I'm curious why you decided to bump a thread from so long ago?

Anyone can 'bump' a thread if he or she is interested enough, pro or con
to make a post and revive a discussion.

Older, longer discussions that mention Tolle are here, Some hunting needed
to locate extended discussions but interesting nonetheless:

[forum.culteducation.com]


One very interesting perspective

[forum.culteducation.com]

Hello there.
i am a man in his 20' that has been exposed to tolles work. my story is about 2 years long now. i won t say much. i am happy i have found this forum. accualy it s the first forum i register for. Some things about your experience really made me resonate with. Believe me for some time now i though i was alone out there. i though i have gone crazy and there was no way back. I realized that our mind is in someway vulnerable to manipulation-brainwashing. Secondly i realized i was raized in a way or maybe i dunno if it s victimhood to through it on the way i was raised but i realized i had not developed my critical thinking. i also realize a tedency to put others on a pedestral, and become some kind of follower always believing my voice is inferior of them. I mean rolemodeling is only healthy to a point and i personaly believe to some age. but this. This was a rocket in my face or mind to be more specific.
AFTER 1 month of reading tolles book i was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety disorder.Had Loud tinitus in left ear.my sweet head was busted.insomnia for a long time.i was like sleepless for like 3 weeks(imagine that) or so and a long time passed for my sleep to recover (maybe it was flase sense and i did sleep some hours in these 3 weeks but that s excactly how i was feeling like) i am not going to throw it all out on the reading of tolles book as i had my some anxiety before but i was really working on and goting through it. some days before i was really anxious in regards to a big upcoming event of my life. and now looking back i realize something more. In situations like that my first urge is surf online to my -internet google friend-psycology. In a situation like that where i was too streesed out i stumbled upon tolles book. And thats where it all fucking started.i remember after reading like half of his book going out of home and boom i knew "i got fucked up" there was this thought of "oh man i should have never red this book" and i remember it man like fucking ptsd i remember a creepy,ugly,dreadful weird feeling going with that though i was like "oh man i don t want that". i can compare it with the eye of a fucking cyclon. because in a way that s what they kinda preach if you see. like " you are 'peaceful' and empty on your core staf".. that s what he delivered. so in a way he is not a charlatan. Only that starting to read his i fantasized it would be something really diferent than BEING FUCKING ZOMBIFIED, BLANK, EMPTY, FEELINGLESS, DISSOCIATED,-lifeless- ... it was traumatic. My parents didn t know what to think. all the things i describe now i was not aware back then. i didn t know what the hell was going on. propably that s what these nuts call ego death..hehe oh man. these people are so sick. my ego was never gone it was just petrified.
My parents are christians so imagine telling em about these cult things. they were trying to help me but all they where doing was making me feel even worse.i felt much guilt. i started reading the bible went to church i was just hopeless and despared trying to find some hand to hold on to get help. for some time (like 2-5 months) i was like "ok now i am christian jesus is my savior,jesus will save me from this devil and my devil mind ". it kinda work like a Band-aid for some time But not for long. the truth: i was getting shitier and maybe even deeper,not sure . because you see i picked and just turned to a more familiar shithole. a shithole that was approved by my home and parents. a shithole that long ago i had-to a point- got out from because i was living away from my home for 6years and more years back because as a teenager i was a church or relegious guy. and i had "detoxed' lets say many bs from my home and parents . i was feeling like opening wings back then. Anyways. i feel i can write forever.
What i am starting to see now is that i ( maybe -we- propably because i know i am not alone now) had betrayed my self, my freedom my soul and fall to a trap like fucking sheep.My old patterns of shame and guilt about myself just found another way to be reiforced.For a man that has internalized propably from young age shame and guilt about himself and he feel bad inside the "teachings" of tolle FITS PERFECTLY FOR A MAN LIKE THAT.YOU SEE?it s like trying to find a way to fit into familiar(propably unconcioysly) ways of thinking and believing and worldviews.
I have come to believe that my GAD was because ..my mind freaked the fuck out about normal and natural cognitive functions.reading tolles book raised so many fears and phobias about my mind it was like Fight or flight response was like always ON because you see our mind CANT STOP WORKING-except when you die( i am not talking about ruminating)( i mean if you are in the storm right now try to remember some random happy moment of your life- Your mind WAS WORKING JUST FINE YOUR EGO WAS THERE).So if you have perceived AND INTERNALIZED IN YOUR MIND THAT YOUR MIND IS BAD-OR EVEN INHERENTLY DANGEROUS-YOU SEE OUR SWEET LITTLE MIND(OR A SPECIFIC PART OF IT OR THE EGO OR WHATEVER WANNA CALL IT) ONLY WANTS TO PROTECT US FROM DANGER. SO WE INTERNILIZED --> MIND(NORMAL FUNCTIONS OF OUR MIND)=DANGER,THREAT/ FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE KICKS/MIND OFCOURSE DOESN T AND CAN T STOP WORKING/SO THERE IS A CONSTANT PERCEIVED BY OUR MIND THREAT (WHICH IS OUR NATURAL FUCNTION(S) OF OUR MIND)/ FIGHT OR FLIGHT STRESS RESPONSE KEEPS ON=GAD AND EXTREME ANXIETY
(oh man where the hell was i..;pit feels reliefing writting things down here.
Now i have accepted in someway and come to terms that it takes time.i see it like flowers growing . only its beliefs and in this case toxic ones. i believe that letting em unwattered sooner or later they will rot and die. because in the moment i am writing i am like a lot better psycologically and i am getting my mind back and my relationship with myself gets restored. the time passes i feel peace and my cognitive and emotional health coming back.the old missed sweet sense of freedom i sold away once without really wanting to comes back. IT TAKES TIME GUYS.
All relegion sucks to me now.(as it did before and now i fully know why) but not faith . you see it s enough. we gotta say it s enough. These people (from all religions and "spiritual" BS teams) prey upon our lust for joy and peace and love and sense of relief and freedom. Maybe some don t even have that intention at mind-maybe- but that s another lesson i learnt. good or bad intention doesn t have to do with the end results which can be damaging.They are just humans. ALL of them christians, buddism,"the secret","letting go"yogic cults etc. but really can someone REALLY BUY or "own the copyrights" ? of simple and natural to all of us things . like faith, personal power, our courage to face and confront difficulties and fears, the capacity to know ourselfs, to live and enjoy the fucking moment whatever it is. to take care and enjoy with our bodies?
In my recovery time i have found this to be an obstacle to push through because somehow i came to connect these and more other things with some kind of relegion or spirituallity. WE DONT NEED THEM we were kinda pushed to believe we do. EVEN WRITING THAT MAKES ME FEEL SOME SHAME AND GUILT because i and we have learned that way.
But it s enough..we got to say it s enough there no savior coming.We gotta help ourselves. Enough being a sheep and a pray to whomevers sick appetites and notions.
i wrote this for myself. and maybe it gets to some use and help for someone else .

