt: The "here and the now" "transcends" Time.
Luis Valenzuela: Right. The big cities in the XIX century brought all kinds of abuse to industrial production and the CLOCK began to set the pace to everyone's lives.
Matt: Yes.
Luis Valenzuela: SO, basically we're fucked. And we either deal with the shit in some manner or other: either through critical thought and action, or blissful conformity.
Luis Valenzuela: Take your pick.
Matt: Perhaps things will be "taken care of" for us. I.e., mass extermination, disease, environmental catastrophe, etc.
Luis Valenzuela: Winning the lottery and giving everything the big finger in an intelligent manner is one way to "get away", if you can, from it all, but not very likely.
Matt: We are only made of flesh, and as such "our" problems will disappear perhaps, as in "ashes to ashes / dust to dust."
Luis Valenzuela: I think global nuclear war would be one solution to go for. hahaha
Matt: All will be left behind--perhaps.
Luis Valenzuela: Wipe that dirty slate CLEAN
Luis Valenzuela: But the lizard-like quest for power would still remain, I think.
Matt: I mean, our problems have a life-span also, just as the individual does.
Luis Valenzuela: YEs. And life, as we know, consists mainly of problems created for us by others, aside from the ones we create for ourselves.
Matt: Uh oh--maybe you should read some Tolle? Sounds like others are taking a toll (get it? Lol) on you!
Matt: I'll see ya later?
Matt: Try out Trillian for Facebook chat. It's fun.
Matt: Adios?
Luis Valenzuela: Ok, dude. HAve a good one.
Luis Valenzuela: ADIOS
Matt: Thanks. You're not upset, are you?
Luis Valenzuela: Not at all. I'm fuckin' made of cast iron...er, I think. Hahaha
Matt: Funny. :) Adios!
Luis Valenzuela: BYE
Luis Valenzuela: ;)

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