Eckhart Tolle and Neale Donald Walsh on no-mind

Today I watched a short video on YouTube: The Evolution Of Awareness: A Conversation With Neale Donald Walsh. The title is not particularly representative of what is spoken about. Basically, Neale Donald Walsh says to Eckhart Tolle – in a really sweet way – that although he understands about being in presence (the state of no-mind) he often is not: to the point where my loved ones look at me sometimes and say ‘you ought to read one of your own books’. He continues soon: I’ve come to you for a personal counselling session … how do I take what I experience myself to be and wash the canvas of my life with it … why can’t I summon this?

Eckhart Tolle on achieving no-mind in everyday life

Eckhart speaks about realising that your mind has taken over, which gives you the opportunity to relinquish being in small mind and invite presence into your life. That whenever any type of suffering arises to use it as an alarm clock to notice that you’ve lost the present moment. That immediately alertness comes back; it’s a voluntary death – if you don’t do it you’ll need more suffering and then it’ll happen.

Don’t get me wrong – Eckhart Tolle is a fantastic teacher, I recommend his books and work very highly. Nevertheless:

How about self-acceptance?

What I almost immediately realised, after the video was over, was that neither man mentioned the possibility of self-acceptance despite often not being in a state of no-mind. If Walsh had reached the state between realisation and liberation which I call a sage, or awakened, then there would have been no drive to ask about achieving liberation in daily life (unless to teach the listeners), nor the emotion which was palpable in his speech and body language. I thought “hey wait a minute, why does he not simply accept himself the way he is?”. This would be an equally effective way to escape subjective suffering, by totally dropping the concept of individual doership, and with it all self-judgement.

There are quite a few relevant articles on these topics in my book:

• The Absolute (realised)
• Nothingness (sage, awakened, no-one)
• Liberation, Peace (liberated, no-mind)
• The difference between Sage and Liberated
• No-mind is no good without no-one
• Stories = Psychological time
• Self-Worth and other ‘stories’ about oneself

Finally a quotation from my first realised teacher:

The only difference between you and myself is that I accept myself totally.

Bhagwan / Osho