Hi George x, it sounds to me like you suffer from depersonalization. It may be that Tolle's Eckhart material triggered it for you. Depersonalization is a dissociative disorder. I have had depersonalization myself, also combined with generalized anxiety disorder. I didn't really understand what happened to me until I went into therapy. My therapist and I looked at what it was that caused the anxiety that made me dissociate from myself (depersonalization) and from reality (derealization).

It happened to me when I was around 10 years old and later again in my adolescence. In the last case, marihuana was the trigger for me, as it seems to be in many cases.

The self that I had assumed myself to be didn't appear to be real any longer, and this led me on a quest to find out what I really was. Western philosophy always seemed mostly narrow-minded to me — over-educated gentlemen trying to impress each other with difficult words.. They seem to be stuck in their minds, whereas in the Eastern approach, they examine what their experience of thought is, and what their experience of themselves and reality, independently of thought is. That's what appealed to me because it was my very mind and its thought-fabrications that no longer seemed satisfactorily real to me.

In my search for truth, the most important thing I found is that what is most essential to what I am is not the mental image I have of myself, but the awareness that perceives that image. Since that awareness can't be experienced as any kind of concrete or abstract form, it seems fitting to me to call it formless. This is exactly the main point of what Tolle writes, if I recall correctly. He distinguishes form and formlessness, and encourages the reader to examine their identification with form, so that they can become aware of the formless essence of what it is that identifies and experiences.

He had a sudden shift of identification from his form-self (ego) to formlessness, when he questioned the thought that kept running through his mind when he was about to kill himself. That thought was "I can no longer live with myself." He then wondered (paraphrasing): "Who can no longer live with who? What is it that observes this self I think I am?"

In my experience, the recognition of the unreality of the self-image can either be hellish or heavenly. It's hellish when you don't recognize that there's a higher truth to yourself (what Tolle calls formlessness), and heavenly when you do. I have experienced both.

In this video, meditation teacher Shinzen Young explains this difference and similarity between awakening and DP/DR (depersonalization/derealization):
[www.youtube.com]

I should note that when you awaken to a higher truth of yourself (formlessness), this is possibly a new trap, a new opportunity for dissociation. It should be a transient perspective, leading to the recognition that this essence that's the true nature of yourself is the same true nature of everything (all form), and that neither form nor formlessness is a complete description of this essence. For example spiritual teacher Mooji encourages you to embrace the formless and deny the reality of form, and you can see that people following his teachings can get stuck in a dissociative state.

