Hey, Listen Up, Oprah and Eckhart. I'm Spiritual, Too.

1.
I'm a spiritual person.

Please don't laugh at this. I'm not bragging, I'm merely stating a fact. I pray every day, I meditate, I've been to India more often than Krishnamurti. I've read the Bible and thirteen Sufi poets. In the eighties I was a Tibetan Buddhist, in the nineties I traveled to see Sai Baba. At one point, I was heavily into Francis of Assisi, now I'm an Eckhart Tolle fan. I've read The Power of Now on Portuguese trains. I've studied A New Earth in Danish drug stores. Let's face it, it's hard to find any one more spiritual than me. On the spirituality meter you can download at Oprah.com, I get twelve out of twelve - yes, it's unbelievable, but true!

2.
"What is he rambling about?" you ask yourself. Well, I'm rambling about the great work Oprah is doing to get Eckhart Tolle's teaching out in the world. The two of them are online every week going through Tolle's eye opening A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. They are doing it chapter by chapter. And the greatest thing is they aren't out to sell us anything.

There are no New Earth badges you have to buy, no expensive meditation courses you have to sign up for, and most important, no spiritual threats to the "uninitiated idiots" who look for their soul food elsewhere.

Why? Because Eckhart Tolle knows that the last thing the world needs is another religion or belief system. We need that as much as Imelda Marcos needs a new pair of shoes. What we need is to free ourselves from our overactive minds, from our sea of anxieties, and from our egos. I should know because I have an overactive mind, a lot of anxieties, and an ego the size of Greenland. If you doubt that, just read the start of these scribblings ...

3.
One of the things my ego wants is for the whole world to read my blog. Actually, that's not true. I want the whole world to read my novels. But thoughts like that can only create suffering because one day I'll discover that there are a few families in Bangla Desh that never got around to reading me ...

Do you get the idea? Having an ego is silly. We have to get rid of it and the only way to do that is being present and staying in the now. If we don't, we identify with the past: our fiascoes three years ago, our successes yesterday. Or we tend to live in the future - for the day we become more successful or get a dream house with two swimming pools.

Anxieties and wishful thinking strengthen our ego. And our collected egos are the root problem of this world.

4.
Eckhart Tolle has a few suggestions on how we become more alert instead of being caught up in negative thinking about all the things that have gone "wrong". Being alert is, of course, the key to true happiness, to becoming free of the mind, and our ego's destructive demands:

I've taken the liberty of rewriting his advice. Hey, I'm allowed to do that, since I'm a bit of a guru myself. I've called it:


The Five Commandments for the Earthly Challenged: Thou Shalt Not Think Unless Thou Absolutely Have To.

ONE. When you want to be present, pay attention to your breath. Follow it flowing in and out without forcing it to go deeper than it wants. After a few conscious breaths, you'll discover that you're more alert. This is the beginning of the end of compulsive thinking.

TWO. If you're lost in thought or anxieties, touch something. Mindful touching brings you back to the now. You actually become aware of where you are by using your senses instead of your mind. It works equally well to focus on something mundane around you: a pair of glasses, even something as corny as an ashtray. After a while you might discover that looking at an ashtray can become a religious experience - that you "see" the ashtray in a way you haven't done before.

THREE. Listen to the sounds around you, but listen to them without labeling them. Don't judge the sounds as being "beautiful", "irritating" or "annoying". For instance, when you hear a siren, don't say "Oh My God, it's the police." Just listen and be alert, even if you find out that the police is coming for you.

FOUR. Feel your inner body. Be aware what's going on inside you, behind your aches and your pains. Feel the liveliness in your hands, your arms, and your legs. There's a place within you that's always at peace, that never gets hurt or insulted by what you might perceive as a "cruel" world. Also, be grateful that you have a body, even though God knows it's gross.

FIVE. Observe your mind, and don't get angry at yourself when your thoughts are negative. Accept everything that is. You can't change your thought patterns if you condemn yourself. So just let your emotions flow through you. These thoughts and feelings aren't real, they will pass as everything else passes. The trick is, don't identify with them. You're much more than your thoughts - this "more" you can choose to call consciousness or your soul. When you understand this on a deeper level, all your problems become less important and will eventually disappear!




