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Ego management: Eckhart Tolle on controlling psychological time January 9, 2013

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.
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Eckhart Tolle tells us that one of the main causes of emotional and mental distress is the tendency of the ego or mind to dwell in the past and the future, rather than focusing on the present.

Tolle considers this past/present thought process of the ego or mind to be psychological time, as opposed to “clock” time. Clock time might involve activities such as preparing a report for a meeting on Friday, or getting our kids ready to take them to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. Psychological time or mind-time, ego-time, by contrast would be worrying about possible outcomes of presenting your report on Friday, or fretting about what the doctor’s report will be this afternoon.

Tolle believes that there are serious emotional and mental consequences from our tendency to dwell frequently in psychological time. In The Power of Now, he writes, “All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry—all forms of fear – are caused by too much future and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence.”

For Tolle, one of the first steps we can take to get out of this endless mind/ego loop is to simply recognize this tendency, to be watchful, and observe when we are doing it. He does say, however, that this approach will take a lot of practice because the mind and ego are so fixed in this tendency that we are constantly dwelling in the past and future, and thereby coloring our thought process, that we do not usually recognize that it is happening.

Tolle recognizes that it is difficult to grasp that “time”, and more specifically psychological time, is the cause of our problems, and says that although everyone has problems in their “life situation” that need to be either dealt with or accepted, he says the biggest problem we have is ultimately the “time-bound mind itself.”

Tolle devotes close one-third of his 230-page book explaining this problem and working to convince us of the emotional and intellectual difficulties it causes. Then, for the most, part the remainder of The Power of Now is dedicated to presenting strategies and tactics to help remove ourselves from this conundrum.

Ego Management: The story of the green wood man January 1, 2013

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.
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In some ways, the concept of managing our egos in our personal growth program is often a matter of managing our personality characteristics.

And, personality appearances can be deceptive, particularly when viewing ego management as applied to other people. We can apply labels to the personality traits of people we know or are acquainted with. But, those labels might be wrong, and with that, our judgements about the egos of other people can be wrong.

Take the story of the green wood man, as related to me by a friend of mine.

This was a man who lived in the country, on a small farm near the woods. Every year, he would leave the chore of getting winter firewood for heating his home until the very last minute; until the cold weather and snow had already set in. This meant that my friend was usually hired by the man to go into the woods and fell trees, cut them up, and then split the logs into firewood for the winter weeks and months ahead.

This scenario repeated itself every year. The “problem” with this approach is that wood cut at that time of year will be green, and there will be no time for it to “season” or dry, because the man needed to burn it right away. Green wood is hard to light and keep burning in a fire.

So why did the man wait until only green wood was available?

Here we might assume the role of personal growth or ego management practitioner, be judgemental, and assume that the man was a hopeless procrastinator.

Or perhaps we should conclude that the man had his reasons, and simply preferred burning green wood, rather than seasoned wood, in his woodstove.