To quote myself from a previous post:

Quote

there exists the phenomenon of an intense "awakening" experience in which you recognize that what you really are, the true subject of experience, was never located in this reality (spacetime), because it's timeless and spaceless. This experience comes with intense energy and bliss, and a feeling of having arrived, having found the truth, and often with a desire to share this truth (some would call it "zealotry"). But it's only half of the truth; there is still identification with separation (with what's called "the watcher dimension" in this description of the ox herding metaphors for 10 stages of enlightenment~ [blog.buddhagroove.com] , see stage 7).

That stage of identification with formlessness and disidentification from form is stage 7 in the link from my quote: "Ox Forgotten, Self Alone."
Stage 8 is:

Quote

Both Ox and Self Forgotten. Separateness and duality evaporate as as we see ourselves and all things as part of the All That Is, the Oneness. It is a visceral experience, not just an idea or concept.

In conclusion: for me, the only way out of depersonalization seemed to be to find out more deeply what I really am, and in my case the Eastern approach (and most of all: meditation) was most appealing. But what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you. I can only tell you what was/is true for me, and when I do I feel it's important to mention the caveat of potentially encountering a new dissociative trap: stage 7.

One more thing about Tolle: his sudden awakening (i.e. shift of identification from form to formlessness) resulted in a greatly diminished amount of thoughts. It was the self-centered, habitual and petty thoughts that dropped away. That doesn't mean we should strive to think less. You can't make your unhappiness disappear or "awaken" by trying to think less. But that is how Tolle seems to think it works. He drew wrong conclusions from what happened to him. His thoughts aren't any more reliable than your or my thoughts.

And who's to say that Tolle accurately portrayed the inner events and states that he experienced and experiences? He may have strongly exaggerated it or even fabricated it. Even if he experienced an awakening, he may have slipped back into his pre-awakening state afterwards. This usually seems to happen, which is why the initial awakening in many Eastern traditions is seen as just the beginning of the spiritual path, with a lot more purification and meditation needed to be done to establish any sort of lasting awakening.

If you want to know about the phenomenon of diminished thought after awakening, look into Gary Weber. After decades of meditating two hours a day, suddenly his self-referential thoughts stopped and never fully returned. Being a scientist himself, he can explain the phenomenon clearly and rationally. He has been examined by neuroscientists (using brain-scans), and what they found is interesting.
More about that here: [psychologytomorrowmagazine.com] and here: [psychologytomorrowmagazine.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2020 06:31PM by zizlz.

hello there,
i am one of them that let my mind be screwed by that dingy man. it s been almost 2 years from my "fall into the pit" moment. i know your feeling about balancing your "mindblankness" with thinking more. i was doing that as a " counteraction" too ,to tolle's poison. i have been there fella i know. Indeed it has it s place for people recovering from this because it can counteract the guilt created by this charlatan's technicks ABOUT OUR MIND(oh man it pisses me of.). But it s not a "solving technice" nor a main solution. It s not about overthinking nor embracing rumination :P. Your were not like that before why be now?. i mean it s only natural and sometimes i can happen to anyone to overthink about sth or even ruminate . but finnaly you don t wanna embrace that as an "expostulation" to that mans bullshit if you know what i mean.it feels like a trap to me it doesn t seem like the thing to do to go to some other extreme.
Ego is not good not bad . Its just what it is. YEAH WE NEED IT. OFCOURSE WE DO. the crazy thing is that we talk or negotiate if we do or not if it s healthy/natural or not . Ego was never the problem.(now in which "condition" and state it is it s another thing) It s just part that nature gave us. the same aplies to thinking. Thinking is just thinking it s a natural ability of us all. we are (and)thinking creatures I WAS NATURAL AND WILL ALWAYS BE.
i saw your comment and i felt like replying. yes ego is good (you can say in someway as you can say about your liver lol :P). Love yourself again love your mind and let the relationship with yourself be restored.

Brainwashed90 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was going through a rough patch in my life when
> I picked up the almighty Power of Now...

> ...Does anyone have any advice for someone
> who is trying to get out of this state? I feel
> like my mind is not functioning. I can't believe I
> bought all his bull shit! that I am just like a
> fucking flower...I am not a flower...he is the
> flower!


The state of consciousness of the present moment (power of now) is a consequence of the gradual and spontaneous erasure of the "patches" of the Ego from the 12 layers of the aura, by practicing some kind of non-Ego meditation.

