Beautiful/rare sunset thunderstorm pic. Via.
Beautiful/rare sunset thunderstorm pic. Via.
Just in case you haven’t seen this already…
Okay, so lately just about everyone has been talking about Oprah’s latest spiritual guru flavor of the month, Eckhart Tolle, and while I’m a fan of his teachings, I have some arguments that I’d like to get off my chest. (Take them for what they’re worth. And hopefully Eckhart Googles himself from time to time so he can respond to this. Totally kidding: self-Googling is egoic!)
In no particular order:
1. In A New Earth, Tolle asserts that the “egoic mind”—individual identity and ambition multiplied by six billion scheming humans—is responsible for ruining our personal lives, derailing our spiritual growth, and destroying our planet. Agreed. Except that Tolle’s vision of a egoless 24/7 present moment awareness creates some problems.
Namely, if you happen to be in a field where an ego is required, you suddenly see yourself as a totally non-spiritual heathen. This is a mistake—you aren’t an abomination if you take pride in what you do. You’re doing what you’re meant to do.
Writers certainly need to be somewhat egotistical. Eckhart may be able to sit on a park bench in Vancouver for 12 hours straight in a state of genuine bliss, but I also believe he likes the feeling of seeing his name on a show’s chyron and his book’s title rising on the bestseller lists. If this weren’t the case, he would have taken on a pseudonym—the author of the Tao Te Ching, arguably the best 2,500 year old spiritual text out there, used the clever pen name Lao Tzu (meaning simply “old sage” or “old man”). How’s that for non-egoic! Dude totally didn’t give a shit.
2. Ego put a man on the moon; ego drives our brightest researchers to develop breakthrough drugs and cures; without ego we wouldn’t have Leonardo Da Vinci or Van Gogh or even the Jonas Brothers!
3. Present moment awareness—good for some people, not so much for others. Tolle and millions of others probably benefit big-time from staying in the moment. Focusing on the past is a waste of energy and worrying about the future is equally useless since modern quantum physics points us in the direction of a world where there is no pre-determined outcome. There are an infinite number of possibilities, maybe also an infinite number of parallel universes, and your “reality” in this moment as you read these words could be the result of one of those possibilities collapsing and taking form in this universe. (I know this is deep shit coming from the guy who was defending PH last year, but I do read things other than Maxim from time to time).
So I’m in agreement with Tolle, except that for some people the past is invaluable: David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs mine their pasts for great content, Chuck Klosterman is something of a “past moment awareness” practitioner if you think about it, and they’re all creating useful work. Present moment awareness in its purest form doesn’t allow for any of this.
4. Everything is spiritual. I was reading a book by New York Times bestselling author Gregg Braden on the train this morning and he talks about this idea at length. (Brilliant writer, by the way.) Paying your bills, arguing with your real estate agent, flirting, day trading, that parking ticket—all of them are spiritual. If you truly believe in a connected, intelligent universe, you can’t exclude egoic activities. You can’t claim they’re non-spiritual.
Obviously being an asshole is a bad form of ego, but I’d argue that’s ego stemming from insecurity rather than specialization. Some of your favorite TV personalities probably have “ego” (plenty of it!) but this may be a way for the universe to experience itself in a new and exciting way. Some “spiritual” people assume that only those who live like saints are rewarded—clearly a quick viewing of Cribs will prove otherwise. Some people say that Donald Trump has a “karmic payback” coming to him… Well, what if the universe/God/the spaghetti monster simply gets a kick out of Trump; what if it’s a huge fan of The Apprentice?
If six billion people spent all their time reading A New Earth and staring off into the distance, not much would get done. Progress happens because of differentiation, and yes, because of ego. Buildings get made because someone, somewhere, wanted their name on it. Hospital wings go up when an old rich dude has a taste of his own mortality and wants to leave something good behind with his name on it.
I think self-expression is a part of the plan. A big part of it.
Harness your ego. Don’t allow yourself to be “hurt” by damage to your ego—it’s not the real you anyway, but it is a temporary and potentially useful tool. No matter how much you achieve, it probably won’t make much of a dent (for better or worse) in the universe. It’s been around for 14 billion years, and it isn’t going anywhere just yet.
I can promise there won’t be any other posts this long… I may break the Tumblr!
Book’s finally off at the printing press. Pretty cool feeling, to say the least.
This is what the final cover looks like (front and back). It’s an improvement over the cover they used for the ARCs, which was already awesome in my opinion.
Presented without comment. Just awesome.
The Web 2.0 way to promote your book, or anything. Post kitten photo, add traffic, and stir.
This blog has been pretty still lately.
I’ve been busy working on something. There’s only so much energy in the day, and sadly thankfully I’m more committed to self-promotion and the wholesale destruction of trees (a.k.a. having a successful book) than to finding you little YouTube clips.
But you should totally check out The Dark Knight because I’m seeing in two hours and am pretty excited — if the reviews are to be believed, should be great!
Also: if you want to take up a new hobby, I highly recommend meditating. I’ve been doing it for about an hour a day every single day for the past two weeks and the results have been amazing. Try it.
Yahoo! Search Marketing’s contextual advertising has a pretty good sense of humor. Screenshot taken today.
“Attempting to rush the schedule based on your own timetable is akin to getting down on your knees and tugging at an emerging tulip shoot, insisting that you need the flower now.” — Wayne Dyer, from The Power of Intention
The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger as the Joker, trailers of The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight preview screenings, Batman franchise.
There, I’ve done it. A post designed entirely as a traffic grab. Sadly, this will likely get more traffic than every other item on my blog.
But this is actually interesting: Scientific American’s excellent take on Batman in a four-page article no doubt also designed to cash in on Dark Knight Google traffic over the next few days.