Well, on April 9th of this year I fly out to California to attend a live recording of Eckhart Tolle TV in San Francisco.  It’s a two day event and I fly back home on the 12th.  Eckhart Tolle TV is a subscription based web broadcast where Eckhart answers questions from the audience.  (You can check it out at http://www.eckharttolletv.com ) I wish I had planned to stay in San Francisco a little longer than 3 nights.  I like the West Coast and could probably find some other neat things to do out there.   And, to be honest, sometimes I wonder if I’m getting too deep into all this New Age stuff.  I think it’s confusing and can even fuck your head up.  Some spirituality is good, no doubt.  But obsessing over it cannot be healthy.  I think in psychology the term for this is a “magnificent obsession”.  And what I wonder is what causes a so-called magnificent obsession?  Don’t get me wrong, I love Eckhart and he is a great teacher.  But, I don’t believe realization is something you can force, ultimately.  In fact, there are alot of spiritual teachers that, ironically, tell people to forget about enlightenment and to forget about spirituality.  And then half the other teachers out there will tell you that you need to desire Enlightenment as intensely as you would desire air if you were drowning.  WTF??

I often ask myself, “what would make me happy?”.  And I think the best answer I can give is, “happiness”.  Happiness is what would make me happy.  In other words,  I don’t think external circumstances matter much anymore.  Nothing happened externally that got me into this psychological funk 14 years ago and I don’t believe anything external or in the outer world can change that would make a difference.  Having a healthy mind, psychologically, is what makes happiness.  Eckhart Tolle spent two years wandering around homeless and alone when he came to the west coast.  And he says those two years were spent being in the most intense joy.  Real happiness comes from understanding.  How then do I come to this state or this understanding?  I don’t know.  Maybe there is no answer and no path.

Malheureusement, I had to learn all of this on my own.  I wont go into details here but suffice it to say I have not drank or smoked anything in over 6 years and plan on keeping it that way.  I despise drugs (especially alcohol) and think it is a shame that public schools don’t do more about educating kids on the subject.  For instance, I never learned in gradeschool that long-term drinking can cause dementia (karsakof-wernicke syndrome) or that a percentage of marijuana users will develop psychosis and need psychiatric medication for the rest of their lives.  I think we can hardly call the modern day schooling systems an “education”.  But I digress.

Suffering is part of the Divine plan of the Universe.  Without it, the mere concept of joy or peace would not exist.  And it is up to us to make the conscious decision between drama or peace, ego or transcendence of ego.  Eckhart Tolle in his book “The Power of Now”, teaches that only suffering is what breaks down the egoic consciousness and that drugs and alcohol only delay the breakdown/transcendence of the ego because they keep us numbed up and allow us to carry on in psychological dysfunction.  Hence, drugs thwart the divine plan of life.  That is why religions consider them to be so sinister (apart from the obvious physical health reasons).

“Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise.”
Proverbs 20:1

It takes a creative mind to be able to meditate effectively.  What I recommend most to those new to meditation and spirituality is to start by listening to your thoughts.  Observe your mind.  And eventually you’ll notice yourself taking your thoughts less and less seriously.  They won’t seem to carry so much weight with them.  A very few of you will simply be able to use your creativity to slow down your thinking.  This is the most direct way of meditating, and it is a very very rare ability.

Meditation can be, ironically, a very unpleasant and even painful experience, contrary to the common misconception of it being a relaxation technique.  The goal is, ultimately, to realize inner peace, but getting there can be very unpleasant.  Generally, you can determine if you are progressing in meditation by the degree of peace you feel from within.  Realizing inner peace is a direct sign that you are successfully slowing down your mind because mind is the antithesis of inner peace.

I believe, also, that there is a very strong link between depression and anger – or what I call “empty anger”.  For instance, if a patient is being emotionally abused and does not act out his/her anger, then depression results.  Depression is anger without enthusiasm.  Practicing assertiveness is, in my opinion, the most practical way of overcoming depression.

Eckhart Tolle