If a person by volition tries to provoke such a state of consciousness, then he practices concentration, which leads to mental exhaustion and the appearance of problems of various kinds.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2021 02:40PM by Dandelion.

Hi again. After a whole year+ i got a notification from rick ross (it didn t feel good seeing it but anyways) so with the opportunity i am here to state that i feel A LOT better. and people that got through similar staff like i did know this : THERE IS A WAY OUT. It s painful. But there is.
The most important is to set sail away FROM ALL THIS NEW AGE GURUS BULLSHIT.
Have the intention, set sail and god or whatever you believe will help you get there.
The more i felt myself "cleansing" from all the "spiritual" crap the better i felt.
One of the main things i found out is that My poor mind was stuck in trying to do sooo many things it was like a long term burn out.

"The present moment" that tolle , people like tolle and new age gurus try to own and preach like jesus, it s like so simple that it was never meant and should NEVER HAVE BEEN A SUBJECT OF PHILOSOFY or PRACTISING and staff. I mean it s so fucking ridiculus to me now.

These people are charlatans. They just mix common to all people truths with things that i strongly believe are UNHEALTHY, TOXIC AND DANGEROUS. And number one is : Hate your ego and "kill your ego" <-- THIS IS PURE POISON. And you know what? ITS NOT something new.
During the past year or sth i don t recall in detail i was in my living room in my bed. I was just staring at my home library and i stumble upon a sociology book (that wasn t even mine) and here is the funny thing. I started randomly looking at pages of the book when my eyes caught something intersting. Boom there it was. The page was refering to a period of economic and general crisis of the Dark Ages (This is eons ago). And there it was the writter (i don t recall neither the name of the writter or the book, but i can find it if anyone wants) mentioning relegious and spiritual preachers and cults talking at public about "a spirutual road of no ego". I recall the writter was trying to connect this with a period where people (mostlly poor fuckers which these preachers were refering too mostly) had A LOT of problems of economic and other nature and these preachers were preaching these thing as a solution!!. It was really amazing what i found. Suddenly Tolle and other gurus like him were NOT SOMETHING NEW !, were NOT people that bring some new evolutionary idea AS THEY SAY! HE IS JUST ANOTHER ONE OF MANY THAT COME AND COME AGAIN AND AGAIN IN TIMES OF CRISIS. Now you may think "ok then they come for a reason, they are good" or maybe even "GOD sents em!" "lets listen to them" BUT NO! NO! If we aprove every motherfucker that comes playing The messia in times of crisis then this is gonna be a fucking disaster! HITLERS WAS on of them..he is a good paradigm ..He wasn t for good wasn t he? He was talking for a new earth TOO, A NEW WORLD MADE IN HIS OWN CRITERIA PERFECT AND GOOD!!
They are charlatans and as a good charlatans does is mix truth with lie!
And They may not even say they are , maybe the believe there are "doing good" to the world.
Anyways having undeveloped critical ability may get your mind and soul to a place you never wanted to and you already propably know to be here in the first place.
I write this as i still keep recovering and knowing for a fact That there is a way forth and out. Our ego is a natural and nessecary part of our psyce and being that God gave us and gave us for A REASON. We need it . It s not about Ego or not but What ego, how developed it is. With simpler words it s not about mind or not mind It s about WHATS in our minds and how we grow and learn to use our minds and what is our "relationship" internally with it.
If you are struggling Keep going and face your fears that grew out from reading tolles book because in my case that was it. It was a like fear and worry and anxiety that grew out of it , about my own Fucking head! About natural things . It s funny and almost ridiculus that i found out that i was anxious about even thinking on its own!!! or a song getting stuck in my head! ( i mean what s more normal than that? hell in my head that had become STH BAD AND STH TO BE KICKED OUT ASAP like it was threat for fuck sake.)

Good luck and keep going.

Hi, thank You George so much for your post. I can relate so much. Some gurus and teachers see us as ego and they send this critical, hate perspective, and we tend to identify with their perspective. So we start this insane drive toward nothingness, being nothing and even niglecting our being human.
I was there, I abused myself, I didn't care for myself, I was frustated, I felt not loved, with no support. Sometimes I am so frustrated with human beings and not being able to sutisfy their wants toward me.
I can relate with your post. I understand you very much.

May Life's fullnes, and love and grace lead you in life and may we just let them go and be happy.

we are not on the same sync here man. Don t reply to me again. I am out of that staff generally . If you want to keep going with the eastern bullshit sure it s your right.

the last comment of mine was going for zizlz .