Sahara71 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A friend of mine once tried to
'live in the
> now' for a period of several weeks and
> everyone quickly became frustrated with her
> because nothing was done and everyone else had to
> pick up the slack and it was as annoying as hell.
> I suppose
Tolle would say
"let other
> people become annoyed, that is not your
> concern". But then what if your marriage falls
> apart and your friends disown you and you have no
> job as a result of living in the moment? What if
> the baby isn't fed all day, and so the authorities
> come and take it away?
That's a great example of the confusion Tolle sows with his anti-scientific approach. Telling people that they can achieve peace of mind by trying to be in the present moment is like telling someone that they can achieve REM-sleep by closing their eyes and moving them rapidly.
If you want to experience the present moment more consciously, it's better to look at what the problem factually is and what methods actually demonstrably work to solve that problem. So it's better to look into what scientific research has found than to spend hours reading/listening to some self-proclaimed spiritual teacher's quasi wisdom.
Quote
Many philosophical and contemplative traditions teach that “living in the moment” increases happiness. However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing.
source: [
www.pnas.org]
Quote
While brain default mode network (DMN) activation in human subjects has been associated with mind wandering, meditation practice has been found to suppress it and to increase psychological well-being.
source: [
www.eneuro.org]