5.
Yes, it's that easy to become present. At least in theory.

Eckhart Tolle might not have put it the way I did, but I'll forgive him. However, these simple suggestions are quite effective when you want to escape your anxieties or disappointments - or when you overreact to some one hurting your feelings (which actually isn't your feelings, but your ego). All these things are mind stuff that clouds the most precious of moments, now.


6.
In the beginning all these theories sounded insane to me.

I thought, is Eckhart Tolle on drugs? I mean, we've always been told that it's good to have an ego - and to a certain extent that's true. It's hard to "excel" without one, but when we become too ambitious, disappointed or "sensitive", the fault always lies with the monster that rules the world - that pompous, self absorbed side of ourselves that wants to be in control and tends to feel diminished most of the time.

So what's the solution? To truly accept what is inside us without fighting it. If we don't, it's going to be harder for us to make the changes we want.

And where do we find our inner peace? In the now, the only place on earth that makes sense.



7.
I remember being present for three seconds in 1996.

1996 was a very bad year for me. I had huge problems with my stomach and my digestion. I often felt depressed, but one thing cheered me up: I had written a spiritual fable called Roberto Massanis to liv (The Two Lives of Roberto Massani). This novel was going to change my life, I told myself. It would get a larger audience that I'd had before. This novel would be read in India and Indianapolis, it would have the power to make me happy and it would be considered a masterpiece by every one from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to my chimney sweep.

All this I had decided beforehand.

But when the novel was published it got awful reviews, the worst I've received to date. I remember the first I read. The headline screamed, 333 UNBEARABLE PAGES. The reviewer wrote that my book was a pathetic new age fable with a language that was worse than a travel catalogue's. And the next reviews weren't much better.

I was totally heart broken. For months I lived inside a cloud. Nothing was real, nothing could come through. I couldn't appreciate my wonderful wife, my many friends or my great house in Copenhagen. I felt I lived inside a dark cellar full of demons who criticized me day and night.

But one day I had a "weird" experience. It was a gorgeous morning. I was watching my cats in the backyard playing around, sniffing the plants, enjoying themselves. Something shifted in me and for a few moments I was totally happy. Actually, I'd never felt happier in my life. I stared at the cats as if I'd never seen them before. But a moment later, my thoughts came back: my digestion, the reviews that made me feel misunderstood, and I went back into my depressed bubble where I stayed for about three more years.

Needless to say, the depression had to do with a lot of other stuff - you know, ridiculous things like "what am I going to do with my life" and "why am I here?" ...

However, I'll never forget those few seconds when I came intensely alive and when I realized that my digestion and my books weren't as important as I thought.





8.
These last couple of years I've had a lot more of those moments - one of the reasons being my work with The Power of Now. Eckhart Tolle's first book was such an eye opener to me, even if it didn't say anything "new". The same goes for A New Earth. These books speak to something deep inside us - something that's not our minds or our egos. To me Eckhart Tolle is a Buddhist without the rituals, a Christian without the dogma, and a Sufi without the mosque. And he doesn't want to sell us anything - he just wants us to be present instead of living in the future or the past.

Both places are hugely overrated, anyway.

You could even argue they don't exist.


9.
So all I want to say is this, "Hey Oprah and Eckhart, listen up. I'm spiritual, too. Give me ten years and I'll become enlightened as a saint ..."

What did you say?

Maybe I should go back and read Eckhart Tolle one more time ...?

-------------

PS. You can download the conversations between Eckhart Tolle and Oprah on www.oprah.com/anewearth and on I-tunes for free. They sure beat watching American Idol. Or you can get a hold of A New Earth everywhere. Your book seller might have heard about it. It's sold five million copies.

Portland Diary (Somewhat X-Rated, I'm Afraid)

1.

"So do you have a lot of prostate cancer in Denmark?"

I'm at a writers' party in Portland. One of the guests looks menacingly at me. He is about sixty years old, his hair is long and unkempt. He is dressed in black as any one should be when addressing a question of such gravity.

My fellow guest raises his eyebrows and continues to stare at me. We don't know each other, maybe we never will, but right now I'm more thrilled with the question than I want to admit. I'm thrilled that the guest is aware that Denmark is a country. I'm thrilled that he doesn't think I'm Swedish or my accent is German. I'm thrilled I don't have to hear about his great grandmother who came over from Elsinore on a donkey, or how he enjoys playing with his stepdaughter's Lego. Actually, the last example is poorly chosen, since most Americans think that Lego is American, not Danish.

