Eckhart Tolle's Book, "A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life's Purpose"

Eckhart Tolle is arguably among the world's most prominent spiritual writers. His books have been named, not once but twice, on Oprah's Book of the Month Club. Even better, Oprah and Tolle are offering a free, online workshop to discuss A New Earth Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.

This lens discusses each chapter as Oprah and Tolle cover them in the webinar. Please contribute and let's discuss this phenomenon.

Introduction to our Spiritual Awakening

Eckart Tolle predicts that the human race is poised for a profound shift in consciousness. We are beginning to witness a spiritual awakening.

The Good Earth, he says, is a transformational device arisen out of this new consciousness. He expects that the reader will experience a shift in consiousness as a result of reading the book. The book will either change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless.

As each individual raises his or her state of consciousness, this in turn increases the momentum of the collective unconsciousness. In other words, you change the world when you change yourself.

Tolle points to the history of the human race as a history of madness. In other words, that which we consider 'normal' is at its very root, dysfunctional. What we consider 'normal' arises from the ego, and the ego is rampant with greed, pride, the lust for power, anger, fear, jealousy, insecurity, etc.

This new consciousness means rising above thought, realizing that within us that is so much greater than thought. Our thoughts, the "voice in our head" is not who we are... we are the being that is behind the thoughts -- our spiritual self.

The more you seek happiness, the more it eludes you. Stop looking and it finds you when you least expect it to happen.

One destination, many paths

There are many ways to get "in the now." Here are some of them:

1. Being outside experiencing nature

2. Meditation

3. EFT tapping

4. Prayer

5. Using a psychological "gimmick" to bring oneself into the Now -- such as visualizing an enjoyable scene

6. journaling

7. Petting an animal

8. Guided imagery

9. And many more

Is Eckhart Tolle's writing a threat to organized religion?

The Voices in Our Head

In Chapter 2, Eckhart Tolle talks about the ego, and the "voices in our head." The minister at my Church sometimes refers to this as the "Board of Directors" -- the miscellaneous people that chatter in our heads -- offering criticisms, warnings, scoldings, nagging, frightened 'what if's" and so forth.

If we banished the "board of directors" -- what voice would we hear?

Tolle says our egoic mind consists of content and structure, and is completely conditioned by the past. He says that our ego likes to identify with thoughts, words, wants, possessions and societal messages, but our our real self -- our spirit self -- is separate and distinct from all of that. The new consciousness involves moving beyond the ego and into our spirit.

A New Earth: Awakening to your Life's Purpose, Eckard Tolle asks, "When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form. When there is nothing left to identify with anymore, who are you?"

Do you know?

Chapter Three

How strongly do you identify with the voice in your head? Do you know the voice is not truly "you" -- it is your ego at work. The ego loves to complain -- but that which we focus on becomes stronger. So by focusing on the complaints, worries, concerns, etc., we make these conditions stronger. As Tolle said in his Webinar with Oprah, "complaining" is not done for the purpose of correcting a situation. That is something different. Complaining is done simply as the ego's way of reinforcing its "rightness" and someone else's "wrongness."

Eckhart Tolle makes the excellent point that war is a mindset. He points out that despite our "war on drugs", "war on crime", "war against infectious diseases," etc., we have more drug abuse, more crime and more medial treatments than ever.

What you resiss, persists.

Chapter four is a long one. It talks about the role playing we do, and the many roles that our ego identifies with. Eckart Tolle cautions us not to confuse function with a role. For example, if I am a mother, I am obligated and responsible to carry out certain mothering functions. But I should avoid allowing my ego to make my mother role my identify.

I love the part at the end when Eckhart talks about ego and work. He makes the point that some people who are exceptionally good at what they do may sometimes lose the ego and function from the spirit while they are working. For them, work is a spiritual practice.

Tolle also pointed out to a caller during the Webinar that it can be a spiritual practice for any of us to do our work, our functions, while striving to act from Consciousness, rather than ego.

I like that approach.

Spiritual practices are freely available to us regardless of our functions in life. We can pursue spiritual growth whether tending the kids or chairing a board meeting