"Do we have a lot of prostate cancer in Denmark?" I repeat feebly.

My fellow guest nods. He takes a sip of his Canadian beer, but his eyes never leave mine. He's obviously a doctor who has sneaked into this artist den. In the background a woman laughs hysterically, perhaps because she's getting a vasectomy.

"Well, my balls have always been one of my favorite subjects," I volunteer. During the next minutes I assure him that my testicles are doing just great, thank you and that my prostates are in top shape as well. Actually, my doctor in Denmark has nominated me for Prostate of the Year, a prize of no little importance in a country as insignificant as mine.

Yes, I'm about to brag about this, but since I constantly work on diminishing my ego, I change the subject and tell him about my country - that Denmark has excellent herring, that we're fond of insulting Muslims, we make great art films, too, and we know a lot about climate change for the sole reason we can't stand our own climate. But prostate cancer, no we can't really brag about that, even though we very much would like to.

"D vitamin deficiency," the doctor says.

I nod politely. He keeps on staring at me as if I'm a patient with a rare African disease.

His voice gets deeper, "New research shows that people who don't get a lot of sun are more inclined to get prostate cancer than people who live in warmer climates. Were you aware of that?"

"No, not ... really."

I down my spring water. Somehow, I start getting that sinking feeling in my pants. After a short while, the doctor continues around the room, discussing breast cancer with the women, gluttony with the weight watchers, and herpes with the sluts.

Outside it's getting dark, Portland is dozing off on this gorgeous spring evening. A cat leaps from a veranda crushing a butterfly, and somewhere out there Chelsea Clinton is going to bed - yes, the Chelsea Clinton. The one and only Chelsea, daughter of Hillary and Bill from Little Rock, Arkansas is removing her lipstick, shaving her armpits. Now she's turning on her TV set to watch a cheesy soap in the comfort of her PDX hotel room ...

Yes, I'm not kidding: Chelsea Clinton is in Oregon. She's scheduled to talk at Portland State University, my stomping ground. Not in the theater or in the ballroom, but in the hall where street people hang out pretending to be faculty. A local TV-station is setting up shop. A pretty journalist carries the microphone as if it were a large dildo.

We're lucky in Portland. Just think of the poor folks in Seattle who has to do with the Dalai Lama. He is speaking at the same time up there. But Portland is way too cool to hire a washed out world leader when it can get some one as important as Chelsea Clinton!

3.
Two hours before Chelsea is on, people start to line up on campus. It's unseasonably warm, about 78 degrees with clear skies and Airdale terriers sniffing tulips. Overweight volunteers in t-shirts talk cheerfully about Hil-la-ry. They pass out stickers and mailing lists. Excitement builds, you can feel it in the air. Another TV-station arrives. So does the police. And a few unemployed muggers.

An hour before the talk we’re lead into the building like sheep. A couple of supporters wear Hillary buttons, a rebel is flashing his Obama t-shirt. Bodyguards parade around the room looking menacingly at any one with an accent.

“Chelsea’s in the building,” a woman reports. Everybody stops talking and stares at the door. In the same moment, she walks into the room. We all get up and applaud. Her huge white teeth fill her mounth, the building, Oregon. Yes, Chelsea knows how to smile; she's not a little girl any more. She's a woman who's wise beyond her years. Actually, Chelsea turns out to be bright, articulate, witty, and hey, she knows a thing or two about Mom.

But after a while it gets old. Isn't it time for some good old fashioned sleaze?

"God, I wish they would've sent Monica Lewinsky," a woman whispers. "At least she could've talked about her blow job techniques."

But Chelsea can hold her own. She discusses immigration like an old pro, she breathes new life into the environment and into universal health care (does that include a plan for Denmark and Bolivia?). She also touches on the economy, the Iraqi war, and the joy of staying at the Benson.

After a quick Q and A it's over. Chelsea disappears into a banged up Volvo. We, the audience, walk out into a warm evening, happy and full filled. A few students play Frisbee. A policeman chases a sorority girl with pimples.

It's a great speaker series Portland State has put together.

Today we've listened to Hillary's daughter. In two weeks, Obama's second cousin will speak, and next month it's John McCain's dermatologist.

I love American politics. What is there not to love?